Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

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Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

Postby skiffie » Mon Oct 24, 2016 2:11 pm

Just curious as it seems you can't avoid it these days. E.g. I told my ski shop I wanted a stiff women's ski that will hold an edge and one of the skis he mentioned was the Blizzard Cheyenne because it was super light but still super stable and stiff. I looked it up and it looks like it has tip and tail rocker, and am not sure if that would work for PMTS? Would be great to know if I can eliminate most skis with these characteristics right off the bat :)

BTW - if anyone has any info on the Cheyenne it'd be great! Some people seem to think it's soft, some people seem to think it's stiff... anyone have any experience with similar skis?

And yes - I did search!!

Thanks :)
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Re: Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

Postby jbotti » Mon Oct 24, 2016 4:11 pm

Of the two tail rocker is much worse for PMTS skiers. Tail rocker responds quickly to active rotary inputs (twisting, pivoting etc) and flat camber skis with tail rocker actually respond poorly and/or slowly to tipping. Tip rocker in small amounts is pretty present in many skis now and in general a modest amount of tip rocker does not destroy a ski. Many co's (Head included) add what we call marketing rocker which is slight amounts so that the salesman can say "this ski has rocker" because around 5-6 years ago that's all anyone wanted. Many of these skis (The Head Rock n Roll is a good example) had the tiniest amount of Tip rocker and also had significant camber and a great flex pattern and the RNR was a great ski. But real rocker does exist and in general it should be avoided for PMTS skiers.

The Cheyenne btw is in the Blizzard line that all have "flipcore technology". This is one of the worst types of skis made for PMTS skiers. Max 501 has skied a bunch of these and perhaps he will weigh in. Suffice it to say avoid like the plague for PMTS skiers.
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Re: Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

Postby skiffie » Tue Oct 25, 2016 2:10 am

Wonderful! That's exactly what I needed to know. I had a feeling the Cheyenne would be terrible, but it would've been great because it would've let me use my Tyrolia bindings with the rotating heelpiece. Oh well...

Thank you!!
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Re: Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

Postby B.Mulligan » Tue Oct 25, 2016 5:01 am

I had to laugh when I saw this thread title knowing the technical tastes preceded here, you might as well said you liked the Head titan while your at it.

My buddies wife skis the Cheyenne, she's a 15 day a year frontside intermediate skid turner, she wants to twist quickly and comfortably through the falline and slam on the big toe edge for the bottom third of the turn. It's perfect for her, and to be honest, probably perfect for the 95% of resort skiers.

My kid sister who raced club in high school and competitive club in college really likes the atomic cloud skis and she tried those Volkswagen flairs and likes those too. There are, at last, technical women's skis available for those who sniff them out. And of course, most good women skiers do just fine on shorter unisex tech skis
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Re: Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

Postby skiffie » Tue Oct 25, 2016 6:12 am

B.Mulligan wrote:I had to laugh when I saw this thread title knowing the technical tastes preceded here, you might as well said you liked the Head titan while your at it.


Well that's exactly what I was hoping for when I posted - I've only ever skied really stiff carvers so no idea what the Blizzards are like nor the Head titans. ;) Nor do I know much about rocker except for powder skis. My only experience with a tail rocker was that it was floofy when carving (and that was before PMTS!)

You had me at 'intermediate' - that's not going to be what I want even if it was a PMTS ski lol.
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Re: Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

Postby Obrules15 » Tue Oct 25, 2016 6:47 am

B.Mulligan wrote:My buddies wife skis the Cheyenne, she's a 15 day a year frontside intermediate skid turner, she wants to twist quickly and comfortably through the falline and slam on the big toe edge for the bottom third of the turn. It's perfect for her, and to be honest, probably perfect for the 95% of resort skiers.


The entire reason to post here is to NOT be like 95% of resort skiers, if I wanted those opinions I could just read the standard magazine reviews. For the life of me I can't understand why someone would expect that they should get a non PMTS opinion on skis from the PMTS.org forum, and clearly the OP understood this.
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Re: Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

Postby jbotti » Tue Oct 25, 2016 9:12 am

Here is a good thread on the subject if anyone wants to go further:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3452&hilit=float+velocity
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Re: Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

Postby skiffie » Tue Oct 25, 2016 12:47 pm

jbotti wrote:Here is a good thread on the subject if anyone wants to go further:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3452&hilit=float+velocity


Ooh that is a treasure trove thank you. Am I understanding this correctly - the wide / rocker skis are being used as a crutch to recapture the same floaty feeling as skiing a regular cambered ski at speed, because people can't ski at speed?
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Re: Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

Postby jbotti » Tue Oct 25, 2016 1:21 pm

Essentially yes.
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Re: Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

Postby skiffie » Tue Oct 25, 2016 1:34 pm

jbotti wrote:Essentially yes.


