Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

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Re: Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

Postby skijim13 » Wed Jan 09, 2019 10:11 am

Learning PMTS requires doing the movements correctly which requires the feedback of an PMTS coach. Being a serious student of skiing with ski instructor background. I purchased all the books and videos that were available and started working on the drills. I did see my skiing get better, and trained even more. However; it was not until I went to my first PMTS camp that I realized how much more there really is to learn to get the most out of PMTS. My wife and I both train together and will be attending Camp number six. I ski about 65 days per year and train about 40 days per year and I can you from our experience we still have a great deal to learn still. My suggestion is to go to one of the PMTS camps and you will see a real change in your skiing.
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Re: Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

Postby ToddW » Sat Jan 12, 2019 2:49 pm

mardale wrote:
noobSkier wrote:Zeus,
When I started PMTS I thought it could be implemented in a matter of weeks...2 years down the road (although my skiing has improved) I'm still doing the most basic exercises and I've never been a weak athlete by any means. Point being, even though the information is correct it takes hundreds of ski days to transform your skiing. Its deceptive because masters like HH make it look so easy, but in reality its no less difficult and takes no less time than mastering a musical instrument.


I don't think it takes hundreds of days to transform your skiing. It can be done in maybe as little as 2 weeks of skiing, with a dedicated student and a good teacher and feedback. It would not be perfection, for sure, but it could be a significant and radical change. Some could meaningfully change in even 1 week.
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Mardale,

I think you and noobskier have very different standards in mind when you use the expression transform your skiing.

The thing about PMTS improvements is that they’re like the Richter Scale for earthquakes. Each successive level of accomplishment dwarfs the previous one. When many of us talk about transforming our skiing, we aren’t aiming for level one or even level 2.

I’ve watched in person capable skiers like Diana, Walter, and Jay transform their already impressive skiing and it took years. It took years for Max_501 and Heluvaskier too.

The first dose of PMTS is thrilling. It’s a rush. But consider saving “transform” for the amazing stuff that comes later.

[edit: repair auto spell change to a person’s name]
Last edited by ToddW on Sat Jan 12, 2019 7:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

Postby ToddW » Sat Jan 12, 2019 3:02 pm

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3259

See HH quote in first post and read responses.
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Re: Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

Postby Max_501 » Sat Jan 12, 2019 6:27 pm

ToddW wrote:http://pmts.org/pmtsforum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3259

See HH quote in first post and read responses.


Todd, what a great find. I need to post in that thread. It took many years and a lot of hard work to get where I am. I skied today and 3/4 of my time was working on exercises for CA and pull back.

What does it take to become an expert skier?
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Re: Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

Postby noobSkier » Sun Jan 13, 2019 10:32 am

Max_501 wrote:I skied today and 3/4 of my time was working on exercises for CA and pull back.


Max_501, you are a masochist...and an inspiration to us all :lol:
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Re: Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

Postby h.harb » Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:56 pm

There are many different kinds of athletes, for example, endurance, skill and strength athletes. Not all of these types are conducive to quick successful ski learning. Skiing requires a combination of skills and natural instincts for someone to get it quickly. I've seen it happen. To even reach the top 100 in the world you have to have some special talents, training, and years for "correct" repetition and practice. Most skiers go out and do themselves more harm than good when practicing.

If I take two individuals I know well Diana Rogers and Max501 for example, who I've coached extensively; you can be the judge of the time frame it takes to achieve their level. From when I first saw Diana ski, it took 4 years of coaching and training for her to reach the level beyond the best Masters racers in the country. So let's look at Diana's skill set. She is in great shape physically, she has the best boot set up one can achieve, she is highly coordinated, has great proprioception and awareness with a strong sense of feedback from the skis, her body, and the surface. She was a Level III PSIA instructor when I met her. However, this is not an enviable standard, she knew it and I know it.

Max501 basically required some canting fine-tuning, his biggest area for development was counteracting and upper body coordination. once he had that going his tipping angles increased and his inside foot pullback became much stronger, which transformed his skiing, to a high level. Max501 is in great physical condition, he's strong, coordinated and quick. Max501 also has great focus for movement interaction, he's highly aware of his body and how it moves.

