Confused

[Harald]

My responding to the questions and discussions about John Clendenin's ideas about bump skiing will be based on information I have gathered from a number of sources.

The first is John C. himself, although what John told me over the last two years was vague, somehow confusing and not complete, at least to me as a ski technique developer, I gather his ideas about bump skiing are very different from those we use in PMTS. John's bump skiing is different from mine and also from many other contemporaries. He personally uses a softer, slower (speed), more skidded, round line in the bumps. I am referring to his own skiing, not what he is writing, although both may be, one in the same.

An aside: Scott Brooksbanks, (a former bump skiing champion and competitor) who's bump skiing I regard highly, skis very differently from John C. Scott uses strong leg bending, flexing and retractions, and early edge engagement, a technique I would call, more like PMTS in approach. John C. is not in the PMTS School of thinking in the same way. Hermann Gollner who was the best pure skier on the free style circuit uses a technique closer to PMTS, like Scott. Just for comparison Wayne Wong, uses a more soft less aggressive bump technique. I have skied with all these skiers and know there skiing very well. In the days of Freestyle there were three events scored separately, but added together for the overall. You did not have to be a great bump skier to win a freestyle event, if you could do ballet and aerials well.

I can't truly say where John's thinking is coming from, as he has not been participating in and is not current in PMTS. He is closer to Lito?s bump skiing approach then to PMTS. He has not attended a PMTS training or certification session in the last four years. For this reason there is a communication, understanding and discussion void between PMTS and John's thoughts on skiing.

I applaud any new attempts to bring across ideas in skiing. But as many of you know my approach is very grounded in the sciences of the mountain, such as, use of gravity and the forces produced when a body in motion is using the skis as the conduit for producing results.

I gather from information both from skiers who have skied in John C.?s clinics and from his own interpretation and descriptions, that John's version of bump skiing is based on a drift, (or skid, to me they are the same just semantics), at the beginning of the turn.

It makes sense to those who believe in this method that skiers will control speed by entering the turns with a ski drift and possibly increasing edge angle as the drift progresses.

This approach could bring about direction change and some speed control, if one is highly skilled at balancing, speed control with early easy edge engagement. It could also, for the unskilled, leave most of the speed control to the very end of the direction change, when the skis are at a greater angle across the slope or the bumps.

This dictates a stronger more sudden edge set to stop the drifting action, as drifting will accelerate your downward acceleration. In this type of approach you need properly spaced bumps and slow speeds or you will face the eventual hard edge sets everyone in bump skiing is trying to avoid.

I don?t see a difference here between what John C. is advocating and the TTS steer the skis to an edge methodology. PMTS advocates an edge change before a direction change, all other systems want to have the ideal, edge control, speed control and smooth skiing in the bumps without the basics that are needed to develop this ability. A competent PMTS skier can control speed with a brushed carve, as can many competent skiers, but what is lost in the translation is that the basics must be learned and that?s what we teach in PMTS.

Furthermore, what is the point in learning different techniques for different conditions, when effective movement patterns can be applied in all situations with minor modifications for the surface? Don?t we have enough to think about when skiing a slope without changing the foundation of the movements for every different surface?


PMTS finds it essential to build a foundation using Counter Balancing and Counter Acting movements as essential components of effective speed and radius control for bump skiing. John C. may well have these steps in mind when he is conveying his ?Drifting? approach to skiers. But if he does not, he is just another skier perpetuating idealisms without foundations to achieve them.

In addition, if the upper body is to face the bottom of the slope during the ski release and ?Drift? then skiers will also rotate the hips, upper body and skis eliminating the most important holding and controlling component, which is hip and knee angle, when the skis are tipped or engaged. It is for this reason that I am confused about the approach.

You can?t have it all your way own way, as physics doesn?t change no matter what you want to believe. I?m sure John C. can control his skiing with the method that he is writing about and advocating. That doesn?t mean his teaching of the method will evolve in skiers in the same way he skis.

