Park and Ride: Your Description - Page 3

There is a big difference between static and rigid.  We can't go on until we can agree on that point.  Please correct me if I have misunderstood, but you seem to feel that unless a skier is constantly moving between one body pose to another and never really stopping in any particular "pose" if you will, then they are somehow too rigid.  I completely disagree with that.  Constantly changing body poses are not necessary in order to be supple, even supple enough to handle ruts, etc.

Being too rigid is a separate issue and should be addressed, i agree, but it seems to me that people are labeling certain things as park and ride, even though the skier is supple enough to handle ruts, etc, arcing beautiful arcs, but their only flaw is that they hold a pose through the belly of the turn.  I'm not so sure that should be considered a flaw.

ok I just want to make sure I understand you definition:

Your opinion is that if a skier is not constantly moving from one pose to another then they will be too rigid to ski well.  Do I have that right?

Your definition of the word "park" is that a skier is too rigid because they are not constantly flowing from one pose to another.  I use the word "pose" a bit loosely here.  If the skier is constantly flowing from one pose to another then they never really are in any poses.  But there are certain checkpoint poses we are all familiar with, what a skier would optimally look like at the apex, at transition neutral, etc.  In your view the skier should always be smoothly moving between those poses and at no time should they linger in one of those poses for any length of time, they would move through it on towards the next "pose", etc.  If they do linger in a particular pose, then that would be "parking" by your definition.  

Do I have that right?

I'm not meaning to ignore anything JASP, just trying to understand your view on P&R which I still don't.  Oh well.

I am not 100% settled on what I think right now.  I am actually trying not to express my own view too much because I really want to hear what other people have to say, though I do not promise to agree with or be impressed by what everyone has to say.  I'm mostly trying to just get people to dig deeper and think more about whatever it is they are saying, and yes that includes pointing out argument fallacies as I perceive them or asking for more clarification and definition.

If you want me to take a stab at what my view is AT THE MOMENT (and it might change by the end of this thread literally), my view is that the term is overrused way too much to mean different things and often in a negative way when there is no call for it.  I think a lot of people condemn a certain "look" without even knowing why it may or may not matter.  And its obvious from this thread already that people are basing their perception of the term on different aspects of skiing, which makes the concept even less useful.

I do think there are times for when P&R could correctly be identified as less than optimal, but I have not yet heard or thought of an acceptable and accurate definition that will identify those times without wrongly bad mouthing other certain situations that are perfectly acceptable.

I think Rick cleanly pointed out the easily identifiable case, where there is a skier making lazy super long radius turns on a low edge angle.  The skier may or may not be capable of doing more, but I'd still call it park and ride, though perfectly acceptable if that is all the skier wants to do.  They basically aren't working the ski.

Some of the other cases, where the skier is clearly transitioning their CoM well across into the inside of the next turn and bending the ski into tighter turns, well, I'm not sure I want to call it P&R because of the negative connotations. 

In longer turns, I think there can clearly be a period of time around the apex where the skier is not adding any edge angle or really doing anything to work the ski other than just standing on it and carving until they are ready to start releasing.  We can see that in downhill and super-G all the time.  I think possibly might see it occasionally in GS as well, though the period of time around the apex would become shorter and shorter as turn radius and tempo gets smaller and quicker, to the point that eventually we would not actually see any pause around the apex in terms of the skier extending/flexing their outside leg or increasing/decreasing their edge angles.

I do not think that its a requirement to constantly be making large body movements in order to be supple.  I do not think the term P&R should be used in reference to absorbing the terrain or remaining supple.  I think it has more to do with whether the skier is working the ski beyond a very simple lazy cruise or not.

I think P&R can and should be referred to specific situations where the skier might be better off being more gradual in developing their edge angles then what they presently are doing, or perhaps where they need to tighten their arcing turn radius quite a bit, requiring progressive edge angle development all the way to the apex; or perhaps they need to get out of edge locked carves into some steering; but that can be a very subjective thing. 

In particular I would use the term for a skier who I thought was being lazy and capable of bending the ski more, or for a low level skier who is skiing too fast for their ability.  My goal would be to get them to start steering or arcing tighter turns through one means or another. 

I may feel differently by the end of the thread.
Edited by borntoski683 - 3/4/10 at 11:10pm