Video For Analysis (SL Race Turns)

[Harald]

I don?t understand what happened here, I'm working for a few days and a situation develops, a guy comes over here for some advice about his skiing ( I can?t get anything from that site he posted to, it won?t play on my computer) then goes back to Epic and tries to insult PMTS skiers of which he has seen no one except on some video he refers to. I don?t get it, is he a plant or a bozo. By the descriptions of his skiing, he?s in no position to analyze any skiers.

Hey buddy, everyone here was perfectly gracious to you and your attempts to find help until you were caught being a jesk (typo I meant jerk) on Epic.

We have great skiers in PMTS, who have learned from low intermediate levels, he has no idea of how many skiers have come through the program. Joe did a complete break down of the guy?s skiing. Should everyone repeat what Joe said and pat the guy on the back, like the PSIA suck-ups do?

Has he ever skied with any one with a PMTS background? We have hundreds of skiers who can ski circles around him, yet he makes derogatory comments about PMTS skiers.

I don?t get it. If this is the case, hey buddy stay on Epic, your buddies over there will refine that up movement and make it perfect so you can skid even further down the falline. I?ll block his entry to the forum if I hear any more BS about this.

[Joseph]

Really, Greg, what sort of reaction did you expect? To solicit help from people and then insult the people who offered their advice because it didn't meet your high standards, seems off base to me. If your true intention is to learn what you can both from here and Epic, then what is your motivation for proclaiming this forum inferior? How can you be offended when people here are upset by this? That, to me, seems a bit like stealing the honey from a beehive and then cursing the bees for their foul temperament when you get stung.

Maybe nobody else took the time to prepare a ski lesson that you could take with you to the slopes, but the "MA" from most parties here was pretty good. Everyone mentioned the up move, which is the biggest movement issue holding your slalom skiing back. Someone posted W.C. video to illustrate flexing to release. Heyoka mentioned your poling and he is absolutely right about it. Efficient pole use would prevent the rotation that does occur at the top 1/2 of every turn and help you to create the counterbalance that I talked about in my post. There were numerous others who mentioned the tip lead. Pulling both feet under your body would improve your skiing. I don't know about you, but I can only work on 1 or maybe 2 things to change in my skiing at a time. Trying to teach poling online is a lost cause, and really, after I posted a great drill to help you to change the movement in your skiing that slows you down the most, what more do you expect to get? If you're serious about using PMTS to improve your skiing, work on the edge flop drill that I described and then send us some new video (especially of the drill). You got what you wanted by your own admission:

"Thank you for the detailed reply Joseph. I will try this out on snow tomorrow. That kind of response is exactly what I was looking for here.
Thank you
GREG"

I charge a lot of money to teach that stuff to people; you got it for free. Smile and be happy. But don't get offended at people who are angry when you've clearly insulted them. There's no logic there, and it's not going to help your skiing any. There are a lot of areas where you could improve your skiing. You're a good skier, but you could be a great skier if you're willing to humble yourself enough to be a student of the sport here. But few people anywhere are going to want to help you if they can expect to be criticized for doing so. (that little piece of advice is also complimentary and goes far beyond skiing)

I would be happy to comment on any further video that you send.

Joseph

[Harald]

Paul I have to disagree with you, as I have had the mis-opportunity to see BB in action right in front of me at Loveland on numerous occasions.
I don?t consider BB you know a good skier. He is a good skier in the eye of the easily dazzled viewer, who doesn?t analyze in depth. If you look deeper and not only see him in normal situations, by that I mean on blue terrain, he can carve and connect turns in easy snow.

In a real skiing situation, in real bumps, steeps, ice he can?t hold his speed, carve a round high C turn or bend the front of a ski. He bails out when he gets going too fast and he leans in on real ice, after he loses his speed control. He parks and rides when he tries to carve on steep hard snow; therefore he gains too much speed and dumps a turn or two. This is not impressive skiing, at least not to me. This is an average PSIA instructor, not a real skier.

I have higher standards for our coaches, Joe, Max, Jay, Rich etc, can ski rings around him. I don't mention Diana because few skiers can even carry her skis.

[JohnMoore]

Joseph, thank you! That was a very gracious and dignified response, and a good model, in my opinion, for how people might conduct themselves on this forum and over on Epic. The skiing world would be a hugely better place without the ad hominem attacks and point-scoring.