I have many skiers who join our camps from Lito?s approaches. John?s turn, (the Drift) I don?t think you can call it a system, is not very different from Lito?s, maybe the semantics and words, but not the biomechanics and physics that result.

We teach many skiers who have been through Lito?s approach. I think they see many immediate beneficial results from the differences in PMTS taught to them in our camps, especially speed control and edge usage in bumps.

Having just returned from our Hintertux camp in Austria where we use trusted established PMTS techniques with excellent results, I have this to report. I tried an exercise, which extended the range of movements employed by everyday skiers, to explore the limits and extent of its possibilities for the students.

In this case the group really showed a lack of patience and balance ability. Sensing this, especially during the early part of releases in their turns, we practiced very slow releases to become aware of the effect gravity could have on skis without other body or external assistance to make turns. This type of turn requires balancing ability most skiers don't possess, unless they spent time with a coach developing counter balancing techniques.

When the skiers in the group realized how skis can turn and tip without body and leg exertion, they were shocked. We increasingly reduced physical effort needed to make turns on steeps, bumps and powder, a complete program. This allowed the skiers to focus on the important movements of bending and tipping. By the way, we had excellent powder skiing days in Hintertux.



As with many skiing techniques including "drifting? as referred to on this thread, they require great counter balancing and edge control for them to succeed. I know John C. has these abilities.

The issues I have with this approach are, that the skier must be prepared at many points when skiing bumps and while learning and developing this way of skiing, to make quicker steering, ski tail pushing and skidded movements then the turn is designed for, as they will be forced into these situations.

In PMTS, we also teach a later, softer, edge engagement in many exercises, but they lead to effective releasing movements that result in early engagement. For all I know, John C. may be using one part or slice of PMTS to develop a specific idea he feels is important for his clients and calling it something different.

Most skiers are too quick to push the ski tails back up the mountain, (this is not a release) and rush into a turn without edge engagement. I have a difficult time thinking about teaching skiers (drift type) movements that they already find they are using and don't work in difficult terrain and bumps. Drifting in bumps will bring most skiers into conflict with the rhythm and speed control needed to maintain a line. When a ski tail is drifting it will eventually run into the steep side of a parallel bump or neighboring bump. When this occurs the skis accelerate quickly putting the skier back and the ski moving forward, often headed downhill. The skier's only response therefore is to put the skis into a direction change and edge set quickly, which means a quicker pivot.

I am not discarding John's approach, I am only explaining what I know about Drifting in relationship to, ski performance, slope steepness, location of bumps, as I may not have the complete information, but based on what I know, I am guardedly skeptical. I won't say the drift approach can't work, but it is definitely a different technique then I would teach. It requires a rounder line and traversing in the bump field, which I often use in bump teaching, but this is not reality. Drifting is also very different from the PMTS two footed release, as well, which is a (what I call) soft turn entry.

Lito uses a similar approach as John C?s drift. Lito's approach when viewed by skiers gives them much confidence. This is almost a direct quote from one of my students in Hintertux, "I saw Lito?s bump skiing in his video and I thought, if he could do it, so could I". Unfortunately when put to the test the skier was not able, because the basics of release, leg bending and tipping were not developed accordingly. Lito and John have those abilities.

Regardless of the approach used to teach bump skiing, much initial development and background work must be accomplished before success is achieved. Specifically, releasing ability and leg bending or flexing must be achieved before bump skiing can be fun or before it can continue to accelerate a skier?s progress rapidly. In PMTS, we give these abilities much higher priority as they result in great bump skiing control, more quickly and easier than a specific one turn type of approach. A one turn type of approach, can too easily fall into situations where it only works in ideal conditions, which could be limited and ineffective on the very next trail, on the next run.

We have developed very specific exercises and movements in PMTS for skiers to gain abilities and they learn very quickly. We often us terrain features, and turning aids, such as brush gates to accelerate bump and other skiing techniques (not to mention Harb Carvers).

