The Ultimate Carving System - Page 5

Seems to me, too, that the exceptional people in any sport are...exceptional. That means that they don't "follow the rules." Bode?

SSH: "There is no 'right'..."

Me: "There is no 'right' without a 'left'. Right, Left, Right, Left...the most skillfull forget all skill." or something like that.

Lao Tzu: "To abandon knowledge is to abandon names, distinctions tastes and desires. Thus spontaneuos behavior (wu wei) resulted."

Wu Wei is my goal.

we could go right, right, right, right....but eventually we'd fall off into the abyss or end up exactly where we started.

Well, I just sat down and tried to catch up to this thread, which I haven't read in a few days.

I realize now that 30 minutes have passed that I will never get back.

Didn't we put this whole thing to bed back when SCSA was raising all sorts of Hell? Cripe's sake people, do what works. Someone said earlier to compare the best to the best. The End.

If I were among the PMTS apostles right now, I'd be high-fiving my buddies and saying "FISH ON"!

What was this thread about, anyway? Carving advice? I'll keep my own council on who's right and who's wrong. Just answer the question. If someone disagrees, respond in an intelligent manner and maybe we'll get somewhere. (Or we won't... which is actually OK too.) Way too many people got their necks up in this "discussion" - for lack of a better word. Sad thing is, now I'M freakin' out because all this actually has me a little tense!

(Did anyone else think it was funny that RadRab thought Nolo was a guy?)

Spag

Honesty - Ya sure Max. My jokes only work 1/2 the time at best anyway. I did try to seriously answer the question. There is no fancy name for our teaching technique like Perfect Turn or PMTS. We simply have a system that is based on PSIA ideas, then it gets tweaked every year by the training director and the training staff to add our personal touch to it. Although PSIA style is how we train our pros, like Rusty Guy's comment, our staff has a lot of freedom to teach as they see fit. We've even had one of our pros do PMTS private requests.

Steering is no bigger part of the technique than balance, edging or pressure.

I should have qualified my remark to say that the term "active release" is PMTS terminology. That was what the question was about.

"Active Release" is PMTS terminology?

I did think it was funny, Spag. Very.

This thread was really about whether or not this is true: "PMTS represents the highest expression of correct and most effective carving technique - basically correctly anaylizing and articulating what the best World Cup racers are actually doing."

As I have thought more and more about this thread and my participation in it (i.e., why do I keep trying to communicate in here?), I have realized the distinction: I do not have any issue with someone wanting to talk about any movement, drill, or even teaching progression. But, I don't think that proclamations about ultimate superiority of a person, progression, drill, movement, or teaching system has any validity at all, and is inappropriate, inherently misleading, and fundamentally dishonest. Simply because there is no such thing on this planet. We're always learning and advancing. Everything changes. There is no "steady state". And thus, posts, threads, and comments along that vein do nothing but diffuse the energy of many that could go into the stuff that really helps (those movements, drills, advice, insights, etc.).

It doesn't help at all when those same comments simultaneously discredit everyone who participates on EpicSki as is the case when PMTS is discussed, since the founder has proclaimed his disdain for this site and all who participate here--and has made it very clear that he never spends any time here nor posts here. Frankly, given the people I have learned from who participate here, I find that deeply offensive.

...and I couldn't care less what "those people" say about my skiing. I have my own mentors for that. And I'm pretty sure that I'd not be welcome in a PMTS camp.

Does the steering skill you teach get the same focus as balance, edging and pressure? Is it as important?

All of the skills are important and necessary at different times for different reasons, so receive focus when one seems to be lacking compared to the others. Ideally, skiing is an "allow" sport, so many of the movement largely "happen" as long as everything is set up right and the world is perfect. But, when something happens to change that, it's useful to have all of the skills available.