The hidden "learning skills" are highly underrated. They are also totally different from the physical abilities I've listed, which are strength, coordination, and flexibility. Let me say in a non-derogatory way if I can, this is a different skill set than say an endurance or triathlon type athlete. Skiing like tennis are skill and coordination sports. Endurance sports like running or triathlons are less skill intensive. Even if you have all the above physical attributes going for you, yet you have not developed the mental "Learning Skills" you will take longer and even struggle to reach your goals. So it's not only about being a good physical athlete.

What are the "Learning Skills"? In a broad sense, they are the ability to translate information from the coach, into the movements you need to make and then creating the movements with the right body parts. You also have to absorb and recreate how the body parts are to be moved in the right order without hesitation. We will come back to the word "Hesitation" later. One of the things I always do when I coach is to ask the student when I see they have had a breakthrough, "What did you do differently." The dominant most frequent answer is, "I did exactly what you said, and I did it much more then I thought I ever had to! It's a very simple secret or answer, however not that easy to achieve.

So let's go back to "hesitation", which is controlled in the mind by fear or uncertainty. I keep trying to promote the message that skiing is about relaxation, not forcefulness. If you are tight or stiff you will not get relaxation with your movements. If you are tight and this can be a physical limitation, from a lack of range of motion, but if it is not physical, it's mental. You have to give up a certain amount of control to be able to relax.

Yes, creating the right movements promotes confidence from the skiing results. This confidence then translates to less fear and more relaxation. This topic could go on and on, but I'll let it rest for the time being and let everyone digestion.

A learning tutorial!

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Re: Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

Postby h.harb » Sun Jan 13, 2019 1:08 pm

As a footnote two skiers I've coached over the internet, or through videos and my Blog, are Helluvaskier and Reilly. I have never actually coached them on the hill. I have responded to video and photos they sent me. Where were they with their skiing and what did they achieve? Both are highly motivated, strong and flexible. They were what I call strong skiers but not finesse-full skiers with all the movements in place. However, they thought they were on the right track. I showed them where they were off the track and to their credit they changed their course. It took approximately 2 to 3 seasons to get them totally on the PMTS track. Helluvaskier can respond and fill in the blanks if he is so inclined.

Where are both of these skiers today, I'm sure you have seen videos and photos of their highly efficient and effective skiing. I'll add, I know, like Max501, Diana, and both Greg and Reilly they are dedicated and willing to spend hours working the basics to get it right.
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Re: Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

Postby Max_501 » Sun Jan 13, 2019 5:05 pm

h.harb wrote:Max501 also has great focus for movement interaction, he's highly aware of his body and how it moves.


Here's some detail for those that are interested in how this happened.

Awareness of body movements was not a natural skill I had prior to PMTS. My breakthrough came one night after a lesson with Harald. I wasn't able to sleep because I was focused on what it takes to get the big angles we see in HH's skiing (I could see the pieces of the puzzle but I couldn't put them together) so I got out of bed at 2am and experimented with creating angles by tipping while keeping a stable upper body. Using a doorway at first and then a wall, I was able to get into some great positions and I spent a lot of time thinking about how I got there, what muscles were involved (some contracting while others were stretching) and so on. The next day some of these discoveries made their way to the snow. From that point forward, experimenting with movement both on and off the snow became part of my training. The other thing I did (and still do) is give HH the credit he deserves as a master coach. I don't second guess or try to reinterpret his instructions. I simply follow them to the T.
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Re: Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

Postby h.harb » Sun Jan 13, 2019 5:48 pm

I don't second guess or try to reinterpret his instructions. I simply follow them to the T.


That's because you know all the other crap out there doesn't work!
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Re: Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

Postby h.harb » Sun Jan 13, 2019 5:56 pm

Let me add that many others who are not naturally built for skiing have had great success with adjustments to their boots and to their technique. For example Jbotti, Geoff Darst, who have long femurs, and limited dorsiflexion, but with adjustments and in John's case with his dedication to training and practice, he has made huge gains. All of the skiers we have had contact with over the years come out looking like PMTS instructors/coaches when they ski.
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Re: Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

Postby HeluvaSkier » Mon Jan 14, 2019 9:44 am

h.harb wrote:Heluvaskier can respond and fill in the blanks if he is so inclined.