Well that makes me feel a lot better about giving up my 107 slightly rockered powder skis, which felt amazing in powder but did a number on my knees when I did PMTS movements on them!
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Re: Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

Postby theorist » Tue Oct 25, 2016 6:55 pm

skiffie wrote:Well that makes me feel a lot better about giving up my 107 slightly rockered powder skis, which felt amazing in powder but did a number on my knees when I did PMTS movements on them!

I suspect that's more the waist width than the rocker. When you tip a wide ski up on edge on hard snow, you put much more lateral stress on your knee (and ankle) than with a narrow ski, because the edge on which you are balancing is, with the wider ski, more offset from the ski's midline. This is not an issue in (sufficiently deep) powder, since there you're not balancing on the edge, you're balancing on the entire base.

Studies of the effect, on skiers’ bodies, of skiing hard snow on wide skis are current preliminary (e.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4541126/), but more of the them are slowly coming out, and the ones released thus far all point in the same direction: the wider the ski, the more stress you’re placing on your joints. Mostly the issue has been reported to evidence itself above 80 mm, but I suspect the actual effect is continuous with increasing width.
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Re: Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

Postby skiffie » Wed Oct 26, 2016 12:50 am

theorist wrote:
skiffie wrote:Well that makes me feel a lot better about giving up my 107 slightly rockered powder skis, which felt amazing in powder but did a number on my knees when I did PMTS movements on them!

I suspect that's more the waist width than the rocker. When you tip a wide ski up on edge on hard snow, you put much more lateral stress on your knee (and ankle) than with a narrow ski, because the edge on which you are balancing is, with the wider ski, more offset from the ski's midline. This is not an issue in (sufficiently deep) powder, since there you're not balancing on the edge, you're balancing on the entire base.

Studies of the effect, on skiers’ bodies, of skiing hard snow on wide skis are current preliminary (e.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4541126/), but more of the them are slowly coming out, and the ones released thus far all point in the same direction: the wider the ski, the more stress you’re placing on your joints. Mostly the issue has been reported to evidence itself above 80 mm, but I suspect the actual effect is continuous with increasing width.


Oh yeah it definitely was the width of the skis not the rocker, but was just commenting that overall they felt amazing in powder.

As for knee strain, my carvers are 78mm and never noticed anything. I think I'm about to get a pair of 86-88s... I should hope those don't cause too much of a problem. 1cm shouldn't really be an issue as far as I can tell...
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Re: Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

Postby DougD » Wed Oct 26, 2016 5:32 am

My 81mm Atomic Blackeye Ti''s never caused me knee pain, even on hard Eastern snow.

OTOH, they did have some tail rocker. Not much, it's not even mentioned in the marketing blurbs (which did mention the tip rocker). But it was enough to ruin the ski for PMTS skiing... or even non-PMTS carving on hard snow.

As jbotti described, the tail would release into a skid much too easily. Because the tail rocker was slight, it could be controlled by very careful management of fore-aft balance on the stance ski... but only up to a point, which varied with steepness, speed and snow surface. Cross that point and there was no avoiding the tail washing out.

I learned to play with that breakaway point. Good training for fore-aft balance awareness, but it was frustrating because I couldn't get full performance out of an otherwise decent all-mountain ski.

Because stance ski rotation was unavoidable in some conditions, the ski reinforced bad movements. Any ski with more tail rocker would be worse and should be avoided, as jbotti advised.

P.S. mine are for sale. Any takers? :twisted:
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Re: Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

Postby skiffie » Thu Oct 27, 2016 4:29 am

DougD wrote:My 81mm Atomic Blackeye Ti''s never caused me knee pain, even on hard Eastern snow.


Well it looks like my new ones will be 86... I suppose mildly worried as the article you posted above said the 88s behaved like the wide skis in some cases for certain types of adduction / abduction / etc. So would hate to cause strain.
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Re: Is there a verdict on tip and tail rocker?

Postby jbotti » Thu Oct 27, 2016 9:48 am

Cannot emphasize enough how important and beneficial it is to ski on sub 70mm waisted skis when learning and advancing with PMTS movements. It is universally true that all skiers new to PMTS do not tip to the level necessary and tipping is always everyone's first SMIM. Hence making tipping harder (with a wider ski) does nothing but slow one's progress. Good/advanced PMTS skiers regularly tip wider skis to high angles with no issue but this occurs after years of solidifying their tipping skills.
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