Bending the legs to release is the most daunting ability for most skiers to achieve, let alone perfect. I believe this is the most important ability needed if one is to become adequate, proficient or expert in the bumps. When one bends the legs or flexes the legs, the body can enter the ?float? stage, which gives the skier time to develop the upper ?High C? part of the turn.

I support instructors who want in the future to branch out, breakaway from the traditional. I hope others will imitate, copy or duplicate what Diana and I have done with PMTS and our camps. It is not easy to establish yourself with the ski business and ski industry as it is closed and controlled by the major resorts. We have worked very hard to develop relationships within the ski industry. Now that PMTS is a highly regarded complete system and it is working, we are finding working with ski resorts is becoming easier.

I am sure skiers will always be drawn to fancy names and quick fix ideologies, as a short cut to bridging the learning gap as this is always appealing. Not different from what happened when I developed PMTS and the ?Anyone can be an Expert Skier? series of Books, Videos and DVDs. I can convey to you that there are no quick fixes, not from any turn, or instructor that wants to make a name for himself by breaking away from traditional systems.

What I do know is, the human body has not changed, the amount of gravity has not changed and the way we can move has not changed much, but tried and true methods are available and they will continue to evolve.

A great skiing and learning experience develops from many things happening at once, including, choice of skiing location, instructor caring and personality, equipment understanding and the ability to convey or communicate technique. I believe excitement about new approaches in skiing are great. I hope new ideas never stop being produced and written about. There will always be a ready audience to soak up the information.

[patprof65]

WOW! Very thorough and helpful post Harald. Thanks.

[SkierSynergy]

I think it?s hard to know exactly what many people mean by "drifting" on a movement basis. If this concept is defined in terms of movements then we can talk about lots of stuff, but people rarely do this. Let me give you a few examples.

Many TTS people talk about pivoting as a form of drift. They often give Bodie?s turns as an example. The idea that I have seen expressed is that when Bodie is faced with a gate that is too far across the hill to carve a turn, that he predicts the exact amount of unweighting and rotation to input so that when he passes the next gate, he has pivoted just the right amount. I find this very implausible and the montages that I have seen don?t support this explanation, but this is one idea.

Another notion of drift is the same as a TTS tail skid. The movements associated with this are well known.

Then there is Clendenin?s notion of drift. In John?s articles on Realskiers, he specifically rejects the notion that a drift and a skid are the same. He defines a drift as an even, lateral displacement of the ski ? something like a car drifting all four wheels into a larger radius turn and a skid as more displacement in the tail than the tip. Though he talks about the concept of re-centering, he doesn?t clearly make the connection between specific movements as a cause/control of drifting (as he defined it). I think that this lack of definition on a movement level is what makes it hard to assess it. Maybe John would make a few comments on the forum, if someone asked him.

However, the definition raises some questions/issues. If I take his definition strictly, drifting is not a change of direction (where the skis are pointed), it is a widening of the arc of the turn. This could be done with edge control that is consistent with PMTS movements and I sometimes use it myself. For example, there may be easier terrain just below me in a bump field and if I lightly flatten my edge angle, I can ?four wheel? drift into the easier terrain and then re-engage my edges to tighten things up again. However, as a technique, this is only useful once you can already high C edge. Most people are struggling to decrease the radius of their turns, not make their turns wider. In this sense, it?s hard to see drifting as a key to more control in a general sense ? though it is one kind of control. On this definition, drifting doesn?t help you make tighter turns. In this sense it is not so much inconsistent with PMTS as of limited utility. I think maybe his notion of re-centering early on the LTE is potentially more important to his approach to skiing.

It also seems that High C carving can establish the skills that make Clendenin?s notion of drifting easy, but drifting does not make learning high C carving easier. In other words, if you learn to rely on drifting as a core skill during the learning process it will not necessarily help you advance to high C carving. It will most likely either become a dead end crutch or lead to other less effective dead ends. If I understand Harald?s arguments, this is the gist of his conclusions.

