 Poster: A snowHead
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FastMan,
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The extension is not intended to move the body laterally on its own.
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Am I wrong then in thinking that apart from disrupting balance to allow forces to act, there is an element of accelerating the body down the flow-line? Maybe it's just in the mind and all mixed up with not always feeling a strong platform but when I extend I often feel I have a choice of extending upwards, forwards, slopeside perpendicular to direction of travel, flow-line. Or is it that if I've got it right, extension in the line that the leg is at that moment automatically sends the body down the flow-line? 
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| slikedges wrote: |
| When to start to angulate? |
Generally, the higher the edge angle, the more you'll need to angulate. As such, you start immediately upon tipping and just kind of fold into the tipping,,, adding more angulation as you add edge angle. |
In learning to extend more and incline, I feel like I have extension/inclination/angulation all jumbled up at the moment!  I've kinda gotten into my head to extend to incline early then when you've extended as much as you want, to angulate but am now thinking this only works on slalom. 
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When turning on GS skis, include a bit more angulation early in the turn, and be more patient with how quickly you move the upperbody in the direction of the turn.
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There seems so much more time on GS to think about what's going on and what I'm feeling. I feel I really need weight forwards to feel balanced and able to do anything with them, then a slow leg extension and edge change whilst fighting the urge to turn the body into the turn. I then find myself having to angulate but not inclining much.
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Here's a helpful hint you may already know; when starting from a standstill, start off going straight down the falline, getting a bit of speed, then starting your first turn. Makes the first turn, and getting into a good rhythm, much easier.
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Yep, have certainly discovered that the operating envelope of GS skis includes a minimum speed! The only way I incline on GS skis is when I go faster, and then I seem to need a more abrupt extension hence the direction question.
Confused, me? 
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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FastMan, I've found the results to go with that 2006 race weekend, here (one race each on Saturday and Sunday). I've not skied there myself, but the slope looks pretty typical for a national/GP race, and a not atypical pitch. Much steeper than 20 degrees and skis have real difficulties holding an edge. The steepest slope is Hillend in Edinburgh, and probably the next is the top half of our slope in Aldershot - and it's sometimes quite amusing watching good skiers get caught out misjudging the steepness . The field for those races is probably a fair bit smaller than a typical National race in England, where we'd normally get 80-100 males and 50-60 females (Regional race fields are normally a tad larger). The winners are the current top ranked skiers, and the heads of the fields contain a good representation of the usual suspects (although there are a fair few of the top males missing). The Saturday race looks a bit spread out, but the result for the Sunday looks fairly typical, or actually a bit closer than usual - I see that there was a dead heat for 2nd place in the women's race. In a dual slalom a couple of months ago, they were timed to 1/1000th of a second, and the final was still a dead heat.
As for the course holding up during the race - it possibly gets even faster as the race goes on as the race line gets impregnated with the various greases/goops etc that get thrown onto the ski bases in the start as lubricants. Start order is from slowest to fastest, first run based on national ranking, last on time from the first.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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FastMan, One of the quirks that I've found on plastic is that, racers tend to be much more deliberitely balanced on two edges, as opposed to having a dominant outside ski/edge, for fear of the outside ski/edge breaking away, as the plastic will not sustain/hold an edge on one ski beyond a certain force, which could very explain the tendency as seen on the vids to stay on the inside more than say you would on snow/ice.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| slikedges wrote: |
| Am I wrong then in thinking that apart from disrupting balance to allow forces to act, there is an element of accelerating the body down the flow-line? Maybe it's just in the mind and all mixed up with not always feeling a strong platform but when I extend I often feel I have a choice of extending upwards, forwards, slopeside perpendicular to direction of travel, flow-line. Or is it that if I've got it right, extension in the line that the leg is at that moment automatically sends the body down the flow-line? |
You're a step ahead of me, slikedges. 
I was focusing solely on the lateral aspect of extension, and how it can be used to harness and manage turn forces to serve the skier. But extension also plays a bit of a role on the fore/aft side of the equation too. As I'm sure you're aware, just extending the knee moves the hips up over the feet more, in essence moving the skier's Center of Mass (CM) in a fore direction. Combining lateral with fore/aft, you get the diagonal (flow line) movement of the CM you're referring to.