When I took my first PSIA clinic in December 2003, I had to work on rotary skills. My racing background was all about the edge, arcing and carving. That's what I did. I could ski everything and (I thought) look pretty good doing it, but when I started to learn to isolate my rotary movements, I learned that I had an entire set of skills that were underdeveloped. I worked them more than the other skills for a full season. Examples: pivot slips, wedge turns (non-braking; using release with independent rotation). Some of those that I have taught have found useful skill building through this as well, while others need to work more on their edging skill set.

By the way, the rotary skills come in handy when one wants to keep the skis from twisting for one reason or another. It's not necessarily only to actively twist them.

In some ways, the answer to your question is yes and in some ways no. It's one of four types of skills that we teach. Like PMTS, balance has the most priority. Rotary, edging and pressure can be equally important after that. In a lesson, though, we typically try to focus on only one skill. In some lessons, rotary movements may get all of the focus. Just by percentages alone, most of the time it gets no focus. Since we teach to student needs, they determine what the focus is. You also need to understand that we consider rotary movements to be an essential part of pure carving. For example, we may be telling our students to concentrate on rotating the femur in a turn (to facilitate tipping - backwards of PMTS philosophy). In other lessons we may focus on edging movements, but be checking for femur rotation as a result (consistent with PMTS teaching philosophy).

Oops, I think we may be confusing the map for the territory. The skills concept is a map, real-time teaching is the territory. I don't teach skills I teach people. And that is the one true distinction between the PMTS Way and the PSIA Way. PMTS folks don't seem to get it, that PSIA is all about teaching people to ski--student-centering is the keystone of the official methodology--which is why concepts like the Stepping Stones evolve. This flexibility, a virtue, is mistaken as waffling, a vice. On the other hand, PMTS is a Big-T expert-centered unitarian program that is ju-u-u-st right for some folks. To each his own. Long live the sport.

OK, I feel my arm being twisted.....

HH makes his living by selling people his ski lesson system. He realizes that he is selling something to people at a very high price that they don't need for their career. People pay him thousands of dollars just out of vanity so they can ski "better". He is very aggressive at protecting that income. Any comment or inference to the fact that the you can search through the creakbed yourself and find the nuggets, or that a bit of impurity might be found now and again, or that there is another Jewelry store across the street is quickly squashed. He is in a fierce fight for his livelyhood. I can't blame a man for trying to make a living, but I find the putting down of everything else and the incessant attempts to constantly "sell" his system distasteful.

I'm not a PMTS apostle, unless HH was running a skishop in Ottawa back in the 80s; that's when the gentleman selling skis showed me how the sidecut forced the ski to bend in order to maintain contact with a flat surface when put on edge. I had been carving my high-speed turns for many years before that, but I didn't really know what I was doing. I have read their website postings and I like what I see in terms of carving technique, but I don't like the attitude.

I can relate to the skidding versus carving through the lense of driving or riding a motorcycle. When you truly start to play around on a twisty road, you need to be able to drift the car or slide the bike, but you don't learn this skill first. You start with your tires "locked in". Strangely enough it's the opposite learning progression for skiers.

To an experienced skier who has been mostly carving, I find HHs system made a lot of sense; indeed it seemed no different from how I skied. I taught my daughter how to ski, using GCCM (Ghosts Crazy Canuck Method). We quickly went from skidding to carving in only a couple or three days. Her lack of rotary skidding skills was appearant, particularly at slow speeds in crowds, even though she could carve well and keep up to my cruizing speed on blues (After a half dozen days or so, given a choice of crowded blue or icy black she would take the black, even though the black was a little unnerving to her).

Obviously if you ignore certain skills and concentrate on other skills, those other skills will develope more quickly. Personally I think carving skills are more important than skidding skills, but there are different strokes for different folk. See vid of tdk6.

What the hell is the skills concept? For me it is a simple science based way of recognizing our movements as they are applied to skiing. Basic biomechanics recognizes three planes of movement for the human body. The frontal plane, the sagital plane, and the horizontal plane. Transfer these planes of movements to skiing movements and we have respectively, edging movements, pressure control movements, and rotary movements.

