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Jump Turns

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
Something I've never mastered but really should.

What's the best way to learn and would it be useful or even possible to practice on a dry slope or am I headed for a lot of pain?

Cheers
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You can do them on dry slopes because I've practiced them myself, I'm not sure what the best way to learn them is though
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Jump turns, given the potentially dangerous situations they're used in, require strict discipline of the upper body and lots of practice. Because of the amount of energy expended, jump turns are best avoided unless a break of contact with the snow surface is essential. I'd get yourself a serious ski instructor - it's the kind of stuff that can't really be learned from a book, video or website. The instructor needs not only to demonstrate but see exactly what you're doing.

No reason why the steeper sections of a plastic slope shouldn't be of use (the steepest I've ever skied was the top of Hillend (Midlothian) near Edinburgh. But really, the feeling of jump turning crud or powder on a steep slope is not easy to replicate on plastic. The edge set, in particular, can't really be simulated that well on an artificial slope.

Good luck - a technique well worth capturing, because it can be very useful in tight situations (which I must admit I avoid these days)
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If you practice jump turns focus on making the landing as soft as possible, like landing onto egg shells.
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Thanks for the comments,.
I'm looking for some drills to practice and reduce the potential pain of getting it wrong.

Is the technique to perform a relatively normal start to the turn and "just" retract the legs or should there be a much more dynamic extension period followed by retracting the legs.

My attempts so far seem to leave me sweating a lot and my skis nailed to the snow or if i do get airborne I land with weight back and lose it after that.
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rich, I was trying to think how to explain it but I don't think I can it's just a bit to complicated, David Goldsmith, gave the best advice which is to find a good instructor
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rich, yes, it is much more explosive, and yet the landings are soft. I agree with D G Orf, as the legs don't leave the snow at the same time, nor is the pole plant trivial.

Fitness exercises off the slopes, like box jumps or rope skipping, might be helpful. Edit: If you're doing lateral box jumps, try to land without a 'thump' and see if you can't get rid of forward/back motion of the head and chin.


Last edited by Then you can post your own questions or snow reports... on Mon 11-07-05 18:29; edited 1 time in total
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rich, Definitely best to get a lesson on your plastic slope specifically for this.

However you must flex your legs first the then stretch them explosively in order to leave the ground. If you don't spring you don't jump. Leg retraction doesn't work for this type of turn. When I worked on plastic we did any number of short swings in any number of different ways (including back up the hill) that was mainly at the top of the Aldershot slope which is about 23 deg so fairly steep. It's good training for fitness as well. As also mentioned your upper body position must be always remai8n in the fall line, and NOT swinging, also they're very difficult to do WITHOUT pole plant. You can pivot your skis around the tip, halfway to the tip, just in front of the toe binding or under the foot. Pivoting around the tails is a much more difficult one! You can also do charleston and rhumba (quite tricky), jump a certain height, jump turn down, stay stationary on the slope, or back up the hill as previously mentioned.

Now you begin to see why you need an instructor to watch and correct you!!!!! Shocked
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easiski, pivoting around the tails? Shocked Ooh, fun, must go practice.
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easiski, it's been a long time since I saw anyone trying to tail pivot, does it actually work on Dendix ?
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rich, You could try jumping up and down (spring like a little kangaroo) while going across the slope, then once your comfortable that you can do this while landing softly and springing up again. Try extending it to the turn. However, you will need good dynamic body position to do this well, and having someone experienced watching you to give advice on what your doing right or wrong. I do this type of exercise on a weekly basis on a dry slope as it's one of the instructor favourite warm up exercises, and usually extends this to other jumping exercises sometimes including jumping up the slope. It can be very tiring and you need to be in decent shape or you'll be knackered very quickly. I would agree with the above posts that you will need either an experienced, technically sound skier or preferrably a good instructor to help you get this right.
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rich, may I ask why you want to do this? Any particular application???
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rich, As easiski, says - you need to flex first - then you will get of the ground. In the air, extend as much as you can, to get a soft landing.

Also try on one ski, or facing up the hill, or 180 degree jumps, or (to show off) try to go back up the slope - but you'll need a gentle slope Laughing
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
It doesn't matter whether you try to push hard off the legs or retract them, the important thing like easiski says is to always keep the upper body facing down the fall line, that way you get a kind of elastic feeling where your legs "want" to spring around. It doesn't have to be hard work at all...what makes jump turns tiring normally is the stress/fear involved when you are skiing something that you REALLY don't want to fall on.