But it takes more than just lateral balance disrupting extension to provide the full fore/aft balance management needed. Consider the position of the inside foot during a high edge angle turn. Because of the degree of flexion needed in the inside leg to attain such angles, and the stiffness of a ski boot, the inside foot tends gets projected out in front of the CM. When pressure transfers (during the transition) to the forward projected old inside (uphill) foot, balance suddenly becomes aft. Extension of the old inside leg helps, as you say, and begins to bring the skier back forward (and in the process initiates the diagonal/flow line movement of the CM). But more must be done to quickly move the skier into a good fore position for the initiation of the new turn.
There are two primary things to focus on to help you make that needed fore move; the ankle and the new inside hip. Dorsi flexing the old inside ankle (flexing it forward) after pressure transfer, and during extension, helps tip the CM forward, accentuating the diagonal flow line movement.
Also, driving the old outside/new inside hip forward helps too. Envision again the previous turn. There was a degree of counter involved, so the inside hip was leading and the outside hip trailing. That prior turn counter must be eliminated, and new turn counter established. By driving the new inside (downhill) hip forward during the transition, that can be accomplished. Not only does it initiate the move into new turn counter, but the driving of the new inside hip forward also obviously aids in transitional fore movement too. It does it two ways. First, the obvious; it move a portion of the body forward. Duh. But the less obvious is the driving of the new inside hip forward also tends to make the new outside hip and foot fall back a bit in relation to the CM. It's just that equal and opposite physics law thing. As the new outside foot will be the primary load bearing instrument in the coming turn, this move of it back in relation to the CM automatically puts the body in a fore balanced state. This enhances that flow line movement you're talking about. It provides the sensation of diving diagonally (forward and inside) into the new turn.
With that said, can one forget the inside hip driving manual early counter creation, and just ski into counter as the turn progresses? Yep. But it's a more advanced maneuver, requiring more speed and balance skill, and I like to see people refine the early counter creation via hip driving first, as it promotes the learning of quality arc to arc skiing.
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| In learning to extend more and incline, I feel like I have extension/inclination/angulation all jumbled up at the moment! I've kinda gotten into my head to extend to incline early then when you've extended as much as you want, to angulate but am now thinking this only works on slalom. |
I hint that works sometimes is to think about attempting to keep the shoulders level with the snow. This promotes gradual employment of angulation. The more you tip your skis up on edge, the more you need to angulate to remain level with the snow. Works equally well in both GS and SL.
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| There seems so much more time on GS to think about what's going on and what I'm feeling. I feel I really need weight forwards to feel balanced and able to do anything with them, then a slow leg extension and edge change whilst fighting the urge to turn the body into the turn. I then find myself having to angulate but not inclining much |
You're on the right track. Yes, getting forward at the start of the turn makes the skis engage the new turn more aggressively, which produces the turn forces you need to help establish lateral balance much quicker. And yes, that urge to turn the body into the turn is a real carve and balance killer. This is one of the reasons I said I like to stress establishing early counter first. It helps combat this carve killing rotation tendency that most non-carving skiers have, born of their years of steering their turns. Focus on the new inside hip driving strategy I was telling you about. It should help you overcome that urge to rotate.
Finally,,, understand that all the feedback I'm providing here is based on an arc to arc carved turn, with Inside Leg Extension (ILE) as the transition type. I'd go into how other transitions would affect what happens, and thus needs to be done, but that would be a book in itself. This is my best attempt to KISS (keep it simple stupid) for the moment. And even with that, the info I'm providing you is not what I would give to someone yet to learn to carve. Many other things would need to be covered first. Yes, this is still related to the thread topic, it's just starting to get into the higher end of the curve. Those finding this a bit beyond where you think you're at, sorry. I promise, I will come back down to earth in other discussions, and provide stuff of more use to you.
Last edited by You need to Login to know who's really who. on Wed 3-10-07 7:07; edited 1 time in total
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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GrahamN, veeeight, thanks much for contributing to my oil based education .
