MA please

I see a bit of A-framing that probably is not needed for these edge angles

 

I also see some hinging at the waist

 

 

Try to bring the hips forward to increase shovel pressure as opposed to breaking at the waist to manage the forces

Try making your first thought in turn initiation moving the new inside knee into the turn. You need to begin that with weight still on that foot from the previous turn. Also think about making the pelvis move forward along the skis as well as toward the apex of the new turn.

Skiing on one ski... 

There is very limited side flexion at the hip which is essentially what you are relying on for your angulation. Therefore in order to remain balanced laterally you have insufficient inclination to achieve the amount of edging you would like. To achieve this edging you are therefore using excessive knee angulation. If you were to drive the pelvis on the inside of the turn forward, this would put you inton a better more countered position which would allow you to use hip angulation to assist you in achieving these higher edge angles.

 

I don't think you need to despair at all as you clearly understand the need for angulation and remaining balanced laterally.

+1

A little hip counter will help you stack & align your bones (tib/fib) against the power point in your foot & ski, eliminating the need for so much knee angulation.

 

JF

You've already recieved great feedback.  I think that skiing (carving) on one ski will weed out all types of things.  When "I" watch your skiing, it looks to me that your outside leg is over edging to compensate for your inside leg's lack of edging.  The inside leg isn't able to edge enough because it is under your body more than it should be.  In your last turn (to the left) your feet are fairly close in the apex, but just before and after, they are fairly far apart.  The A framing is there at the transistion too.

 

Just another free opinion.

 

Ken

Excessive counter is not a good thing but you cannot acheive appropriate hip angulation without some. It's a matter of degree. Try it in a doorway. Bend to the side keeping your hips square then advance one hip slightly and try again. The difference will be immediately obvious. Excessive tip lead creates problems for sure and getting a bit more square at the end of the turn will add power to your transitions but these are not mutually exclusive issues.

The image of the BASI square on lovemaking manual is an interesting one. We Brits are obviously very unimaginative!

It really depends what the quality of instruction is like down there as to whether lessons are a good idea. I ski at Chill Factor in Manchester and tend to use it during the Summer months to isolate things a bit and work on my many weaknesses. I read a lot, watch DVDs and certainly get lots of ideas from here at Epic. I do think it's good to get some feedback. There are clinics going on from time to time. I don't know what happens at Tamworth but Warren Smith does Spring and Autumn ones at Chill Factor which may be worth keeping an eye open for. He's a good coach from what I've heard. I went to a lecture by him a couple of years ago and he was very impressive.

 

You may also find there are instructor courses taking place. Obviously these will be BASI courses. I'd have to say I have some reservations about BASI. I'm not saying they aren't good, just that I haven't enjoyed their approach on occasions. It's only my opinion but I find them a little overly prescriptive and rigid in their approach which is why I got into the Canadian system which I love for a range of reasons.

 

Hope that helps. If you wanted and we could arrange it we could maybe meet up for a ski?

Adie covered it pretty well.  I will just add that the femur must rotate freely below the pelvis, the pelvis must rotate freely above the femur or a combination of both to increase hip angulation & higher edge angles beyond a small degree.

 

JF

4ster's pic is very extreme and us mere mortals can only dream of angles like this. It looks like Ted and he really does make some great angles. As for the inside ski, it only takes a few pounds of pressure on a ski to get it into reverse camber. This can often be misleading when you look at pictures of skiers as it's easy to think that weight is ditributed more evenly than it really is. The outside ski is the dominant ski; how much so depends on where you're skiing; terrain, snow etc. but it's dominant.

 

The higher you put a ski on edge the tighter the arc it will carve.

Just another point about the BASI guys comments. Try turning a corner walking or running and keeping your hips square. Apart from looking crazy, it's not very efficient. If you do it you'll notice some natural movement forward of your inner hip tp put you into a countered position. It's mechanically sound.

 

 

Yes this is Ted, & yes it is extreme...  Ted IS extreme ;)

 

Notice that although the outside ski is bent more (as it should be) the edge angle of both skis are nearly equal & the shafts of his boots & lower legs are parallel.  I would speculate that his inside ski is NOT skidding.  You will get tighter radius & more "wootang" out of the turn by tipping the skis to higher edge angles, pressurizing the outside ski,  & holding the inside foot back.

 

Here is a mere mortal, in mortal snow:

 

 

JF

If you like the holistic perspective, be more of a driver and less of a passenger

 

Note your uphill hand and the direction of your torso vs. the direction of the turn.

The A-frame starts right at turn transition, so you have to fix it there

 

     You can have to get your feet outside your hips

     Or

    You have to get your hips inside your feet

 

     In your case, you get the uphill foot outside, with the other foot too much under the hips

 

Moving more inside the turn might build a platform on the 

inside leg, vs stability from an outward shove of the uphill leg

 

*for me* i've found that driving my hips across the skis by extending

against my uphill leg really got my hips inside / my feet outside

(Outside leg extension, for me, did much more than inside leg retraction)

 

 

 

  (approximate times in the video)

 

 

Kneale, great eye. As for the strong focus on hip angulation, well that involves more hip flex, even if it's to the side. Since the hips don't open up much, increased hip flexing would only drop the hips further aft and further inside the turn. 

