Video of a PMTS student - Page 4

i've been playing with exactly that, trusting, rather than defaulting to steer mode when i think it's the only way the skis are going to come around in time.

being more active with the new inside ski - the release and tip - is what's helping, with more nuanced counter-balancing. and actively pulling the free foot back is smoothing out the bumps.

Well, let me ask how deep are you talking about. Its a "feel" thing but I think you would agree that you have to trust the downhill edge. A strong countering movement will help to solidify the turn through the crud bringing the skis around with your body stacked over the downhill ski will result in good stability and remember the float through the transition. If its piled (a foot or so) remember to use the tops of the bumps as your turning points. You can easily make your turns in the air, hopping off the tops. This is a very effective way to get through that kind of terrain. I think that is more of a Clendendin technique (?) You can moderate the level of edge pressure with the uphill foot required as the terrain dictates. Do you have HH's first video? There are good examples of the postioning in it.

PNW crud skiing takes the legs of an Oak tree and on race skis even more so. Your stance ski can go 2 feet deep in a turn. It can be done but it is not easy.

Agreed!

related:

"There are a number of reasons skiers of all kind have difficulty transferring their carving skills from Blue, Green to Black and all mountain conditions. There are two specific reasons you can carve on moderate slopes and not on steeper more difficult ones. The first is that on steeper slope even shaped skis require more pressure on the front or fore body of the ski. The other is the commitment to higher edge, foot, ankle and ski tipping angle, high in the turn, must be increased.

The "Free Foot" pulling back movement helps to get the body over the skis to pressure the ski fore body."

- HH

That's good info. Greater Vertical seperation and maitaining a balanced CM would eliminate the pull back,no.

Arcmeister has a very interesting post here.

http://forums.epicski.com/archive/in...p?t-38027.html

the executive summary is to be aware of the direction of your leg extension.

Imagine your position at fall-line and get your CM to arrive at that point in that position. The thread has a very small progression that worked. Teaching the progression was not quite as stated -- different words were used, and a number of trials at each drill were done until satisfied.

The upshot of which was to make sure that the skier can feel the path of the CM, as independent of the skis. The skier is to imagine where the CM had to be at fall-line, and how the CM was going to get there. You then time your release to make it so -- the timing is chosen so that when the CM begins to be deflected in the new direction of travel, the skis are maximally loaded. Release is complete -- float is a great word, 'cuz it feels that way.

It's less foot-focussed than it is CM-focussed. Of course, you will use PMTS stuff to get the CM into place. It should feel very dynamic/athletic. There ought to be a HUGE difference in the length of legs at fall-line.

You can be certain that WC skiers that exhibit PMTS traits are not allowing just the edge angle to determine the path of the CM.

Thanks Max_501, I do understand what you are saying (and what PMTS expects one to do), but in that kind of deep, soft snow I find it counter-intuitive to extend, even if it is gentle in nature. I find it easier to gently absorb the entire turn and do it with feet close together. Gravity and lots of tipping will ensure that the turn happens. A bit like skiing bumps, where I also have trouble with PMTS.

But for me this is OK, because I am happy to mix up PSIA/CSIA/PMTS. As long as I can handle the run with some flow, I am a happy man.

Max_501: When you are all compressed at the end of the turn how do you get out of it? A big pop?

Of course, what else can you do after you are compressed like that?

FWIW, from my untrained eye, I see you tipping and flexing the skis into a curve and riding the edges around that curve. I think what looks like the "rotary" is just the needed rotary for your legs to follow your skis around the curve, and not your legs "steering" the skis. Pobody's nerfect, but you've pretty much got the hang of riding the edges in the direction they were designed to go.

As to the cross-under, cross-over, up, down move. I' not PMTS, but it seems that the avoidance of the up move is just to cut off the undesired unweighted pivot turn a lot of peeps have as a habit. You could have a lot of fun playing with different transitions. You can do a cross over without pivoting, and you can vary timing of retraction. It's lots of fun to suddenly retract at the end of the turn when the skis tails are really loaded up.

nice turns

Good info and feedback in this thread.
I agree with Ryan and Si that your acceptance of feedback in a nuetral nature are very nice (and refreshing).

sitting at my desk today with little prodcutive to do, I acutally read this whole thing after looking at the video. I had a few thoughts that I saw that i'm thinking about as well (the old, "you see what you're thinkng about thing".
by the way, i'm certified by All mountain ski pros, which came to exist parrellel to PMTS around the same time, but also a psia guy.

so, overall i like the image and lively feet. for how little you have skied, it's extremely impressive. you obvioulsy are a hard worker with some good talent to boot...

