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Pressure you can't handle

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
Saw this on another thread and rather than interrupt there I thought I'd ask here. What does pressure that's built up in the turn and "needs" to be be released feel like? Genuine question. I guess I must do it somehow as I've yet to explode a leg/ski but as with so many things I have no idea whether it aligns to things I feel when it gets written down as a "thing".

Is is just the transition to the next turn or "stand tall" for a traverse etc releases said pressure?
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On firm snow it can manifest itself as judder.
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fatbob, I saw it on the other thread too and asked myself whether failure to handle the pressure was what is happening when, skiing off-piste, I find myself doing a big turn right across the slope (much bigger than I intended) and find myself still on my feet but crouched inelegantly over the skis, stationary, at the end. Laughing A position from which it's hard to get going again. I should have MTFU and started a new turn with aplomb a lot sooner. Something to do with handling the pressure, I guess. The French instructor I've had a few lessons with shouts "UP!" loudly and firmly trying to get me to put in another turn long before I feel I've recovered from the last. But left to myself I think I just chicken out. Sad
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Keep tightening the turn radius as you complete the turn and continue to keep the skis on a high edge angle... at some point, something has to give. You release the pressure in some way: straighten out the ski, release the edge, or even jump off the snow. Lots of ways to do it, but if you move gently and progressively from one turn to the next without building up a lot of force under-foot, you may not notice it.
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pam w, yep, I think you've got it! "Up!" is, however, not what I would shout! "UP!" often means "towards the sky as the trees grow," and that's not the direction you want to be moving. "OUT!" might work, but better just to move back the other way once you've maxed your apex. Like a pendulum: tip-tip-tip then slow to a stop and go back the other way...
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rob@rar wrote:
On firm snow it can manifest itself as judder.


Yep - I've posted about this before on certain high angle hard pack I have shaken off a ski. Diagnosis - late entry and too clumsy with the edge angle thinking I can just power it round with enough on the outside ski.

Guess the positive version is that really snappy rebound on a performance ski from one turn to the next.

ssh - that's what I figured. Another one for the things to think about that make skiing far too complicated if you think about them all the time file.
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fatbob, ultimately, one can't "think" through a ski turn. It happens far too fast. That's one reason we do drills: to slow it down and isolate a skill to develop it to a higher level of competence. I think once you get an idea of how forces work and how our energy gets applied to adjust them for the sensations we most enjoy, the rest is just developing those high-level skills and playing with the ways of applying them with varying duration, intensity, rate, and timing.

Ultimately, though, it's all about the fun factor! snowHead
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ssh, actually, thinking about it, he probably wasn't shouting "up" but that ubiquitous French "op" which means all sorts of things.
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fatbob wrote:
rob@rar wrote:
On firm snow it can manifest itself as judder.


Yep - I've posted about this before on certain high angle hard pack I have shaken off a ski. Diagnosis - late entry and too clumsy with the edge angle thinking I can just power it round with enough on the outside ski.


A great breakthrough for me (and I speak as a self-taught punter) was realizing that I wasn't getting enough edge angle and the reason was that I was keeping my inside leg too straight (A-frame) and that was 'blocking' the outside leg/ski.

I now consciously think of actively leaning / steering my inside leg when doing high pressure turns and that has helped my a lot.
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rob@rar, correct me if I'm wrong, but at teh suggestion of two coaches on two occasions in the last 10 years I was told firstly I had got lazy with my angulation and more recently that I just wasn't getting the edges angles that current ski shapes required.

So really it was a case of getting the skis more on edge (and being a little smoother too...)
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under a new name, as discussed in another thread, angulation certainly helps you increase your edge angle, so the two are likely aligned. However, increased edge angle will actually increase the building of the pressure. It's reducing that angle (in one way or another) that releases it.
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ssh, ah, yes, but I think i meant that increased angle increases the level of pressure you can handle without judder or "brutalising"
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I often feel pressure building during a turn, especially after sauerkraut and Guinness. Goretex is damned difficult stuff to fart through Shocked
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
Wrong membrane. Clearly need something with higher permeability.
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 Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
under a new name, actually, I think you'll find less edge is often better in those cases! It's counter-intuitive, and yet it seems to work reasonably well. I would also suggest that part of the issue when you get that "juddering" is where you are applying pressure to the skis. A useful metaphor to consider is sliding crusty bread with a knife. You don't simply push it through the bread! If you do, you get a mess (the crusty equivalent of "juddering"). Instead, you slice with the knife. The more precise those slices (patient, consistent, directed), the cleaner the cut. Same with skis on harder snow.

Avalanche Poodle, Laughing Cool
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 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
ssh, interesting thought, the changes I made to my skiing last year also included (along with more angle) a smoother and possibly earlier transition. But the angles are definitely greater.

Possibly at a different stage of the turn?
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ssh wrote:
under a new name, actually, I think you'll find less edge is often better in those cases!
Less edge would increase the turn radius, therefore reducing the pressure. Or you could skid a bit which would have the same effect. What you don't want to do is press harder or brace the leg which will make the problem worse. One situation when more edge angle is the best response is skiing gates - you have to make the turn and less edge angle or more skidding isn't what you want to do if you are able to create bigger angles,
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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?
rob@rar, and when you are making short turns to control speed in a steep couloir, increasing turn radius us also somewhat suboptimal Shocked
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under a new name wrote:
rob@rar, and when you are making short turns to control speed in a steep couloir, increasing turn radius us also somewhat suboptimal Shocked
Yup, but I think I'd be skidding my skis a lot more than edging them in those circumstances Happy
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In answer to the first questions.

It feels like blooming hard work. A bit like heaving a walloping load on a squat rack or cycling up a huge hill, you know the knid where you just have to stop and get off, only you're on skis and now you're going too fast, so it's a question of horrible sideways skid braking over ruts and ice and winding up achey and out of breath or decking it.

You release it by bending your knees. Maximum flex at transition/edge change minimum when parallel to the fall line.

I'd suggest that you don't want to be skidding sideways at the transition point because you'll be presenting edges into the snow in the direction of travel which is a good recipe for a face plant.

If you don't absorb at the end of the turn, you wind up as a fence post on top of a pair of skis. If you don't extend at the start you end up as a sack of spuds.

Unless you're one of these india rubber teenage types, there will probably be some element of up/down away from and towards the slope when you get to higher edge angles. The ideal core form has the body travelling straight down the fall line with no rise and fall relative to the surface of the slope, all movement is supposed to be sideways; frankly it's hard and beyond certain limits it won't happen. If you look at the carving demonstration on the carving thread you will see some up/down of the body and also some 'rooster tails' from the skis indicating ski rotation as well as carve.
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fatbob, Sometimes reading these threads is akin to nailing your balls to the road . . . http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?t=104166

"pressure" is just a verbalisation of one of the force vectors that influence a ski's performance. It's very easy to go down the Newtonian Physics/Euclidean Geometry path in explaining how this works . . . easy, but full of verbal diarrhoea.

A ski is just a spring, it stores energy, you introduce that energy by the hill you ride and the movements you make. How you release that is a measure of your awareness of how much energy you have stored and how skilled you technique is to use that.

FFS will some of you lot just look at the mechanics of what we are doing before lathering over it a topcoat of bullѕһіt?
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It's not a spring - it's a plank
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
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Avalanche Poodle wrote:
I often feel pressure building during a turn, especially after sauerkraut and Guinness. Goretex is damned difficult stuff to fart through Shocked


Remember to follow through on the turn but not on the others.
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It's neither a spring nor a plank, it's a flywheel with part of the wheel missing.
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