A Season of MA.

[onyxjl]

This season I want to take my own advice and start posting regular video clips for MA. Selfishly, I want to benefit from all the expert skiing advice available on these forums, but I also think that other aspiring skiers can benefit from video of real students with less than perfect turns to analyze for themselves. I've seen what a difference this made for Heluva's skiing and I'd like to come out the other side even skiing half that well. I want to try and dedicate this season to really practicing the PMTS drills.

With that in mind I'd like to post the first of hopefully many clips. This was taken at the end of last season. I am skiing on SuperShapes and was fortunate enough to have boot alignment performed by Harald's shop. In the spirit of Max_501, please tear it down so I can rebuild it stronger. I will try my best to put ego aside.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM68f39qx54

It might be a while before the hills around here get snow making going so follow up clips might have to wait until late november, but its never too soon to start thinking about it.

My gratitude in advance for the assistance.

[h.harb]

Is that Boyne Mt?

I see natural ability in your movements. like flexing, absorbing the edge and tipping without pushing the body out of balance. I also see a strong awareness of balance. Because you are proficient in many Essentials already, I'd ask what are you looking to improve in your skiing before I give yo advice.

Although the first thing that sticks out to me is inside ski and boot tipping . It's late and not developing to help build greater angles for the body, to the slope. You have great lower body activity, but your hips and upper body are blocked from moving to grater angles because your inside ski is not starting the tipping movements.

[onyxjl]

Thanks for the look Harald. It's actually Alpine Valley, WI.

The lack of inside foot action in my turns is the number one thing I want to improve in my skiing. What frustrates me every time I see video of my skiing is that as hard as I think I am trying to tip my foot, its just not there. I feel like I am creating tipping tension in my ankle but that isn't developing into better angles at the ski or pulling my hips into the turn. It seems I have a big disconnect between what I am trying to do with my inside foot and what is actually happening on snow. I also know the other essentials are just building on a mediocre foundation without stronger tipping skills. Those turns have way too much park and ride skiing and I'd like to turn them into real angles.

I would love to hear your thoughts on how to really get that inside foot in the drivers seat.

[milesb]

Harald, what do you mean by "absorbing the edge"?

[onyxjl]

Is it possible that I am tipping the inside foot but never getting the hinging effect from side-loading the edge? I found this concept on page 106 and 107 of the Essentials with a nice picture. When I think about tipping, I think about prying the base edge off the snow but I don't try to actively apply pressure to the side edge as the book seems to describe. This pressure is also supposed to be what activates the kinetic chain to pull the body into angles.

Could side loading be the missing piece here? Or I am just always playing catch up with the free foot and need to get it releasing first? It's hard for me to tell watching the video if my free foot initiates the turn but then goes passive or if its just always late to the turn.

[A.L.E]

The pole work is a little lazy.

[ToddW]

Or I am just always playing catch up with the free foot and need to get it releasing first? It's hard for me to tell watching the video if my free foot initiates the turn but then goes passive or if its just always late to the turn.

You can tell for yourself. Freeze frame the video at transition (by pressing the stop button unless you're a video guru.) If you have a visible O-frame, you've probably released and then initiated tipping with the free foot. If you don't have an O-frame, then either a timely release or tipping initiated under the hips via the free foot is weak or absent. Freeze the video a split second earlier to check on the release; if the release is good, then tipping is the issue.

If you watch Harald ski in a narrow stance with the sun behind him, it looks like his legs are touching except at transition when there's a flash of sunlight between his legs -- passing through the O-frame caused by early tipping of the free foot. In several of your transitions, your knees are closer together than your feet (A-frame). If you release and tip the free foot early and hard, your transitions will begin to look more like Harald's

The power release drill is a good way to become acquainted with strong tipping of the free foot. At first, it seems to take a surprising amount of tipping effort to make a clean, carved transition to upside down without benefit of momentum from the previous turn. Harb Carvers are another good way to develop strong tipping skills. Two quotes about tipping by PMTS instructors stick in my mind when I ski: "Double it. Double it!" and "Tip and tip and tip some more. Tip and tip and tippy tip."

P.S. I know you checked your ego at the door. Many people would love to ski as well as you do, so take comments in this thread as suggestions on how to make that even more true!

[h.harb]

Harald, what do you mean by "absorbing the edge"?

Just add the word pressure or change edge to pressure.


by "absorbing the edge pressure"

[onyxjl]

I can't really find a way to express this well so I'll just throw it out there.

Would it be possible for a skier to inhibit their tipping action by blocking the knee from moving out? It seems that if you strongly invert your inside foot and prevent your knee from moving you get a lot of tension in the ankle, almost like stretching the ankle. Instead of rotating out, its like your thigh is rotating in to resist the tipping motions. Could that tension in the ankle be confused for appropriate tipping?

That might be nonsense or physically impossible, but I suppose it doesn't hurt to ask.

[h.harb]

Everything is possible. but it's unnatural to keep the knee "in" while trying to tip the foot outward. The whole idea is to allow the kinetic chain to work, (follow the same movement and direction of movement you start at the bottom all the way up the body to the last joint) but if someone is determined to keep the knee in, they will block the inside ski from tipping and coming to an angle.

If you watch the old footage of Stenmark, (link posted here in this thread, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lpFWjOFe8w) he never tips the inside ski in slalom. This explains many things, first it refutes one Epic coach in particular that likes to call PMTS an amalgamation of what was always done in the past, but only explained differently.