Now, just like in our movements in everyday life, our movements in skiing combine varying degrees, or as we say in skiing, a blending of these three classifications of our movements. Some play a primary or lead role in a turn and others will play a secondary role or supporting role. I like terms lead and supporting role better myself. Even in one given turn we may have our skills changing from primary to suporting roles or vice-versa. I think many times we have co-stars in our turns. More than one primary, maybe even all three acting in primary roles. Imagine that, "THREE" co-stars all working together in support of the intended script. Sorry.

So when do our rotary skills move from a supporting role to at least a co-star role? when I make a turn with active steering, which I will take the liberty of defining as a turn where the ski/snow interaction is overpowered. A skidded turn, skarve, brushed carve. Whatever you want to call it. I'm really talking here about a nice tip leading through the turn type of skidded turn, where the radius is shorter than the combined sidecut and decambing will produce for us. Steeps and bumps come to my mind here.

We need a way to identify, classify, and talk about the movements that make this possible. This also give us the ability to identify, classify and talk about these same movements when used in a passive or permitted way also. It also give us mechinisms to isolate and refine these movements, whether we use them in a supporting role or lead role. Otherwise we are saying, "it just happens", not sure what, but it does. A way to identify what happened and how to duplicate and refine it. It just happens, is not where I choose to be in teaching skiing, though an okay place to be if you are simply a skier making turns on the mountain.

Rotary movements and steering are a part of the symphony, and if we don't let them play occasionaly in a lead role it will limit the songs we are able to play.

Yes I do teach steering from the begining, along with edging and pressure control, and blending of these, which we do as a matter of nesessity. Nesessity doesn't always produce the best blending though, in the same way that every good orchestra needs practice playing together. We want to create a whole that is greater than the parts. Yes I try to help students develope the understanding and applications of the supporting roles as well as it's lead roles of steering.

I felt my arm being twisted too, but I decided to address why I like the skills system, and why it makes sense to me. Later, RicB.

So here is a key difference with PMTS. HH feels that active rotary causes more harm than good. I have watched him work with skiers in removing rotary movements from their skiing and I've watched those skiers improve. Perhaps this is not true for all skiers that use rotary in their skiing, but with the recreational skiers I have seen in his camps the less rotary used the stronger the skiing becomes.

Its an interesting difference in opinion. Do you really need rotary skills to ski?

Max, you really don't need any skills whatsoever.

But really, even in PMTS you need rotary skills -- your skis do move, and your legs do turn under your body.

The definition of "stronger" skiing being equivalent to more edge hold is dubious. I don't really want to go there. But I will strongly suggest that a skier that has poor rotary skills is not a versatile skier. Neither is a skier that has poor edging skills. You need the whole package.

It's not enough to control one's edges and claim versatility.

I'm not a PMTS instructor but I've read the PMTS Instructor Manual and I've watched a few PMTS instructors. There is a focus on Student Directed Ski Instruction. How that might be different from "student-centering" I don't know. But the student is key in PMTS instruction.

Max,

In my opinion, you do need rotary. Certainly your mileage may vary, though I don't really see how you're making a tighter turn than your ski will allow with only tipping and decambering if you don't.

I don't think it does much good to reference those other recreational skiers, unless you're going to provide footage to allow everyone to get on the same page, as every situation will be unique and general statements like "removing rotary causes improvement" don't make sense. For instance, if one of those skiers is coming thru transition and showing a pivot at the top of the turn, is too much rotary always the problem and what you would suggest removing?

This is an interesting observation. I ski with a bunch of guys. Some are racers, PSIA instructors, patrollers, freestylers. We ski everywhere on the mountain (some places the majority of skiers on our hill don't even know exist). Go figure, no rotary skills and I can ski with the rest of them.

I'm not an instructor so I can't answer that directly. But one of the guys was doing exactly that and they helped him to remove the movements that were causing the pivot.

