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carve help.. pressure on ski?

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
Ive been experimenting with carving for a while and have left some nice clean grooves behind. I thought I was carving pretty well but have recently seen some youtube clips that show things differently. Most clips show how to simply roll the ski's on their edges with knees still wide, but none of them mention pressure or weight. So I assume one still needs to pressure the downhill ski ??
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shootingmike, don't focus on 'adding' pressure to your turns. The dominate steering element when carving is edge control. If you want to carve a tighter turn you need to create bigger edge angles, a more open turn will require less edge angle. At the speeds you normally travel at when carving there is no shortage of pressure building up as you go through the apex of the turn, and the challenge is often managing those large forces rather than trying to create them.

Make sure you are creating clean, sharp tracks all the way around the turn and in to the next turn. This is tough to do on anything more challenging than a steep blue, and if you look around the hill you see very few skiers who have clean transitions, moving from being balanced on one set of edges to being balanced on the other edges without twisting or pushing their skis.
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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,
Quote:

don't focus on 'adding' pressure to your turns

Right, that's another thing I can chuck out of my over-loaded brain. Very Happy
I'm into 'one-word skiing' after my week with Inside Out Skiing in Folgarida. My word is 'ankles'. Toofy Grin
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Pedantica, "cake".
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rob@rar, no-o-o-oooo! Shocked Laughing
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Pedantica, challenge, success and reward is an important concept in skiing wink
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Pedantica, My one-word is two words - early pressure. It's like a mantra when I get a bit stuck
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Quote:

My word is 'ankles'.

We got a lot of "ankles" from easiski in Les Deux Alpes. wink
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pam w, is "ankles" the new "knees"?
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Quote:

is "ankles" the new "knees"?


dobby, yes, it probably is, because if you bend the latter without bending the former you just shift your weight back and put far too much strain on your knees and prevent the skis turning nicely. Which is what I was doing in La Grave. Embarassed
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pam w, at least you are competent enough to ski La Grave. I am definitely not. Very Happy Although I will now be thinking more of ankles.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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at least you are competent enough to ski La Grave

you don't have to be very competent to do it the way I did, dobby!
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Incidentally, Charlotte told us that if we couldn't flex our ankles so our knees were over the front of our bindings, our boots were probably too stiff.
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
pam w wrote:
Incidentally, Charlotte told us that if we couldn't flex our ankles so our knees were over the front of our bindings, our boots were probably too stiff.

My experience would back this up. Was many years ago, but took to skiing quite well in my first week - winning the ski school race etc.

Second holiday I just couldn't do it. Instructor was forever telling me to bend ze knees etc.

Last day I changed my boots (due to comfort) and skiing was transformed. Turns out the boots had been too stiff and I just couldn't flex them at all. But being a relative beginner I was unable to diagnose the problem. Had I not changed boots on that last day I may never have bothered with skiing again!
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My aspirational mantra is also 2 simple words "Don't Suck"

....unfortunately doesn't always result in positive results which is where the correctional rebuke of "backseat!" comes in (other forms of sucking are available)
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 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
pam w wrote:
Quote:

is "ankles" the new "knees"?


dobby, yes, it probably is, because if you bend the latter without bending the former you just shift your weight back and put far too much strain on your knees and prevent the skis turning nicely. Which is what I was doing in La Grave. Embarassed


Oh good grief! I'm SO glad I read this! Cool
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fatbob may or may not recall, but he came up w a mantra a while back connected with those times when it just doesn't seem to be working right maybe all too static, summat like "jiggle" yourself about, a lot, then good stuff usually happens.
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rob@rar,

Thanks for your advice, I'm still struggling though with the mechanics of initiating the carve. I was trying yesterday to just roll the skis over but all that happened was my weight seemed to stay on my uphill ski and I caught an edge nearly making me fall. When I stopped trying to do this by just starting a normal turn, as the skis began turning, I then rolled them a bit more and really stood on the middle of the downhill ski and they carved. Hence the original question about pressure. .. could you advise any drills to initiate a carve?
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shootingmike, I get a bit confused when people talk about uphill and downhill skis, so not quite sure why you tripped up. A good drill for initiating a carved turn is the "J Turn": start skiing straight down the fall line with your skis parallel, get to a reasonable speed then simply roll both skis equally on to their (same) edges so your skis begin to gently turn by edge control only. Do not rush the skis, do not twist the skis, simply tip them. Gradually keep tipping the skis to bigger edge angles as the G-forces begin to build up. Keep carving the turn so you head back up to the hill and come to a natural stop. Make sure you don't cut in front of other skiers when you do this.
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That's the exact problem... When I try and just "tip" the skis over, it's like they just want to keep going straight and the rest of me also wants to tip over onto the floor. Am i supposd to have equal pressure on each ski? Where should my weight be?

Some YouTube videos suggest a weight shift forward and over the ski that will end up downhill to initiate the turn.
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And surely to make the ski bend along its radius, pressure has to be applied somewhere?
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rob@rar wrote:
shootingmike, I get a bit confused when people talk about uphill and downhill skis,
REALLY?
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shootingmike wrote:
That's the exact problem... When I try and just "tip" the skis over, it's like they just want to keep going straight and the rest of me also wants to tip over onto the floor. Am i supposd to have equal pressure on each ski? Where should my weight be?