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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| slikedges wrote: |
| GrahamN wrote: |
| ...I've definitely found that staying low helps, in that the COM is lower and so you have less distance to move it to get from one edge to another - but I get roundly criticised for it from some quarters . ...At higher levels it may be much more of a problem, but at my level staying low allows my legs to move into the turn way quicker. By far my fastest runs have been by keeping low as possible consistent with allowing free leg movement and keeping the upper body as still as possible - sort of like that description of a swan: all serene above the waterline and all hell going on below. ... |
Do you feel you're crossing over or under? |
Sorry for not getting back to you on that earlier. We actually had quite a discussion on this after training today. I use cross-under pretty much all the time. I developed this over last winter as a way out of some pretty misconceived body movements. It works very well on plastic where courses are fairly straight, but often quite tight vertically, but probably not so well on snow. We have a new coach who's started working with us and he's now trying to get me to put a lot more cross-over into things. To some extent I wonder how much of the difference there is real and how much is dependent on the relative point from where you measure things - looked at from relative to where the skis are, everything is by necessity cross-over, looked at relative to the centre of mass things are always cross-under; probably the difference is all to do with what forces are applied when. We have plenty of discussions pending about the value of pole plants and upper body position (see threads passim); I remain to be convinced about the connections between and rationale behind some of the stuff coming my way at the moment - most probably in that unwanted movements come associated with the desirable stuff and training is required to separate the two - but no doubt we will work out a way through it.
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FastMan, GrahamN, thanks guys, just so's you know, I've read your responses but am going through a busy patch and just haven't had the time to reply properly yet! 
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FastMan,
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| There are two primary things to focus on to help you make that needed fore move; the ankle and the new inside hip. Dorsi flexing the old inside ankle (flexing it forward) after pressure transfer, and during extension, helps tip the CM forward, accentuating the diagonal flow line movement. |
It sounds so obvious when you say it (!) but amazingly it's something I've never been conscious of before now  . How direct and uncomplicated! I suspect (hope) I already do it to some extent but have never done it in a deliberate manner.
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Also, driving the old outside/new inside hip forward helps too. ... It provides the sensation of diving diagonally (forward and inside) into the new turn.
With that said, can one forget the inside hip driving manual early counter creation, and just ski into counter as the turn progresses? Yep. But it's a more advanced maneuver, requiring more speed and balance skill, and I like to see people refine the early counter creation via hip driving first, as it promotes the learning of quality arc to arc skiing. |
This is certainly something I still need to work a lot on. I have a tendency to counter late, so I'm not sufficiently countered early and too countered late ! I certainly feel much more powerful in the arc when I get it right.
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| A hint that works sometimes is to think about attempting to keep the shoulders level with the snow. This promotes gradual employment of angulation. The more you tip your skis up on edge, the more you need to angulate to remain level with the snow. Works equally well in both GS and SL. |
Yes, I've heard this one before some time ago but it wasn't very relevant to me then . Much more so now though so I'll definitely keep this in mind - thanks for reminding me of it!
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| Finally,,, understand that all the feedback I'm providing here is based on an arc to arc carved turn, with Inside Leg Extension (ILE) as the transition type. I'd go into how other transitions would affect what happens, and thus needs to be done, but that would be a book in itself. This is my best attempt to KISS (keep it simple stupid) for the moment. And even with that, the info I'm providing you is not what I would give to someone yet to learn to carve. Many other things would need to be covered first. Yes, this is still related to the thread topic, it's just starting to get into the higher end of the curve. Those finding this a bit beyond where you think you're at, sorry. I promise, I will come back down to earth in other discussions, and provide stuff of more use to you. |
In fact, thanks very much for your efforts on this thread generally FastMan, from me personally, and if I may presume, on behalf of all sH. You've answered a lot of my ever so mildly crazed questions eminently well, with your usual incisive accuracy and simple clarity, and I'm sure lots of others will have learnt a lot too. Personally, I've printed out your posts so's to re-read them and maybe make a profit by one day selling them off as original drafts from the celebrated and successful skiing book that is so obviously within you and bursting to get out! 
GrahamN, despite not dry slope skiing anymore, falling into a quick and dirty cross-under is also one of my sins in short turns, and I'm trying hard to correct this. Rather like carved and skidded, rarely such a thing as pure crossunder or over, but crossover seems to me the power, accelerative, hips projected move whilst crossunder the quick, mass continuing along its path move, for when there's no time eg verticale, correction/recovery, moguls...and obviously dry!
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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slikedges, thank you for the VERY kind words. I'm glad my feedback has been helpful. Feel free to pick my brain whenever you like. Long as I have the time to respond, I'm happy to.
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FAQ