The rotary skills you guys talk about aren't taught in PMTS (for example, no pivot slips). HH acknowledges rotary as part of a turn but its passive and a result of other movements (tipping for example).

BTW, I have no interest in starting another rotary debate. I'm just pointing out that it appears to be a key difference between PMTS and PSIA.

Unaware could be more to the point.

Max I think the more appropriate question to ask relative to biomechanical definition, is do rotary movements (movements parallel to the horizontal plane) happen when skiing? If so, do we need them to happen? If so, When, how much, and why? This then leads me to a need to develope understanding, control and application of this category of movement. Whether we allow, permit, or intentionaly recruit rotary movements, is the debate I assume you are seeking.

Let me ask you a question Max. What happens if we totaly remove any rotary movement from our skiing? I don't mean relegating it to a supporting role, a subordinate role, or allowing it to happen. I mean really no rotation happening at all, for any reason, in any joint. Could we ski effectively then?

Is steering over/under used by many skiers? Yes. Is edging over/under used by many skiers? Yes. Is pressure control over/under used? Yes. Usually lacking in most skiers?

In a hundred students I get one student that says they initialy wants to improve their carving. Probably 90 of them should improve their carving, and probably 90 of them should refine their steering and use of rotary. In both directions. They need to learn when to just permit it and when to actively engage it. I don't see any black and white, or line in the sand. Only ineffective over/under use. I can certainly agree to disagree. Later, RicB.

PMTS devotees claim a number of things about the efficacy of the movement pattern:

1) Hockey stops
2) No washing out of the carve by excessive rotary
3) Skis can be redirected EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT ON THE SNOW.

How does number 3 happen IF THERE IS NO ROTARY MOVEMENT!!! The steering cannot be blamed on pressure control and ski to snow contact.

It's ridiculous to suggest there is no rotary in PMTS. It would be far more accurate to say "There is no *excessive* rotary", but no rotary? No way!

Max, do you ski fast through dense trees with no rotary movements?

How about big, steep moguls?

How about 5-meter-wide, 50-degree chutes with exposure where a fall might kill you?

I'm sorry, but I just have a hard time buying the idea that you or other PMTS'ers are carving your turns all the time. If you're really doing that, you are collectively much, much better skiers than anybody I see skiing on my local hill. The people on my hill include a somewhat significant number of skiers who have Olympic and World Cup wins as well as wins in international free-skiing competitions.

THEY don't carve their turns all the time. How can you?

Altho' maybe HH is using the centripetal force provided by the cold air layer next to the snow?

Maybe! Maybe those movements causing the pivot were needed at the time as a result of other balance and directional movements - and it was a good thing he had those movements! ie I'm still upright=rotary good! Maybe they didn't remove the pivot at all, but worked on something else that resulted in the pivot no longer being necessary.

So what? You have your own ideas, thoughts, beliefs, right? Clearly you spend a lot of time and effort trying to understand and improve your skiing. You have asked specific questions of these instructors as to what they're teaching; I assume this is because you have your own reasons for wanting to know. I couldn't care less what HH thinks, he's not participating in this discussion - you are; what do you think?

FWIW: I am not an instructor either.

He's for sure relying on some sort of density.

Well, I'm probably going to get hammered for this but I do exactly what HH tells me. I don't question it. Now if it wasn't working I'd be all over it, but when I follow his instructions my skiing improves so I don't have any reason to question it.

I asked the questions because I'm trying to understand what the differences really are.

Max, my respect has gone up since you've admitted to "just following instructions". No bashing is forthcoming from this end.

May I suggest that it may be of interest to you to examine how far down this biomechanical rabbit hole goes:

How can a rotary movement be 'passive' if the skiis are not in contact with the snow or if they pivot quicker than their side cut and edge angle would allow them to (like in a hockey stop)?

Blue pill or Red pill?

Cheers!