[john heath]

It's a waste of people's time. for every post that isn't aimed at gaining a better understanding of skiing, people like joseph and harald have less time for analysis of other people's genuine posts. What you got was one of the most detailed replies on this site. Email a lawyer and ask him for free advice and see what response you get. the other skiers who replied were practising their observational skills - in observing PMTS. PMTS doesn't have time for anything other than the moves that need sorting out and the moves that will help people do that. So the analysis was limited to these moves. all the posters were courteous and far from slating your skiing, they pointed out that they admired your courage in posting the clips. If they were wrong in what they said, they'd already pointed out that they were here to learn too and that they were, like you, hanging on to see what more experienced observers had to say about it.

[Harald]

I managed after about a hour of loading to see about two seconds of the video clip in question. Is the guy you are doing MA on in red or blue?

[tommy]

red/black jacket and whitish helmet.

[Max_501]

I managed after about a hour of loading to see about two seconds of the video clip in question. Is the guy you are doing MA on in red or blue?

HH, did you try these links, they load pretty fast on my machine as they are smaller

http://www.realskiers.com/pmtsforum/viewtopic.php?p=8120#8120

[Harald]

I managed to get a look at our friend who posted the video. I will be blunt and to the point, if you can?t take it, go back to Epic, they love this stuff over there.

This is immature skiing. It is using the side cut, but that?s as far as it goes. Some concerted coaching needs to happen for this skier to become a successful racer. This is skiing like the PSIA boys love, wide stance, parking on the side cut, up unweighting, coming square to the skis before or at the falline, all the stuff that coaches don?t see (and if they see it, they like it) the stuff that makes racers slow and makes them frustrated and they don?t know why..

This skiing reminds me of a bad skiing version of Pranger. By the way Rusty, where is your favorite poster boy these days, not in the running!!!! He?s probably skiing with his feet too close together.

I coach Diana and I can tell you on any day, she can beat the daylights out of this skiing. Not that that?s a comparison anyone needs to know, but I?ll tell you why Diana skis differently than this skier.

She is the antithesis of these movements. The skiing in the video is lazy, has little technical discipline. It?s not the Bode type of discipline omission, its just immature movements. I have no idea how old or how long this skier has been skiing, but it looks like a high school level type of skier, who skis with a self learned technique.

The upper and lower body are not supporting pressure building. The turn arc is not reduced or shortened by pressuring the ski, the side cut is grinding into the snow doing all the turning, this is OK for a recreational skier, but for a racer this won?t hold up. This is evident because the upper body leans away from where pressure needs to develop. When the upper body leans away, the turn has to have a hard hit at the finish, because the pressure was not loaded higher in the arc.

There is little preparation in the High C phase of the turn. The upper body comes square much too early, which is also a pressure robber. The square upper, to lower body position reduces hip angle, this is demonstrated by where the inside leg resides. You see the inside leg is not flexed under the hips, it is at the same angle as the out side ski, this tells me there is reduced pressure on the outside ski.

I can verify that by the release, as it is an up movement release, which means the rebound to send the skier to the next turn with a float, did not happen and will not happen. Diana has conquered all of these faults; in fact she never developed them, as she was on a completely different track then this skier. There are plenty of good examples of skiing out there. Use Darren, he?s the PMTS poster kid, as is Rocca. The Epic posts about Rocca?s skiing are hilarious; they have no clue about what he?s doing. Some call it rotary movements. Reminds me of the joke about how many PSIA guys does it take to screw in a light bulb.

Darren is a great model why not copy him? He used to come to Alaska to ski with me when he was a junior. His Dad used to bring him up to see how our junior racers were doing it, as we had two kids from our small program go to the World Junior Championships in one year out of the whole country. Mr. Rahlves wanted Darren to see how our guys were skiing and what we were doing.

A program for this skier, first his feet are too far apart, that?s part of the reason the CM is sitting on or over the inside leg rather than inside the turn, and why he has to extend to get out of the turn. If he could ski without weighting his inside ski it would really help develop balance. This skier has yet to make a turn that demonstrates the use of balance, that I?ve seen. It would be a building process to undo and rebuild a real project. By the sounds of his mouthing off on Epic, I doubt he has the commitment or the industry to want go through the steps to do it right, He thinks he?s already there and got the goods. He never really wanted to know what he should do to change; he just wanted to be told he was a great skier. Sorry, we have standards here and we don?t BS anyone.

[Max_501]

Woof, woof, the hyenas are out tonight! The pack mentality on this board is unbelievable.