The other thing it shows is that if you are skiing with TTS coaching you naturally want to hold the knees together. Even with a wide stance idea they use, because they offer inside leg steering, which only contributes to a weak compromised technique to begin with.

HH quote:

Also, (all TTS) are so dependent on big toe edging that the inside knee never has a chance to be the leader in correct movement with their system.

This may not be their intent, but it sure is their result. How good is a teaching system when the ones who write and use it, don't even see the outcomes and results of their system?


The more you study, watch and practice PMTS the stronger all the tenets of PMTS are a marvel to behold. If this looks like a pat on the back, don't be fooled. I only described what worked; what the best skiers were evolving as far as technique and what I saw lacking in all levels of skiers. This is only what any good ski coach should be doing for his athletes. I did think Stenmark was the greatest, but I didn't stick with his technique to build PMTS. It was already old and inefficient by modern standards. Stenmark skated off the big toe edge which is a push, rather than using a Phantom Move type approach.

PMTS was the first teaching system to take on inside ski tipping and inside leg flexing. But it goes well beyond this, PMTS Direct Parallel was the first system to focus on starting the next turn with these movements, while you are in the old turn. This is a radical departure from PSIA, all other TTS and even racing technique of the middle nineties. If you watch Tomba, you could see inside ski tipping. He was the master of shaped ski technique on straight skis. Armin Bitter the WC slalom champion and also Sykora, the Austrian great, began using a movement very close to a Phantom Move.
Can you believe PSIA rejected the Phantom Move? They are amazing in their short sightedness, misconception and misrepresentation of skiing. Here was an instant success story that every ski school could have sold as the "instant skier fix", but they decided they would rather fight Harb than even steal from him, funny when you look back. It's going to get funnier in the future because everything in "Essentials of Skiing" will be substantiated and all the miscellaneous garbage out there, endorsed by TTS, will one day be looked upon as stupid. Stupid is as stupid does.

[onyxjl]

Thanks Harald. I think I will spend the start of the season going through the all the tipping drills from scratch and focus on making sure that the foot tipping is recruiting the rest of the chain to come along for the ride.

[ibMED]

Onyxjl,
A lot of us will be doing work to increase tipping this year. Thanks for sharing the video.

I think you do a good job of getting onto your new stance foot in the High C and your counterbalance positions are strong. Perhaps your cb position when your left foot is the stance ski is not as pronounced as when turning the other way.

When I watched your video, my first thought is that you release too quickly and stay more in the fall line. To my eye, your turns are a little chopped off. My mental picture of HH's turns have him really making round turns and keeping on the stance leg long past the fall line. By actively tipping your feet more and for longer lengths of the arc your turns will also round out.

I wonder if your poles may be too long. In the video, you don't plant so it's hard to tell, but, if I guessed, your planted hand position would be high. Pole planting is an aspect Helluva worked to improve and it's an area he pointed out to me to concentrate on when we skied last year.

[h.harb]

The good news is that this can be fixed, the reality is it's going to take time with very slow exercises, like two footed releases. The skiing you put up is habitual and it's what you have evolved to based on what you needed to do to achieve angles. But you have reached the end of progress with the method you are using.

In some ways you are using your hip counter to make up for lack of inside leg tipping. Remember inside leg tipping begins with tipping off the angles and also onto the angle. While this happens the mid body moves from inside the last arc to inside the new arc. Mid point in this process both legs should achieve the same angles, and be parallel. Keep the inside foot back and let the hip follow the inside leg into the center of the next arc.


Hip counter is one of the Essentials yes, but not to the exclusion of other Essentials like tipping. There is another thread with gives very good advice about doing slow exercises with slow movements. Slowing everything down puts higher emphasis on getting your balance in the right place and moving with balance. It also demonstrates how to use less mid body, and add instead lower, smaller parts, so the kinetic chain can work in the correct order, bottom up.

[HeluvaSkier]

One thing that really helped my skiing when I started taking PMTS more seriously was going back to easy terrain and rebuilding my skiing there. It was much more than simply making a few changes here and there in my skiing, but completely rebuilding my skiing with each essential. In order to get the payoff on steeper terrain you will have to make sure everything is dialed in properly on easier terrain. I would start with really working on tipping as has been suggested and then combine that with foot pull-back drills as you seem to be aft in the footage you've posted.

One thing that is important to remember is that being able to execute each essential to the amount required in the turn you are making is key. On easy terrain you will find that you will not have to employ the essentials to their extremes in order to make good turn (of course you will still need them all), however when the turns and terrain start to become more aggressive, you will need to employ each essential more than before - thus requiring a greater range of motion and understanding of the movement.

I'll look forward to watching your progression this season.

Later,

Greg

[onyxjl]

Onyxjl,
When I watched your video, my first thought is that you release too quickly and stay more in the fall line. To my eye, your turns are a little chopped off.

I agree, that jumped out at me too. It looks to me like I am rushing everything instead of letting the turn develop smoothly. I want to be making bullet-proof short turns the right way and not cheating by only skiing half a turn.

...the reality is it's going to take time with very slow exercises, like two footed releases.

That's OK though. Improving anything takes dedicated practice right? I don't expect to go out and spend a half-hour working on tipping and be a totally different skier. With skiing in the midwest being what it is, practicing movements doesn't feel like you are missing out on anything. Hopefully with dedication the video at the end of the season looks significantly better.

Keep the inside foot back and let the hip follow the inside leg into the center of the next arc.

I definitely see myself letting the inside foot drift ahead in these turns.