Also, I find Harald?s comments on upper lower body coordination (ULBC) to be very important. If you try to use TTS notions of ULBC with drifting, it is most likely that other movements that are inconsistent with PMTS will tend to follow ? I think this is another example of how the two systems work as inconsistent systems. If you use a TTS model of ULBC in which the body stays looking down the fall line and the skis ski into and out of a counter, then it becomes almost impossible not to rotate and steer at the release. It also becomes very difficult to actually release through a flat set of skis rather than go from the old BTE immediately to the new BTE (i.e., a no release change of edges). Again, maybe John would make a few comments on the forum, if someone asked him.


Another possible definition of ?drift? that is consistent with PMTS movement patterns is to tip the free foot while holding the stance ski in a flattened position. This can be used to create both lateral displacement and change of direction and is finely control-able. Isn?t this the essence of the phantom drag as most beginning students experience it? This is the essence of a soft/brushed carve. This is a PMTS consistent way to change direction faster than the side cut of the ski with no steering and easily leads to release skills as well as more advanced carving.

It?s very easy to use this technique to drift laterally across an entire run while changing direction and then let the stance leg re-engage to begin carving again. You can see this clearly in some of the Bodie drift montages. The change of direction (what TTS people mistakenly refer to as a pivot) is not produced by throwing a rotation at the beginning of the turn. Rather, it is from differential edging between the free and stance foot.

I have purposely worked on this skill with students for a variety of reasons. In my opinion, being able to independently control edging is an important aspect of PMTS. Many people see a good high C PMTS turn and they immediately try to get their edge changes as fast and as high as possible. They think this is the key to everything and the idea of edge change becomes unitary and digital ? both feet changing edges all at once. Things are worse if the person also tries to quickly transfer weight from foot to foot at the same time ? this leads to a kind of false feeling of high C carving in which there is no real release, but everything is happening so fast that the student can?t try to break things down and control the movements better.

So I have concluded that many people try to get into the high C mode without first establishing the proper ground work and it leads to less success than if they weren?t so focused on a fast high C.

In this sense a drift can be an important skill in the development of a good high C. It isn?t so much how fast the release and edges change as how effective the release and edge change is. It seems to me that two aspects of these movements are crucially important: 1) that the skis roll through flat and that the leading foot roll to it?s LTE ahead of the other movements of the body ? if the stance foot rolls to BTE first, then there is no release and a tendency to steer; if the CM moves ahead of free foot tipping then the skier is disconnected from the skis and the snow. However, this suggests to me that it?s important to develop a mindset that release and edge control should be more independent in the feet and more ?analog.? It can be a way of makingh the patience concept more tangible. So, I tend to spend more time than many on release drills especially slow release drills, the float, and varieties of phantom drag drifts. I have seen some people make great breakthroughs in their control by working on Bodie drifts, or patterns of drift/engage/drift/engage in a single turn. For me, these are very closely related to garland release activities, just with the added aspect of differential edging on each foot. I think there are more excercises related to this that could be useful and I have been following this line out in my own thinking.

There are clearly some notions of drift that are inconsistent with PMTS movements. I am not clear on how to assess Clendenin?s notions for the reasons that I have outlined. In some ways, I could imagine ways to do what he describes in a PMTS consistent manner, but it doesn?t seem to be a core of any system of skiing (even for bumps) and then I can see many ways to do what he says that would be either limited, dead end, or simply PMTS inconsistent -- the ULBC discussion is of importance here. I would have to see more. I also wouldn?t dismiss the idea of drifting as always inconsistent with PMTS or never useful. In fact, as I defined it above, I think it can be a very useful developmental skill that isolates certain key movements that are often too quickly ignored by students and skiers.

[tommy]

maybe the scientific notion of "six degrees of freedom" for a body in 3D space could be used to clarify what we mean by drifting, skidding, pure carving etc:

A body in 3D space can move translationally as well as rotationally wrt the tree axis (z,y,z).