You may have missed it, but the skier in question set off the flame war when he referred to the regulars here as a bunch of hacks and bashed them for not doing a good enough job on his movement analysis. There was not a single negative comment about him or his skiing prior to that post.

[JohnMoore]

This guy is an accomplished skier by many accounts and while there's always room for improvement, the lynching he's gotten here is incredible! I saw on another thread that some of you would be at my home resort, Snowbasin, this Friday. At first I thought that it would be great to meet you and see PMTS in action, but now I think that all you'll do is attack my skiing and want to charge me money for even the slightest bit of advice.

Read the whole thread and you'll understand more about what happened. HelluvaSkier posted a message suggesting he was genuinely interested in some video analysis of his skiing. Quite a lot of people chipped in with advice and suggestions based on the video, some spending quite a bit of time and effort on it (such as Joseph) - all, of course, free of charge, notwithstanding what you are suggesting. HelluvaSkier then posted to a thread on Epic ridiculing the contributions people had made here and suggesting that there weren't really any good PMTS skiers other than Harald and Diana. That's why the venom you are seeing here occurred. If he had actually been interested in the advice and prepared to listen and take it on board, no-one would have attacked him, but it appears that that was not what he came here for. 'Ungentlemanly conduct' would, I think, be a fair description of what took place.

Nonetheless I would agree that the tone on here is sometimes more negative and confrontational than is ideal as a 'shop window' for PMTS. Don't let it put you off PMTS, though! Give the guys at Snowbasin a chance and you may form a quite different impression.

[Heyoka]

It all did me a favor. I need reminders, of how not to be.

[jbotti]

I hate to beat a dead horse, but this is absolute comedy!!

Our buddy Greg (Helluvaskier) posted some new video on Epic and he did some analysis of his skiing and what he needs to work on. His commentary is below:

"Well, I have been working on many things that were brought up in the previous thread. I broke them down into a few things.

1) Hands need to be more dynamic, and actually using a pole plant.
2) My upper body needs to move up much less intransition, and start moving down the fall line more than it is, as well as stop crunching/hunching.
3) I need to continue to create some counter toward the bottom of the turn and top of the next in order to keep my inside ski on the snow (lifted as a result of following my skis).
4) My stance for slalom needs to narrow up in order to be more effective in the course.

There are many areas that I still need to work on, but the newer video show me using my hands slightly more and not rising up as much (still there a lot) in my transitions. The old habbits however are still there... I need more time on snow "thinking" cross under, versus cross over.

Also posted is a clip of me skiing on my GS skis. It shows little hand use (hands do come together more when you give me two sticks and a flag to turn around) and a lot of other bad habbits that will come out in discussion I am sure... The skis are 182cm Elan GSX WC. Both videos were shot on the same head wall which is probably around a 30+/- degree pitch near the bottom.

Neither clip has much regard for turn size that I will be making in a course because I wanted to keep them carved and not looking really sloppy (things get messy looking when you carve them too tight at that high of speeds). Since it is not skiing in a course (which I did in GS today with some success) I figured that turn shape did not matter too much.

As a final note, I will probably update this thread from time to time as I get new video that shows some sort of visible improvement in my skiing. This update doesn't show as much as I would like, but I promised more video, so here it is. I would like to thank everyone who has helped out so far. There was a lot of time and effort put into the other threads by many posters. It has been VERY helpful and excellent for my skiing"

Now everyone of the issues he talks about in his 4 points (pole plant, Up Move, Counter, and less wide stance) were all mentioned to him and pointed out well before Joseph ever sent him the response that according to him was finally at his level.

He also goes on to thank all his buddies on Epic for the wonderful help they are givimg him with his skiing.

This is clearly the case of someone who had his mind made up before he asked for the comments.

I apologize in advance for the post, but I couldn't resist after I read the new commentray from Greg.

[milesb]

It's not this friday for snowbasin, it's feb 3.

[tommy]

I hate to beat a dead horse, but this is absolute comedy!!

Jbotti,

just relax... WholeLotOfBS or whatever the nick was is just a typical representative of the younger generation (I've got 2 kids, 10 & 12, sometimes behaving exactly in this way to get what they believe they want for now) where ego rulez and quick fixes and narcicism are the norm... it's really the ancient principle of "licking upwards, kicking downwards so I get what I want for now" that's going on in his/her posts, all aimed at gloryfying "himself almighty"...

They will (hopefully!) grow up sometime....

--T