the folly of 'fall' - Page 5

I think your comments accord with everything I've observed in ski teaching. If you can somehow control the learning environment (in the broadest sense) to remove the perception of fear then people tend to learn and progress. This comes in part from developing skills but also as a result from attaining a comfortable familiarity with the terrain and other characteristics of the situations they are put into. Familiarity tends to remove uncertainty and perceived threat so that progress is achieved, not through "leaps and bounds" (but not excluding epiphany) but through a gradual accretion of awareness. Asking someone to do something that all of their experience has taught them is dangerous to their well being is potentially counter productive.

 

As an aside, it seems to me that this development of comfort through familiarity works even in what you might describe as extreme conditions. For example on very steep terrain, lets say in excess of 45 degrees, by actually walking  progressively further up the slope and skiing it successfully the perception of risk is altered and the skier learns to feel comfortable with both the terrain and his skills, whereas, if you were to take that person to the top of the slope and ask that they ski down it, the response would be fear and uncertainty, regardless of your personal assurances that they had the skills.The skier's development cannot be regarded as confined to technical skills alone and an awareness of the psychological dimension of their learning ought to be in the forefront all the time.

 

This still begs the question of how you bring the student to this point in their development, if falling really is what you want to encourage?

 

I thought we wanted to encourage exploiting gravity.  We might go through the motion of falling to do that but the focus is to use gravity to our advantage.

I don't think we disagree. I think the term falling in this context is only our concept of a technical description of what actually occurs in these movements. It isn't necessarily what the skier perceives is occurring. Even when a skier is actually falling as in when he skis over a sudden drop and falls through the air to a landing he, if he is comfortable and feeling in control, is apt to feel as if he were flying, not falling. We even suggested or implied as much when it was asserted that a person ski jumping in control was not falling.   Whether a person making a dramatic crossover movement is being supported by an applied force or linear momentum or wishful thing is beside the point. He or she may actually be falling but that isn't necessarily the perception of the skier and that is what we should attempt to address. I think a skier in control has a feeling of being secure in such situations regardless of the technical facts involved, not falling which is associated with loss of control and risk. As such we can develop this movement gradually in the context of the feeling of security instead of asking him/her to make a leap of faith and pitch himself down the hill. The movement to crossover is learned albeit to a minute degree even in a student's first wedge turns. All of his development subsequently can be a gradual incremental development of this movement. The advanced skier can work to accentuate this movement in a secure (psychologically speaking) environment, moving further across the skis as speed increases. We can even encourage in the context of a familiar turn, the feeling of release as in a relaxation of the downhill leg to develop the ability to use gravity to pull him into the turn. This isn't a sense of falling but just an economical move that feels like a smoother turn initiation. The sensation for that skier can be that he is in control, balancing with whatever forces they are. He may also develop the ability to recover from a fall. That is the kind of lateral development that rounds out an expert skier but it isn't really mainstream technique in my opinion. The safety/loss prevention/risk avoidance people at your area would probably shudder to hear of it.

Edited by oisin - 6/5/12 at 11:54am

Actually I wonder why openly discussing fear would be a negative thing. Especially when my students may not realize just how scary it can be to face those fears. Asking them to operate outside their comfort zone without addressing that subject is IMO unprofessional.

JASP,
I don't think I, and assuming no one else, is trying to hood wink students. I feel out the class and never ask them to do something they aren't
comfortable with. I may try to instill the confidence in them to do something, but for several reasons, I have no intentions of having someone do something they don't want to do. We're to encourage them to come back and not scare the crap out of them.

I'm not against discussing fear. In fact I spent a good portion of my last career doing just that. My point earlier was to not phrase something in a way that would instill fear, and not so much with the students but with their parents (what is the demographic of the bulk of our students? Mine is the After School Program).

This is really hard for me to do via posting. I wish we could all sit down and have a beer some night and discuss. We'd be done with t his subject in 20 minutes - tops.

