When you are losing your counter acting before transition.

PMTS Forum

When you are losing your counter acting before transition.

Postby h.harb » Mon Oct 20, 2014 8:26 am

This is MA on a junior racer, U16, in this post I am sending the MA to his father. Billy is in the US junior development pipeline. He's well coached, I know his coach, he is using mostly PMTS. However more stringent attention to detail is required, for him to reach the next level. You can read this analysis as I wrote to them.

Dear Mr. Billy,
I caught some runs of Billy (fake name), training in September, you have on You Tube. I like the exercises with the hands on the hips, we call that the "Angry Mother" exercise. And when practicing this he has good control of his tipping and upper body to support the angles. I can also see his efforts toward counter tipping or "Counter balancing" in the exercise, this is all good. At this level it is good skiing and good performance. Now the, "However" comes into play from what I see needs more work and more refinement emphasis.

My first question before I go much further is, where was this training day relative to his canting changes? I see the right boot (left turns) is slightly soft, which means it needs to be tipped out. The left foot turn is better, very close.

OK, back to the movements. In the exercises which later shows up to a greater degree in slalom training. He comes out of his Counter acting hip relationship, (squares up) before the turn is over, right at the transition. Which means he is already square to his skis in or before edge transition. This should not be happening. He should work on holding that counter acted relationship through the transition and transfer to the uphill outside edge, LTE and get balanced before changing edges. Next, due to this squaring up of the hips, a number of other compensations have to follow, and they are, extension off the outside ski (or a push) and also pushing the new outside ski flat before he balances on it. This makes him late for establishing balance and pressure for the next turn.

I see signs of this happening in the exercises, but it is very subtle. As with everything, when higher stresses and performance is required these little things get magnified, like in actual gate running.

I like the fact that he went back to the exercises the next day, they are exactly what his technique needs. I would have him focus on the refinements I mentioned, so to become stronger with the good technique he is using and so he can hold onto that technique more consistently in gate training. We know that at some level technique will always be tested when gate training. The best skiers in the world are able to maintain it longer, while still going faster. Regards HH.

This is an example of MA I do with racers that come to our shop for alignment. Obviously a relationship develops before this kind of interchange can happen. In this case, I've been doing the alignment on him for 4 years. Recently Sarah Schleper asked me for help with her skiing. She is racing at Seolden next Saturday. Coaching via the internet.
User avatar
h.harb
 
Posts: 7047
Joined: Sat Feb 03, 2007 2:08 pm
Location: Dumont, Colorado

Re: When you are losing your counter acting before transitio

Postby h.harb » Mon Oct 20, 2014 1:09 pm

This sounds so simple if you have PMTS training. However for most skiers they have no idea what this means and they for sure don't do it.
http://harbskisysems.blogspot.com/2014/10/pmts-skier-development-transition.html
http://harbskisysems.blogspot.com/2014/10/transition-continued.html
User avatar
h.harb
 
Posts: 7047
Joined: Sat Feb 03, 2007 2:08 pm
Location: Dumont, Colorado

Re: When you are losing your counter acting before transitio

Postby skijim13 » Tue Oct 21, 2014 6:38 am

Counter acting is very important to good skiing but PMTS is the only program that teaches how to learn it correctly. Not an easy thing for the everyday person to develop since we forgot about how to isolate our hips. The angry mother progressions are the ones that got the true message on how to counter to me and how to feel it. Now to develop it into my skiing without having to think about it will be the next progression.
skijim13
 
Posts: 528
Joined: Wed May 22, 2013 9:17 am
Location: Nazareth PA USA

Re: When you are losing your counter acting before transitio

Postby h.harb » Tue Oct 21, 2014 7:06 am

Don't forget that once you have learned the "angry mother" exercise, you still need to coordinate it with your pole use. You can undo angry mother right after you practice it, if you go back to pole use that swings or advances the outside arm.
User avatar
h.harb
 
Posts: 7047
Joined: Sat Feb 03, 2007 2:08 pm
Location: Dumont, Colorado

Re: When you are losing your counter acting before transitio

Postby Erik » Tue Oct 21, 2014 9:39 am

h.harb wrote:Don't forget that once you have learned the "angry mother" exercise, you still need to coordinate it with your pole use. You can undo angry mother right after you practice it, if you go back to pole use that swings or advances the outside arm.