Kneale touched on one issue, I think we need to explore in more depth. The edge change is sequential  (review the crossover at 00:14) but it needs to be simultaneous if we are doing parallel turns. Notice the wedge turn entry that occurs as a direct consequence of this sequential edge change. Why is a bit harder to say without Rossy's input but it looks like the age old defensive habit of releasing the old edge platform only after the new edge platform has been established. Wedge entry, seqential edge change, matching after the edge change, hmm mmm...

...sounds like an old famliar maneuver I know. AWC anyone?

 

There also is a curious difference in how fast the inside and outside skis turn. Normally we see this in slower Wedge Christies but here I suspect it's a lack of effort (to abduct the inside knee and externally rotate that femur) and some in-riggering might be reducing the effectiveness of the current inside leg steering efforts. It's also something Kneale mentioned, BTW. (A useful tip here is to point that new inside knee to where you want that ski to go and continue to do that throughout the turn. Also remember both skis must finish their seperate turns even after the core start moving towards the new turn.) Be patient with that new outside half, you have plenty of time to shape that new turn.

 

That's exactly why skiing on one ski would be so helpful. White pass releases to one side, no dump the hip and ride the in-rigger on the other side. BTW, Barnes used this activiy to ski from the top of an upper bowl and all the way down to the base lodge during a white out and somewhat cruddy day over at Arapahoe. (Binding problems meant he couldn't use both skis). So you never know when an exercise like this just might be very useful. Other, less advanced actiities exist and I am sure others will post them but I need to run.

Like I said to start this post, Kneale is spot on about the sequential edge change and the hip migration issues. Release the old turn by rolling the ski over until it releases, then roll it over some more. Then steer it by pointing your inside knee to where you want the ski to go.

 

L8r, JASP

Edited by justanotherskipro - 7/31/12 at 9:20pm

There's always a lot to learn. The more you know the more there is. I'm sure JASP and Kneale would agree. Always worth listening to these 2. They see things and analyse them so well.

Generally speaking, the more you edge the inside ski, the more the outside ski will go on edge. As Adie notes, you don't need much weight on the inside when circumstances require outside ski dominance.

You can begin to emulate White Pass turns by doing tracer turns. These are turning both directions on one ski while the other one "traces" the movements. They're a bit less frightening that true White Pass turns.

You will be seeking confidence in balancing on the outside edge of the weight-dominant ski. You want to get there through movements in the foot and leg rather than by launching the upper body into the turn. In other words, you want to be positioned over your left ski in a left turn as if your weight were mostly on the right ski. I try to feel my weight moving across the bottom of my foot as I change direction and my contact with my boot cuff move around the front of the leg.

I think of white pass turns as "little toe turns"...

Good questions Rossy! Advanced Wedge Christies begin with the skis on opposing edges (like we see at 00:14). In riggering refers to too much weight being kept on the inside ski.

 

Both are related to our stance and balance on the skis. Suppose you picked up that inside ski? In all likely hood you would fall over to the inside of the turn. By using that inside ski to avoid falling, you in essence limit how effectively the outside ski can grip the snow. Your workaround is to add edge angle and thus the A-frame is maintained. A good corrective drill for this is to do 1000 step turns. But before trying them, walk around in a circle about 15-20 feet in diameter wearing just your ski boots. Then do the same while on skis. After you get a good feel for that move, try doing some linked turns using that same sort of move. Make sure it's on the shallowest slope you can find though. Eventually take that to steeper terrain but what is most important is the integrity of the move, not the steepness of the slope. Once you gain the experience to do this confidently, use that same basic stance to make round turns without all the stepping. You might find shuffling is an intermediate step and worth doing as you gain experience with this new stance.

 

From there the next step is to start the new turn by rolling the ankle and knee over and allowing the hips and torso to follow that knee into the new turn. (It's not enough to abduct the knee and let the core linger inside the old turn.) As this becomes ingrained in your habitual movements, I think you will find maneuvers like the White Pass Turn and one footed skiing a lot easier to accomplish.

 

BTW, I looked up the white pass turn in the book NO HILL TOO FAST because I remembered it as a variation of the serpentine move that includes a large projection of the torso. It's there. So I wonder why it was suggested otherwise. I guess different variations exist and I simply don't use that smaller RoM version. In any case, I agree with Rusty that toning down the lateral hip RoM would improve your skiing Rossy, so I would play with his version.

 

So there you have it, Aft stance due to excessive hip flex and insufficient ankle dorsi flexing, core getting too far inside the turns to maintain effective outside ski pressure and edge purchase, and a lack of dynamic fluidity due to all these stance and balance issues.

 

Rossy, as a side note. The fact that you solicited advice says you wanted us to be a bit critical of your skiing but I hope you take what we all wrote as constructive criticism. Ski well my friend,

JASP 

 

rossymcg,   Watching your video, two things jump out at me.  First, this is not skiing that can be evaluated very well because, well.... it isn't really skiing but more of a task or exercise you are demonstrating.  You are merely locking the ski on an edge and riding it wherever it wants to take you.  I hardly classify this as skiing.  I mean absolutely no offense by this just that I would rather see you making some real turns in a variety of turn shapes that you choose rather than trying to railroad track turns.

 

Secondly, your A framing is likely caused more by alignment issues than technique issues.  I would suggest having your lateral alignment parameters assessed and corrected before focusing on the technique side of A frame issues.  Many skiers tend to ignore this very important part of skiing but proper alignment can change your world instantly.

 

Best wishes in reaching your skiing goals!

bud