As for practising them, do it on a flight of stairs (seriously!!) - just point both feet along the stairs, with your outside foot one stair higher than your inside foot, and your upper body facing down the fall line. Reach out down the stairs with your lower arm as if it's a pole, spring around, and land with panache wink

DISCLAIMER: OK no-one sue me for this please. Best try a small flight of stairs first eh?
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D G Orf, I don't think you could say a tail pivot "works" as it's only an exercise in control really. It's difficult because you have to move your weight further back than is ideal for any sort of jumping turns! Little Angel I haven't done it for years, but we used to do it and all other short swings when I was working on plastic. Sad
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David Murdoch, fair question. I had day skiing crust of the worst kind on a touring week and can't actually remember a single successful turn. Ended up knackered and a bit demoralised. Before that I wouldn't have described myself as a ski god (unless v.drunk) but thought I could handle most things.

How wrong I was Sad
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rich, Ah, understand.

IMHO, jump as little as possible while getting the right outcome.

Thoughts for practise where safe, sensible etc. are... (all else being safe, secured and OK) about 6 feet to the side of steep pistes will give you plenty of nasty snow to play with.

Let me know what works!
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First, this must be triggered by a pole plant, so tighten up the straps so they can support the wrist in a plant.....so no strapless poles..!!
Start off by turning on a bump and get used to turning the skis in the air, once you are comfortable with this concept pick a steep-ish slope and pick your spot, plant a big pole plant and hop the backs around, this is the beginning of an effective hop/jump turn and will get you quite a way in a lot of different conditions and can be quite effortless so you need this if tiredness is an issue.

For a big jump turn you need to set the edges, plant the pole and use the momentum of the edge set to help lauch you into the air, once you are here you can bring in the air turn of the skis as mentioned at the start of my post. It is getting quite hard to remember how to do this but what I have described started me on my jumps turns. In crust you need to be light on your feet and not turn too hard... or use monster skis like the B3 which will just trunk through the stuff..... or thats my excuse... as we followed this guy off the back of Cresta D'arp
into what looked like a powder field and it was crud...he sailed through on these monsters and we struggled a bit. Or he might just have been a great skier anyway...
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JT wrote:
First, this must be triggered by a pole plant, so tighten up the straps so they can support the wrist in a plant.....so no strapless poles..!!
Start off by turning on a bump and get used to turning the skis in the air, once you are comfortable with this concept pick a steep-ish slope and pick your spot, plant a big pole plant and hop the backs around, this is the beginning of an effective hop/jump turn and will get you quite a way in a lot of different conditions and can be quite effortless so you need this if tiredness is an issue.


I was taught them differently, as a progression from the "Falling leaf" as the Americans call it, which is a side-slip turn.
Do this on a red or steep blue...
Then go for a side slip followed by a hockey stop. Release the edges from the skis, and make a quick two footed turn, followed by a hockey stop.
This then gives you the basic feet movements required for the turns.
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Wear The Fox Hat, I would probably favour starting by hopping on the traverse until the hop itself was comfortable - so that's 3 methods already!!! wink
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easiski wrote:
Wear The Fox Hat, I would probably favour starting by hopping on the traverse until the hop itself was comfortable - so that's 3 methods already!!! wink


Yeah, a good exercise!
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easiski, could you have a look here and explain this:

Kim Reichhelm wrote:
If you jump straight up and down and don't anticipate the effects of gravity and pitch, you'll get caught in the back seat (see "wrong"). And you never want to be sitting back on the steeps-the next thing you know, you'll be sliding on your backside.

Use the momentum of your hips extending up and down the hill into the next turn to power your hop (Figs. 1 and 4).


- is the first sentence related to upper body position?
- 'up and down the hill' and 'into the next turn' seem like two different directions?
- what exactly is 'powering the hop'? In combination with my first question, is there a rotary activation of the upper torso from the hips before the 'hop' and does a forward driving with the upper body somehow assist this?