Ken

Well Nolo was questioning my methods and suggesting I was instilling fear in my students. Nothing could be further from the truth. The cliff analogy allows me to openly talk about fear with just about anyone. I let them know I understand their fear and that I empathize with their struggle to overcome that fear. Been there, still have a few "cliffs" of my own. Although falling into a turn isn't one of them. I would say it's rare for most level 3 candidates and below to not be struggling with releasing their body and letting it fall into the new turn. They're too busy perfecting their reference manuevers to bother with something that simple. Ironically that little detail is why they ski defensively and fail that test. It's a small cliff but until they take that leap of faith and trust themselves to stick the landing (finish the turn) they will never pass that test. BTW, in Bob's tribute to Bergie I shared another cliff story that speaks volumes about fear and someone opening my eyes to the fact that raising my game meant overcoming my fears and self imposed limitations. I ask my students to jump out of their ruts and I'm proud to say they do that on a regular basis.

 

JASP, you were talking about new skiers. I was talking about how Maslow's hierarchy of needs might pertain in this situation. There's a  world of difference between the L3 candidate and the new skier. I would expect a L3 to be at or near the top of the hierarchy of needs -- an interesting conversation might be whether that expectation might be reasonable.

 

My belief is that the new skier needs to fall in love with the sport in order to sustain the climb up the learning curve. Whatever the instructor can do to facilitate that match is right and proper.  

 

Agreed.  I brought it up because I've heard so many people say "...get in neutral" etc.  It's something that happens and you should know it's there (or where it is) just as you should know if you are forward or back.

Nolo, I was talking about newbies and saying that deep seated fear of moving downhill is so pervasive that I see it in almost all of our cert candidates. Eliminating it in the beginner corral and on the very dirst day, eventually will eliminate it in our cert candidates. BTW, I take cert candidates over to the beginner corral to work on releases. When they can't sideslip (including those that traverse) I suggest they are hanging onto that deep seated fear of moving downhill. You should see the looks I get as this epiphany slowly occurs.

 

Another incarnation of this fear is seen in post 128. Being too aggressive is no less of a technical error than being too static. Releasing the body and exploiting the external forces that will carry the body into the new turn is sufficient. If you have to thrust it there, that is a corrective move necessitated by a late release of the core into the new turn. In other words if it feels too slow, start it earlier and while you're at it don't kill the momentum that would carry it there. Even in the comma shaped turn (where you move the shaping phase up into the first third of the turn) getting the body aligned on the balance axis begins at least a third of a turn earlier, if not two thirds of a turn earlier.

I decided to add a second post because IMO line plays an important role in how we shape a turn. Slow line fast, and round high line describe C shaped turns. To accomplish this we lengthen the shaping phase to about half the turn. What lies beyond that is a more direct line, one we see in racers once they get to J2 and beyond. We cannot assume recreational skiers ever progress beyond the SLF /RHL stage but for those that do, the turn gets seperated into two distinct phases. The dynamics of each phase expands as well. There is a very strong shaping phase no longer than a third of the turn and a softer (think floaty) two thirds of the turn where the objective is to get set up well for that next strong shaping phase. Explosive power and incredible touch are how I would describe these two different phases. This doesn't mean we never use a rounder less dynamic line, all it means is expanding the dynamic range to meet the needs of a more direct line includes more than adding power, it also includes adding more touch.

A question intrinsic to the topic remains "how do you deal with the experience of fear", in my opinion. I realize its a complex issue and I think Eastern examiner and former demo teamer  Mermer Blakeslee has written a book on the subject but I don't think it is often dealt with well by talking about it. Maybe I'm wrong, everyone has his own experiences and some of them may have been otherwise. In my opinion dealing with fear is best accomplished by avoiding fear if possible and/or by accomplishing that which might be otherwise fearful in the context of familiarity and incremental development, and not by a process of denial. I say this is intrinsic because asking a person to fall is asking him to deny fear or disregard it's warning in the expectation that the outcome will not be painful and the experience rewarding. That requires a lot of convincing to say the least. Bringing up the topic in itself would tend to introduce fear I think. 