The Angry Mother e-videos (2) available from Harb Ski Systems show the Angry Mother as a standalone, poles-free exercise, and then demonstrate how to do additional drills to reintroduce pole usage in a way that maintains focus on the the Angry Mother counteracting. If you don't coordinate the pole usage with the counteracting, you might look more like an "Angry Moth" than an "Angry Mother".
Erik
 
Posts: 213
Joined: Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:30 pm

Re: When you are losing your counter acting before transitio

Postby h.harb » Tue Oct 21, 2014 1:10 pm

No one can ski like Ted Ligety! For someone to use Ted Ligety as an example for the way to ski, already tells you; they don't understand skiing's basic movements. Basic fundamental technique is what the Austrians use. Ted, has special abilities that no one else has. I've said this before, Ted has the best feet and ankles in ski racing. If you think you can lift your outside hip like Ted or square your hips up like Ted, you are in for a surprise. You can't and no one should copy Ted! Ted has limitations in hip flexibility especially lateral movements and he is able to make up for it with his amazingly strong feet and ankles. He can hold where others can not without CB and CA.

This is why he isn't a top level slalom skier. He just can't roll his hips side to side and achieve CB with his pelvis, before the load takes over his balancing ability. Slalom is too fast and tight. In GS it's OK there is time and distance on your side. Or even in slalom the way slalom was set 6 years ago, with more distance between gates, from time to time Ted could get top 5. Then the slalom courses got tight, ski radius was changed to 13 plus, and slalom skis for men had to be 165cm long. Basically that killed Ted's slalom skiing.


What is amazing about ski instruction and coaching in this regard, is that some people out there (instructor and coaches alike) try to teach what is already an over-used detrimental movement that holds skiers back. A current example, the US Ski Team men's Head coach, he says, "Steering movements, leg rotation are missing in our National Team slalom skiing." However when you watch our US slalom skiers, if they make the cut, (often there are no US racers in the second run) which means finishing in the top 30 after the first second run. They don't do well because they use too much ski twisting and steering. They already have this movement and way too much of it. What the US ski team coaches don't get, is our racers are missing an effective release, creating a balanced transition and complimented by tipping movements. They already have more pivoting, steering and ski redirection than they know how to control. And most of it is with the skis flat.

In a technical presentation recently, the same US Men's Head Coach pointed out what he thought were the most import concepts used by a world class slalom skier. That list didn't include a transition or tipping movements. How can you even pretend to be a ski coach, without strong emphasis on these two Essentials? What that demonstrates is that this coach doesn't get world cup skiing or movements.

You can't coach or become a world class slalom skier without these movements. Yet, the US Ski Team wants 'more" emphasis on leg twisting to re-direct the skis. How idiotic is that? It's hard to fathom, mind boggling in fact.

Same goes for hip rotation, most US racers already has too much of it and are using it incorrectly, why? Because they never learned how to CA properly first. If you know how to CA, you can feed in some hip follow. "Hip follow", is totally different than "hip rotation". In "big turns", some hip follow is necessary, this is due to the nature of the body's amount of femur range of motion in the pelvis.
This is a given, it has to happen or you can no longer keep tipping your legs in long turns. So hip follow in long turns does happen. It's not as necessary in slalom unless you are dumping the hip. At some point in a turn, if you are hip dumping the hip down and inside, you have to rotate it to get back out for the next turn. Fixing a movement mistake, with another movement mistake, is the domain of PSIA instruction. If you investigate PMTS movements, you will find, there are no movements in it that you have to compensate for with unwanted ones.
User avatar
h.harb
 
Posts: 7047
Joined: Sat Feb 03, 2007 2:08 pm
Location: Dumont, Colorado


Return to Primary Movements Teaching System

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 40 guests