Besides the positives, my constructive impression actually had some similarities with Mike M

Mike M " Little engagement of the tips of the skis, body moving straight down the hill in the old style, as opposed to reaching across the skis as in modern slalom racing.. ..Occasional lack of balance caused by being too far back on your skis. "

Those last 2 clips, you have the propensity to get thrown back as your skis take off. I feel a similar feeling when working a rebound turn on a hard steep groomer (my least favorite skiing). I believe the relax and tip move can lead to letting the hips fall back, which flattens the skis and causes it to loose the energy and leaves the skier back for a moment. It doesn't happen to HH or Eric D, so I don't think it's a systematic problem, but i would work a more lateral move here to mimiize the propensity to get left behind for a moment.

the other thing Mike M touches on is the lack of the CM moving across the hill more. that's something else i'm playing with. sometimes with the retraction, extension, pmts type moves, the tendancy is to absorb the energy/rebound instead of using it. staying stronger, instead of giving in to the pressure can allow the skis to "reach" more. Yes, that is a catch phrase of the psia right now ('the reaching short turn"), but i'd bet HH does it as well.

thanks for posting and keep up the good play.
also, you seemed interested in my head im82, did you find another pair?

Cheers,
Holiday

This is way past PSIA lvl 2 certification. get real. this is better than most 3's ski

Have you seen video of Rocca freeskiing? I've looked, but can't find any. I'd appreciate it if you'd post a link if you know of one.

If you check every other freeskiing video in this link, each person (Grandi, Nyberg, Guay, Cuche) is displaying the very same fundamental execution I was trying to draw your attention to. http://www.youcanski.com/video/video_index_en.htm

Four different top notch WC racers, from 3 different Nations, all with the same extension of the old inside leg to initiate release. There's good reason they're doing it, and I'd not be surprised to see Rocca doing the same thing when out of the environment of gates where the majority of turns require a pivot entry. Pivots require a much higher energy/higher motion (exaggerated flexion/extension) type of skiing than in the arc to arc turns made when freeskiing. Don't be fooled into thinking the predominant transitions you see being used in a WC slalom courses represent the same transitions those same guys would use when linking arc to arc freeskiing turns.

This is WC slalom skiing. This is pivoting. This requires retraction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv0tjsQ-eoo

Max, sorry to say, but you are blind. There is TONS of ILE going on there.

Max, I brought this up for you because I saw a number of flaws in your OLRAT (outside leg relaxation and tip) transitions that could easily be rectified be means of the transition these WC guys I showed you are using.

Your edge changes are very aggressive and harsh. They're much in need of progressive application, of edge angle development. You lose contact with the snow then come down with a hard edge set.

You're fore/aft is very static, and favoring aft. You're not making a move forward after your retraction, it's leaving you stuck chasing to keep up with your skis. If your retraction was accompanied with a pivot, as is the usual case with that type of transition, the pivot would put you automatically into a fore position at the top of the turn. But as you are trying to ski arc to arc, you must make the fore move on your own, and your focus is so on retracting and tipping it's leaving you ill equipped and struggling to make the fore CM move you need.

And you're very tippy in the shoulders. It's causing you to frequently lose outside ski pressure. This relates back to your rushed and imprecise turn initiations. You never really establish a clean and solid outside ski engagement at the top of the turn, so you struggle to try to maintain what you've not yet felt. In your rush to get the inside leg collapsed and the outside ski on a high edge, the inside shoulder drops in and you lose your outside ski.

The transitions I showed you in those freeski videos are particularly well suited to allowing for correction of the technical flaws I pointed out. A day on snow with me and they'd be gone.

Maybe your PMTS does not permit you to do a different transition than the outside leg retraction cross under, but I think you would benefit from some experimentation, especially in larger turns. The beauty of allowing centrifugal forces to pull you up over the skis is it applies force downwards into the snow as the skis act as the fulcrum that you rise over. Think of it as a super-weighted release, said release being coincident in time with the new edge initiation. These are two ends of a spectrum, blending is also allowed, between the two skis, and between retraction and extension. Fly through a few transitions varying your altitiude, rate of climb and pressure on the skis as you switch edges.

Max, I'll try one more time, as much for everyone else's benefit as for yours.

The transition you're trying to make is just not conducive to the type of turns you're trying to make. If you want to put in a big retraction into your transition, then do what HH does in his short slalom turns, put in a pivot (saw it in the video over at realskiers). This will rectify the problem of getting forward for the start of the new turn because the pivot does it automatically without you having to make a forward move. (Everybody understand that?)

But if you try to do these retraction transitions with arc to arc turns, you're going to have to lever against the back of your boots to launch your hips (which you dropped behind you with your flexion) back over the top of your boots. Sure, it can be done, it's just extra labor and more difficult than these particular turns need to be. This is why it's nice to have more than one transition in your bag of tricks. Pick the one that best suits the type of turn you're trying to make. This is what these guys in the videos I showed you are doing. In a race course, where they need to pivot, they retract.

Exactly, Ghost. This is how continuous ski to snow pressured contact, and thus superior feel for edge engagement and angle development, are achieved.