So, "drift" according to this model would correspond to lateral movement (aka swaying), while "pure" skidding (tail movement) would correspond to yaw.

What pure carving would correspond to is beyond my understanding of this model as well as of skiing ....!

--T

PS: see the links below for more info on 6 deg's of freedom



http://www.simlabs.arc.nasa.gov/vms/six_degrees.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrees_of_freedom

[Guest/jbotti]

I can say that I have spent this entire past season working on my ULBC and on ending upper body rotation into turns. Toward the end of the season I finally grasped high C carving and early edge engagement in turns. I do not profess to understand skiing theory at the level of JohnC, Jay or Harald, but, it seems to me that working on "Drift" would be moving backwards. I want to create as extreme an angle as I possibly can in all my turns and continue to feel and believe that the beauty of PMTS is that the fundamentals do not change with the conditions.
I can understand (using a golf anaology) how one might set up slightly differently to draw a ball versus fading one. But it seems to me that the concept of "facing where I am sking" by defintion must involve the loss of counter and proper ULBC thus resulting in reduced edging i.e "drift".
I have worked too hard over the past year to get increased edging, I don't want to now undue what I've accomplished. Maybe after I am more accomplished this could make sense. However, hopefully by being more accomplshed I won't have to drift in the bumps. JB.

[Harald]

I want to pick up on some of the things Jay presented as they are important in the context of skier levels. Beginning skiers do not produce very much force or momentum. It almost seems like they try to kill momentum or forces because they are unsure of how to work or deal with them, so they are very reluctant to experiment.

If you have very good athletes, who especially have done other sports, such as skating, biking or Harb Carving, some of these initial fears can be reduced, as the athlete will have a back log of experiences to draw from and use in their skiing. It is for this reason we recommend to beginners and intermediates alike that they do other activities such as balance boards and mountain biking, for example. Fear can be paralyzing and even with every effort, can sometimes never be overcome.

Now to the essence of the topic I want to clarify, Bode has tremendous momentum from one turn to the other. Most skiers and instructors can not relate to this energy. If you have not skied with that much angle of ski to snow and the speed needed to hold the body from falling, it is difficult to explain the results and opportunities created at this level of skiing.

Ron LeMaster wrote a book about ski racing, yet he has no idea what ski racing is about. He is a fairly adequate skier, not parallel or Blue level by PMTS standards, but by PSIA standards he is a trainer. He is viewed by many instructors as the expert on ski racing technique for PSIA. This is lunacy. The reason I bring up Ron is becasue he is know to intrepret the skiing of world cup racers for the PSIA instructors.

When Bode releases a turn he has many options. He can allow his skis to release and go flat, this is a the passive delayed reentry technique, many like to talk about. Bode is not steering, he is not twisting he is not guiding or drifting, he is simply waiting for the momentum to put his body back into the right place for a radius that his skis can carve.

Many coaches these days set courses where the distance to the next radius is greater than the radius that the new skis can match if they are immediately released and reengaged, so the racers have to wait for the right moment to reengage. Many would like to explain this and justify these movements as supporting the PSIA approaches to skiing, in other words skidding and steering. Again I say ridicules.

Bode releases his skis and has a number of choices, he can reengage, but that would immediately start another arc, he can use the rebound from the turn, suck up his legs and place the skis flat or at a slight new angle. This second option carries with it the momentum to allow him to stay at a slight angle and continue sideways across the slope above the next gate. He is adjusting the ski?s angles with his feet and ankles to direct the skis where he wants them to be before he begins his next turn.

No PSIA instructor, skier has ever produced the forces that Bode produces, so they can not accurately describe anything Bode does to begin turns. The students that most instructors teach never produce anything even close to the forces that a world cup or even national level skier can produce. In fact, most instructors can not relate to the forces that Diana can produce in her racing or hard carving turns.