Edited by oisin - 6/6/12 at 7:16pm

I don't like any of the terms falling or diving. Why I don't like falling has been discussed enough, but I don't think diving is any better because it implies that you start from an elevated position and "dive downwards", whereas a float includes both an up and a down phase (in reference to the surface)

I don't understand why you think toppling is slow. IMO any high level turn, and most low level, involves some kind of toppling. There is no such thing as a turn that is released purely by flexing. If you purely flex you would indeed be falling. There would be nothing driving the body across skis, you would just land on your hip.

In fact, toppling is what utilizes the kinetic energy, as you say in you last sentence.

In a turn where you flex to release you must have toppling as well. The toppling may be done in a lot of different ways. If you are balanced at the fall line the toppling will happen automatically because of the changing angle between the gravity and centripetal force. If you want to speed it up you can topple in many different ways. One example used on a high level (e.g. WC) is to flex the stance leg slightly without releasing so that you can increase edging. That will send you flying into the next turn very quickly and you have to follow it up with very aggressive flexing. It happens in less than 0,1 seconds, far from "too damn slow".

You could argue that in a pure OLR you don't need toppling before you flex, but in this case the OLR is what actually starts the toppling.

 

When you are in a carved turn you feel a lot of force pushing from the side on the skis. It is quite natural then to think that if you remove this force, e.g. by flexing you would be moving in the direction that the force was coming from. This is not true however, you will just continue in the direction you (as in CoM) were going. So unless you have some toppling before you release nothing will happen, the skis and core will not cross.

Oisin, dealing with fears directly doesn't have to be confrontational, nor does admitting they exist change their magnitude. They are a preconceived notion based on assumptions that may. or may not be accurate. When a student develops enough skill to safely make a turn, I point out that success and how they had to conquer their fear long enough to achieve that success. When they link a few turns I point that out as well. Eventually, they lose the preconceived notion of the bunny slope being a cliff. It's also why revisiting the beginner corral later in the day is so important. Their perception of danger and steepness changes as they experience more and more success. Cementing that allows them to feel good about the process and we openly celebrate their success. I praise them for facing their fears because it's a big deal in my book. Avoid fear? sorry not in my classes.

Surprising.  Are you sure it isn't a deep-seated fear of catching an outside edge, or deep-seated fear of failure.  I can see that fear having been reinforced by being slammed into the snow enough times when going past neutral.  Fear of going downhill, not so much.

Yes I suppose it is semantics. To be honest I have never used the turn topple or toppling before I started hearing it in skiing. To me toppling in skiing means whatever you do to disturb the balance so that you start launching towards the next turn, and thus is can be anything from doing nothing to increasing angulation with all body joints. I looked up the term in an online dictionary and I understand that it usually has a different meaning in normal language.

That should also explain why I wrote flying instead of toppling.

I also separate flexing/extending from releasing.

English is my second language and I'm sorry if it so bad that you think it is my fourth. 