Some YouTube videos suggest a weight shift forward and over the ski that will end up downhill to initiate the turn.


Sounds like you are doing too much, too quickly. When you initiate a carved turn the ski won't change direction as quickly as it will if you were twisting it, so you need to make it a smooth, progressive movement. Your weight should be wherever it needs to be to remain in balance, and is likely to vary a little throughout the turn. I'm generally outside ski dominant when I'm carving turns on firm snow, but if I move my centre of mass inside the turn too quickly (to become excessively outside ski dominant) then the result might be as you suggest, I tip over (to the inside of the turn) because I'm no longer in balance.

There's some good skiing videos on YouTube. There's also some really terrible ones on YouTube. My advice is to be quite discerning about which ones you choose to follow.
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shootingmike wrote:
And surely to make the ski bend along its radius, pressure has to be applied somewhere?
Simply standing in balance on the edge of a ski will bend it so the ski can follow a curved path. As I said earlier, very large pressure will build up during a carved turn. But it's important to remember that this is not an instantaneous event, it builds up progressively so you body movements to stay in balance with that pressure also need to be progressive.
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waynos wrote:
rob@rar wrote:
shootingmike, I get a bit confused when people talk about uphill and downhill skis,
REALLY?
Yes. On the other hand I have no difficulty at all in understanding discussion about outside ski and inside ski wink

When the OP talked about his uphill ski I didn't know where in the turn he was referring to. At the start of the turn the uphill ski is your outside ski, but at the end of the turn your uphill ski is your inside ski. The trouble with uphill and downhill is that they are relative terms, changing every time you pass through the fall line. With one exception (traverse drills) I never talk about uphill and downhill skis, it's just too confusing (for my tiny brain, at least).
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Thanks rob@rar, that makes more sense now. The bit about my weight being wherever it needs to be and the bt about standing in balance on the edge of a ski make me think I'm pretty much doing it right .. Also the pressure I put on the outside ski does increase as the carve does.

Thanks for clearing it up. I find it odd that most carving instructions mention nothing of weight or pressure when clearly its important or you'd just fall over! Sad
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I prefer to think of it as being in balance rather than pressure. As you know, large forces will ebb and flow during each turn, so we are constantly adjusting to remain in balance.
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rob@rar, are you saying that pressure never has to be applied and that pressure will build by itself if balance is maintained?
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
Pedantica, remember this....
Quote:

A good drill for initiating a carved turn is the "J Turn": start skiing straight down the fall line with your skis parallel, get to a reasonable speed then simply roll both skis equally on to their (same) edges so your skis begin to gently turn by edge control only. Do not rush the skis, do not twist the skis, simply tip them. Gradually keep tipping the skis to bigger edge angles as the G-forces begin to build up. Keep carving the turn so you head back up to the hill and come to a natural stop. Make sure you don't cut in front of other skiers when you do this.


By getting in to the 'Alpinesfahverhalten' .... (whilst touching yourself up... or rather down) gravity takes care of it for you. It isn't until you try to manipulate the turning radius that you have to focus on pressure and weighting too much.
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flangesax, I certainly do! Very Happy So you're saying that IF you want to manipulate the radius, THEN (and only then) you have to think about pressuring the skis?
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 Poster: A snowHead
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Pedantica, I'll answer by posing a question for you - how would we apply pressure, and where in the turn would we do that?
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rob@rar, pass, I'm not going to show myself up on snowHeads, and give away the fact that I've either not understood or not taken in what you and Scott have repeatedly been telling me over the years. wink I'll just go as far as saying that sometimes I think 'bicycle' (staying on the theme of one-word skiing wink ) to get myself round, and I'll say it to myself as early in the turn as possible. But that would be in short, or sometimes medium-to-short radius, turns only - not longs, where I'd generally just try to keep tipping the skis over.
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Sorry, not a test wink. Will give a fuller answer if I can get the poxy wifi to work at T1 so I can type on my laptop. Generally I think "bicycle" is a great trigger word.
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I don't know if it is of any help, but I find it useful to think about the ski that is on the outside of the turn and the ski that is on the inside of the turn.
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Spyderman said 'bicycle' to me huring my very first indoor lesson (at MK) - it has stayed with me ever since as a good concept.
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Megamum, is there a difference between 'the ski on the outside of the turn' and just 'outside ski'? Other than the number of words required, that is. wink
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Pedantica, it depends on the direction you are viewing it from? Maybe? Possibly? Or I'm talking proverbial B***s Laughing
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Megamum, I couldn't possibly say. wink
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Pedantica, Laughing mind you I think when folks are talking skiing it results in less confusion to refer to inside and outside skis on the turn whether you mention the turn in the phrase or not - and yes, outside and inside ski are of course sufficient in their own right Very Happy . Then you can do things like describe increased pressure on the outside ski as early as you can in the moments before the turn, then you can refine that and refer to pressure to the inside edge of the outside ski and things like that. I think it removes loads of the confusion of the uphill and the downhill ski.
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I would suggest that 'bicycle' works well for long radius turns too.
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