So if the momentum gives Bode the ability to look like ?to the untrained? as if he were skidding, drifting and steering on purpose, then how would the intermediate skier produce the same results?

The intermediate skier would have to twist, steer and rotate their legs to begin a turn to produce anything that might begin to resemble what Bode does in those transitions. Unfortunately, those movements that are taught to students and are justified by instructors because they believe they are the ?Bode skid.? What Bode does is completely different, if not opposite from what is taught in his name. What is taught is inefficient, not affective, damaging and ugly. The same unfortunately will happen to anyone taught the ?Drift? transition that some are calling the John C. technique. It simply can not work without big time down side deterioration of healthy skiing movements.

So yes, John B you are right, those techniques do not apply, at least not yet, to ninety-nine percent of skiers.

Without the rebound and momentum Bode can produce a regular skier has to make an up un-weighting movement instead, and then twist, steer the skis, or rotate the legs for the skis to redirect. Skis do not turn on there own unless leg bending and passive releases are used. Up un-weighting is not very effective in the bumps, as many of you who have attended our camps already know.

So I ask this question, how does the ?Drift? learning skier produce the momentum that holds up his body, change direction of the skis and keep him in line with the bump field? Remember the laws of physics and biomechanics still apply, techniques can be invented, but are they realistic?

On a different topic, another point that Jay makes is right on the mark. Where are the movement descriptions for any of these actions? This is so typical of PSIA talk; they value an observed action, but never explain how it is done, or what movement requirements are necessary to create the result.

Ron LeMaster, is a nice guy, and I like to talk to him as long as it?s not about skiing, because he is inaccurate and makes interpretations of what he sees based on beliefs, not science, his descriptions are out of context to what actually happens. And since he doesn?t have the skiing or coaching to back it up, he makes huge mis-statements and mis-judgments about high level skiing, as many others do.

[Biowolf]

Harald:
I have absolutely no interest in the PSIA (I am surprised you do). I am not a practitioner of PMST either, but I like some of the ideas. I am very interested in WC skiing and I respect your insights, although I dont agree with all of them. I would be very interested in discussing this subject if you are. Let me know your thoughts.

[Harald R H]

Biowolf, I am open to discussing any topics presented on the forum. Topics that are most likely to receive attention are ones that promote calcification and discussion of proper skiing methodology and are of interest to forum participants.

[Guest]

Harald now you can take on CSIA. Will that be CTTS?

http://www.snowpro.com/skipro/e/article ... age_15.pdf

[Guest]

Harald now you can take on CSIA. Will that be CTTS?

http://www.snowpro.com/skipro/e/article ... age_15.pdf

If my physical address caused this post, I have to clarify. (If not, just forget my post). I have absolutely no interest in the CSIA. As a matter of fact, I have no interest in ski methodology either. I am only interested in the WC. So I better stay out of here. Thanks anyway.

[Biowolf]

Sorry. That was me above.

[Harald R. H.]

I don?t understand your question; my previous two posts just covered the point. It doesn?t matter who wants to describe the action, PSIA or CSIA. Neither organization nor the people in it have world cup skiing or coaching experience. They are not qualified to describe it, as is obvious by your reference material provided.

[Biowolf]

Harald:
I just want to make sure you know: I am not the "Guest" in the above two posts. Again, I am disinterested in CSIA, PSIA etc. I am interested in WC.
Maybe the Guest can stand up.

[Guest]

Neither organization nor the people in it have world cup skiing or coaching experience. They are not qualified to describe it, as is obvious by your reference material provided.

Now there is an intelligent statement.

[SLAVA]

Biowolf,
I think all including HH got it - u are not interested in PSIA, PMTS, CSIA, skiing mythology, skiing since and etc.

Just curious in your opinion WC skiing base on what type of movements or if you WC racer your self what movements consist your style?

Again I?m just curious if you are WC racer any trophies? What is your rank?

Best regards,
Slava