I don't disagree with you or necessarily fault your approach, I would only like to point  out that in certain circumstances which you can often work to create you can take the students mind away from fear. Just as we may not fear the slope because of the confidence we have from having negotiated it securely, they can often achieve this kind of confidence without having to be in fear. I often have done just the sort of recap you suggested although I may not have had to mention fear at all. I remember bringing classes of level 5 ski-weekers up the quad to the top of the mountain for their very first time. I'm sure many of them felt fear, looking down from the quad, or looking off to the distance for that matter. Once on the slope which was wide open although actually rather steep for them I worked hard to give them another focus. For some reason a wide open slope without objects on it that either identify the steepness or present threats in themselves tends to remove the perception of steepness. You have probably experienced this yourself, looking off at a slope, trying with difficulty to ascertain its steepness, usually facilitated by some vertical reference point. I worked to provide them with another focus, as I said and they actually felt that this was a rather gentle slope. Sometimes by having them playing a spread out  follow the leader, I would lead them down the slope in a long serpentine line. They were familiar with one another's ability such that following the person in front of them they knew they could ski pretty much just as that person could and with their attention focused on following that person and with me in the lead shaping a secure line they would negotiate a slope that, if they had stopped to think about it much, would likely have been perceived as far too steep. Just as you related, I would stop on the flats at the bottom of this slope and gaze back up at it. Students would look back up at the slope in amazement, realize they had skied it without difficulty and generally related how much they had enjoyed the experience. (this was also a good opportunity to affirm the significance of the line they skied in obtaining control of speed-most felt the descent as a kind of sweeping movement which they enjoyed) This I think, as you may been suggesting, was a milestone achievement for them, solidifying all they had accomplished so far. My point though was that they may have been dealing with fear in a sense but fear during the experience was not on their minds because they were focused upon other things and what they were doing was in a context of comfort. I think an instructor works hard to not only see things from the students' point of view but also to provide an environment for them, largely perceptual,  that facilitates learning. 

Ghost, fear of failure is a possibility but isn't as common as the fear of actually moving downhill. Like I mentioned earlier it's prevelent at all levels and isn't limited to leaning back away from the danger. Lingering too far inside a turn as the skis turn across the hill is another incarnation of this fear. The core needs to get back over the skis before we release the edges, or we simply fall to the inside of the old turn. So the workaround of hucking excessively and catching that new inside edge is also an incarnation of not allowing the core to move back over the skis in a more timely way. I don't see much of that among newbies though.

 

 

 

Oisin, We deal with fear differently only in how much I bring it out of the closet. Helping students gain the skills to safely negotiate terrain is what we teach. Again that's a mechanical focus and only half the picture.

 

 

I feel we are responsible for not addressing the mental roadblocks imposed by our fears. The flip side of that coin is fear driving adrenaline junkies to take bigger and bigger risks. My tag line was written with this in mind. "Skiing well starts in your mind", and IMO expert skiing starts in the beginner corral. Both physically and mentally.

I have never failed to understand your posts or considered your attempts of communication  failure. Mostly I think well written but wrought from a racing background.

 

Your second  language is well stated.  I wish I understood your first.

Ditto, however, based on your location, and my experiences here at epic, I have wondered if a word your using is different from it's typical use here.  It isn't a proficiency statement but a geographical one.  Even Stateside folks will use terms in one part of the country that seem odd somewhere else.  We ( or at least  I) get stumped by the Queens English now and again and English is my native tongue. 

 

To that point, the skiing definition of toppling is different than the way I understand the word to be used and I don't understand why folks are making it a buzz word.  It might just be in my head but the difference between "fall" and "topple" is the activity during the event. In topple, the likely hood of a recovery is slim where that isn't the case in fall.  Topple (again - maybe only in my head) sounds more permanent.  I could expect some one to use the term "controlled fall" but not "controlled topple".  Buildings topple over, stacked cans topple over and drunks topple over.  For a topple to be interrupted, something else has to step in (i.e. a tree topples over and gets hung up in another tree or someone catches his drunk friend that was toppling).

 

Ken

On the word topple:  To me topple implies a focus on the balance going from one side to the other of a tipping point, and has nothing to do with ability to control or recover.  "Fall" implies connotations of lack of control, but free-fall doesn't.  The spoken word has it's limitations.

 

Jamt,

Your English is good.

Since the topic seems focused on the word "topple", this definition from the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary:

 

 

The context is transitions between turns. Not trying to fall down. The use of the word topple decribes a type of falling, one where the top is pivoting around the relatively stable bottom. It paints a specific mental picture. Swinging, sweeping paints another, one where the pivot point is at the top and the bottom moves around below it. Falling isn't as specific and can paint a variety of pictures.