Rusty Guy wrote:Tony talked about the importance of inside leg steering and how prevelant it is among current racers. He debunked the idea that anyone on the courses today can make edge to edge turns. There is exceedingly active redirection according to Tony. I don't expect anyone here to buy into that because you didn't hear it from Herr Harb.
Inside leg steering to create a pivot action in the outside leg certianly creates rotation. Racers may use it, I wouldn't know. "Herr Harb" was hanging with the US ski team and their coaches often at the camp as they were practicing before the runs opened and so many of them know Harald. He would have direct knowledge about this and I hope he comments. I do know that Roger Taggert from the NW PSIA tech team and coach of the SARS racing program and his staff actively coached against inside leg steering as it bleds off speed. Anyone diverging their tips were coached to change their line so they could carve it top to bottom. That's not saying a racer wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't ever active steer, just what represents the norm.
Interestingly, on carvers you can't do this. Even if you lift your inside carver off the ground (which you would have to do to do this in carvers), the pivot force on the outside carver would be resisted and disrupt balance just because, unlike skis, the carvers resist pivoting and twisting.
What's missing in this disussion appears to be a lack of understanding of how the prior turn can blend into the new turn with both remaining carved. Most skiers don't and can't do this. Many of the skiers at this camp I was just at do this regullarly. They look quite different coming down the hill from most skiers.
Rather one wants to do this or not in their own skiing is certainly up to ones preference.
Rusty Guy wrote: Let's look at it from another perspective. I guess I find it almost comical to hear you say "PMTS allows the skis to pivot (redirect) into the fall line.
I'm not sure what MilesB was referring to, but the beginner PMTS turn that is taught is the two footed release and it uses "unwinding" to start the turn and only the bottom of the turn is carved. Basically the student simply faces down the hill with their skis in a traverse. They let their skis go flat and their skis will seek the fall line. Then they tip their inside ski to it's LTE to carve the bottom of the turn. This is an easy turn to make and good for non-beginners or anyone for keeping it real narrow and brushing off speed. But, this has nothing to do with the high end and much more skilled turn that carves the top of the turn. That's a different kind of PMTS turn that does not rely on any rotational inputs. The edge changes occur while the skis are in a straight line in this high end PMTS turn.
Rusty - those Fischer boots sound fascinating. I asked rehtorically when I was first getting into skiing why the bindings were linear since if they were offset at an angle the knees would work right for flexion. I guess Fischer does this in their boot shell. I'm intrigued. Makes a lot of logical sense.
I also note in your history of posts that you have a reverse ramp angle in your setup. IE toes higher than your heel. That's not the norm for most people, but it all varies by person. In my own case I'm going to start playing with the total angle "delta" + "ramp" to get my fore aft balance going better. I have quite a few pairs of skis and ranked them while at camp to Jay as to which ones I find easier to ski on in terms of fore/aft balance. Then I figured I could measure them and see if my subjective fore aft ranking matched any trend in measured delta angle of the skis.
Indeed it did. My preference or ease of fore/aft balance followed exactly the delta angle differences in these skis. Looks like I'll be experimenting going a tad more with it. SI had an interesting post about this and measured the weight people had heel vs toe with and without a heel lift and found 50% got better distribution and 50% got worse. Just shows that this whole ramp/delta angle vs fore/aft balance is a very individual thing and must be played with. Paul Kilby from Vail at the camp talked about his experience with this as well and his pair of boots has ramp angle adjustment built into the boot. He was quite amazed at how much a little change in the boot changed how he skied.
But I'm hijacking BigE's thread a bit here.