I can jump turn fine (I learned to feather the edges of linked hockey stops) but that explanation leaves me more confused than ever.
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comprex, I find this explanation a little confusing. I think what she means (and who am I to argue with the likes of Kim Reichelm?) is that if you hop purely vertically you'll end up leaning back on a steep pitch. Therefore the hop should not only be vertical, but projected dwn the hill so that you remain perpendicular to the slope. I'm not 100% sure what she means by "powering the hop", but would suggest that a suitably active leg + gravity will do it for you. This is similar to the balance stuff being discussed in the "summer training in LDA" thread currently. If you remain well balanced and perpendicular to the slope you shouldn't have a problem. Of course the steeper it is, the more forward perpendicular is which opens a whole other can of worms .................

Hope this helps Madeye-Smiley Madeye-Smiley
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Unless you are right over the skis you are never going to get them around with any efficientcy.

I think what powering means in this context is a type of unweighting where the skier almost appears to make a two footed stamp down and then rebounds and pulls the knees up to clear the snow. I don't quite know the technical term but it is just another form of unweighting and works well in deep chopped snow. If I read this correctly...

I must say I am at a loss as to why this needs deep analysis. You don't need to be walked through this, you get the idea and you use the terrain. If its steep, gravity is your friend and will do most of the work you just need to initaite the first move of getting them airbourne and land them. If it is chopped you can use the terrain to get a launch.

If you use fats you can plough right through the turn and don't need to jump much at all. Just as well because fats aren't the nimblest skis around generally.
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JT, "down-up-unweight"? Haven't used that since like 1987.

Deep analysis if done properly it doesn't need, but I experiment a lot on my own away from any instruction, and sometimes rolling eyes I end up with rather strange form and habits. So I find it just as well to have a correspondence between my kinesthetic sensation and what is written by experts, or I'm very likely to think myself into rigidity.

Thanks, easiski, for keeping it simple enough for confidence .
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comprex,

We are talking jump turns, right..?
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JT Laughing I thought it was that simple too until we started about 'spinning 'round the tails'. rolling eyes
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comprex,

Don't fancy the idea of that.


Here's another thought which I can't work out. I hear all sorts of talk about carving, it seems to pre-occupy a lot of posts, I don't see too much going-on on piste. I mean, I don't see too many people really laying down good tracks in the places I go to, or it might just be that I have been away from the slopes too long and my memory isn't too good..
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JT, start a 'Are you really, I mean really carving?' thread then? One that isn't for club racers that is.
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comprex,

Hmmmm,

Personally I don't care, I'm sure I skid my fair share
But I see, IMO, a proper carved turn performed by way less than 10% on the hill. And not many of them are British.
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JT, Suggest a new thread - should be beautifully contentious!! Perhaps I could have a magic measuring machine at the PSB to measure how much of everyone's arc is carved, and what percentage of the time on what percentage of slope they managed this???? Puzzled Puzzled
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easiski,

So, so tempting..!!!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
easiski, don't you just look at whether they leave railway tracks on the snow?
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Arno, That would be far too easy!!! Anyway, if the turn was slightly slipped - how much slipping is slipping? Is slipping and skidding the same? Better stop before I get tooooo carried away!!! rolling eyes rolling eyes
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JT wrote:

But I see, IMO, a proper carved turn performed by way less than 10% on the hill. And not many of them are British.

I think that's about right from what I see as well. Although I've been working hard on carving for the last couple of seasons, I would say that a very high proportion of my turns are skidded to a certain extent.
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easiski wrote:
Is slipping and skidding the same?

Please explain! And don't worry about getting carried away Smile
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Hmmm... never really thought about this before but my guess is:

skidding - arises from some rotational movement; more likely to be intentional

slipping - not caused by rotational movement - the ski just loses grip due to insufficient edge angle/pressure/hitting bullet-proof ice; not intentional

Any other offers? easiski?
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My take on carving is this. You should feel like your are on rails because you are not losing any speed
via a skid. For this reason you have to pick your terrain because recreational skiers will not be able to
hold the speed if its gets too steep. On a course or through gates this is exactly what you want. Doing it is a different thing.
Its where the thing is won or lost
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easiski, slipping sounds like a technique while skidding sounds like an accident!
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rob@rar.org.uk, Slipping is when the edges are released and the base slips over the snow. Skidding involves the edges scraping the snow.
Ref BASI Manual ver2.0
I could not remember exact definition so looked it up. Puzzled
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