Thanks Harald. It doesn't get much more complementary than that! I had completely forgotten about the post I made in 2011, but the journey obviously did not stop there. Today, I would ski circles around "2011 me" in an almost-embarrassing fashion... and 'today me' and '2006 me' don't even look like the same skier. That really is the power of staying focused on the right movements and the right ski/boot setup when developing one's skiing (boots/footbeds have changed a bit more since 2011). My fitness also hugely improved since 2011--adding major strength and flexibility training. In addition to the continued help from Harald (were just texting about my boot setup less than a week ago) I was also fortunate enough to spend some time on-snow with Max, which helped me better-understand some critical deficiencies in my skiing. Since then, the improvement has only accelerated. I do more 'self-coaching' with video now (thanks to my wife who is willing to film me), but I always ensure that the coaches who I trust the most (Harald, WNYSkier, Max and Reilly) confirm/deny that I'm moving in the right direction. I also STILL spend most afternoons on easy terrain working on refining movements, increasing range of motion, improving timing, using specific targeted drills. I spend my mornings when the legs are fresh on steep terrain, aiming at tighter turns, more speed control, more ski performance and bigger range of motion in every Essential... constantly pushing my skiing to be better across all turn shapes/types and terrain.
Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability.

www.youtube.com/c/heluvaskier
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Re: Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

Postby dewdman42 » Mon Jan 14, 2019 4:46 pm

+1
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Re: Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

Postby Max_501 » Mon Jan 14, 2019 7:20 pm

HeluvaSkier wrote:I was also fortunate enough to spend some time on-snow with Max, which helped me better-understand some critical deficiencies in my skiing.


I'm not so sure "fortunate" is the right word. How many times did I shout "Don't be such a wussy!" :lol:
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Re: Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

Postby zeus » Wed Jan 16, 2019 8:25 pm

Wow, you all are like in a cult-like mentality. No wonder PMTS is being marginalized everywhere else.

Also, seems like there's a lot of judgment passed around based on an experience with an n=1 as well. Just because you did not progress as quickly when you started does not mean no one else can. You are forgetting that I did not have to "unlearn" a lot. A lot of movements I learned were self-taught, and they were not too far from the PMTS descriptions. And secondly, you know nothing of my background. I was a successful professional athlete in a different sport for over a decade. Surely, some skills transfer across disciplines.

Anyway, I have had less than twenty days on the snow total so far (although I ski bell to bell with my only breaks being on the lifts), and I have already successfully and comfortably skied the vertigo headwall at Killington over ten times. That makes me feel accomplished, and I am happy that I feel comfortable on steep, icy slopes that I did not think I would manage to do in years. That is literally all that I care about. I don't care if I don't perfectly conform to your view of "expert" movements. I am not going to spend 40 out of 65 ski days "training." I ski for enjoyment - I am not competing; and I bet none of you are. So, what is the point in spending thousands of dollars on camps and videos and boot alignments chasing that incremental change to conform to a standard someone else has set? Just ski naturally. It really isn't that hard.

You all need to open your minds a bit, and be less rigid about these things if you don't want PMTS to die with the four or five of you. Speaking of which, I hope you are open minded enough to not delete this post. If it does disappear, I will just post it elsewhere.
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Re: Help with fore-aft balance issue in uneven snow

Postby ToddW » Wed Jan 16, 2019 9:52 pm

Open mindedness — that’s what led most of us to PMTS. We had enough experience to recognize how superior it is. We reject the other stuff based on its outcome.

N=1 and knowledge of your background — we assume you’re probably a human being with two feet to tip with and an organic brain controlling those tipping feet. That tells us an awful lot. N is actually quite large. There are decades of racer and rec skier video from coaching and alignment sessions. There are detailed records of the feet, ankles, legs and hips of most of those skiers from indoor alignment sessions and on-snow alignment experiments. This stuff works and is far more thoroughly tested than any other coaching methodology or technical model of skiing.

Too much time training — as an athlete in another sport you surely know that the results you obtain reflect what you put in ... you reap what you sow. Some of us find the results of PMTS rewarding and don’t find that practice or analyzing our turns as we freeski detracts from our pleasure. Quite the contrary, in fact. If that’s not your cup of tea, then go ski your way and have a great time on the mountain.

PMTS and that other stuff are like oil and water; they don’t blend together very well. If you’re not will to try PMTS straight, then save yourself the effort and go do something else.
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