I confess that I haven't had the patience to watch the entire series but I find it interesting that even in the first video in which the skier illustrates the basic stance he is in the backseat. This is especially visible when hedoes a flexion and extension that causes him to leave the snow, ostensibly to illustrate a balanced stance I suppose. You see almost no ankle flexion or movement of the knees fore and aft, all the flexion is at the knees, waist and above. When he flexes he moves his weight forward, when he extends it moves backwards. (I think I have this backwards: when he flexes his butt moves backward and so on) There is virtually no movement of the lower legs, almost as if the feet were cast in concrete.
The usefulness of this is illustrated in the second video when he pushes his tails out by extending his legs. There is one point when he is demonstrating his snowplow and his skis go over some minute terrain variation that you can see daylight beneath one of his skis all the way back to the ski boot.
The tail of the ski is definitely the operating part in these videos so I suppose it makes sense that he would want to have his weight back there,
The stem turns are basically one-ski maneuver in which the inside ski is picked up and moved to a matching position so I guess it should come as no surprise that the basic short parallel turn illustrated is also one footed with the inside ski being picked up to achieve edge release.
One consistent thing in these demos is that the movement of the ski is always away from the body rather than the the body moving away from the ski. Skidding is what he is teaching here.Edge release is such a consistent problem that you see one or both skis being picked up off the ground in tn order to initiate the turn.
Video number 6 shows the skier suddenly working on leg rotation and active guidance by leg steering. I find it curious that he has waited so long to introduce this. It must require of the students the learning of some fundamental re-balancing to achieve this. The splits are kind of alarming. It does look as if he has a difficult job getting the ski tips back together, not surprising if he has been a bit back up to now. I can imagine some interesting injuries resulting when his students try this.
About midway through #6 the skier suddenly begins skiing in a somewhat contemporary way, with active inside ski leg guidance and a movement of the upper body to the inside and across the skis to facilitate turn initiation. What is really curious is the lack of any sequence of development leading up to this that should produce these movements and this kind of skiing. Even here though you can see the consequence of faulty movements in the skier's development as you see him picking up the inside ski at times. It isn't so much necessary as the skier is capable of correct movements but perhaps just a residue of a faaulty progression in his learning, old habits that are difficult to discard.
Suddenly in video 8 the skier reverts from some very nice two footed skiing back to a one footed technique in which he intentionally picks up his inside ski, an interesting execise but for what purpose?
This leads me to my biggest criticism of this sequence as a teaching system. It teaches faulty movements and skill applications that are not those employed by even this skier in his own advanced skiing. I don't see purpose or intention or connection between the teaching shown here and the demonstrator's advanced skiing.
Edited by oisin - 7/6/12 at 7:26pm
