Return to skiing after 35-years

A snowHead

I started skiing when I was 16. I skied alot for ten years, and I was pretty good. 35 years later, I retired and returned to skiing. I have been out 20 times already, on a season-pass to a 600' hill. I was always more of an intuitive-skier than technical, and I think I learned these Rossignol Temptation-80 skis pretty quickly. I was fighting them at first, but it was effortless by the third-day. I looked at alot of videos, and changed my focus to the inside-ski. I think in the old days, we skied more from one ski to the other, and the main thing about the inside-ski was to keep it out of the way until it was time to transfer weight for the next turn. Now, it seems like I want to try to get 30-40% of my weight on the inside-ski as soon as possible. On the 5th day, I took a lesson. I felt the instructor was dismissive verging on insult, not even trying to understand what I was doing with proprioception and centripetal-force. “We don't ski that way any more”, “We don't un-weight”, “Don't use your poles”, “Back-pain is part of skiing”. I had to end the lesson early, for fear that I would push her off the chair-lift. I can ski without poles, I just don't see why I would want to. It's like I am skiing with a big toolbox, of ways to turn, ways to use my poles, ways to balance, ways to transfer weight. I use these tools, as needed in the micromoment. Why would I take tools out of my toolbox, instead of add new tools? For example is what I call skaters' turn. If I am going into a turn faster that I want to be, and I think I might not be able to hold the edges against centrifugal-force, I drag the uphill pole a bit behind me and just touch the downhill-pole to ground ahead of me. On a right-turn, the poles are at 2 and 8 on the clockface. The tips of the poles define an arc that connects them, and when I bring my elbows in, conservation of momentum makes the turn for me, like when a spinning skater brings their arms closer to their body to spin faster. At two-times the speed, centripital-force is quadripled, and it counters centrifugal-force in safer-way, in my opinion, than toppling. So I think perhaps I can start a discussion here about how what we used to call intuitive-skiing is backed by new science about proprioception, and how to use centripetal-force to sky with less strain on the lower-back. Or maybe I am just full of hooey, and should have sense enough to listen to the instructor and learn to ski again from scratch like I was a fifth-grader.

A snowHead

It's possible you may be about to turn modern ski instruction on its head, do you have any video footage of you skiing, I'd love to see it!

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

You can either, get more lessons, listen to the instructor and adapt to modern techniques.

Or spend ages inventing new techniques that miraculously, no one else has thought of or tried for the last 35 years, before reverting to option1

You need to Login to know who's really who.

Good to see something in this section. I recently concentrated on initiating the new turn with my downhill leg, by just gently rolling my knee down the hill that ski onto the outside. It helped massively get that ski turning and out of the way and get my weight down the hill. Improved my turns no end. No idea as to the percentage of weighting between each leg, but the inside ski is definitely involved to a degree

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

You'll need to Register first of course.

@GinaMae, Welcome on board

That's a long break, I suspect that the more you ski the more your style will evolve to something closer to the instructors view of ideal, that said
maybe a good thing to try a differnt instructor.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

It sounds to me from your description as if you're using your upper body to turn and these days you really want to be keeping your upper body stable and use the skis to make the turn.

I'm going to suggest more lessons but probably with a different instructor who can help you understand what you should be trying to do.

After all it is free

That's not it adi. There is nothing I said that is not in an advanced instruction video. I retired from being a librarian. I have a Masters of Science degree, and research is my superpower. In no field does technology or instruction keep up with new science that will eventually change technology and instruction. Proprioception and Vestibular-System are new science, a sixth and seventh sense. Incorporating proprioception and vestibular-awareness into ski-instruction will change the way people think about skiing, eventually. But there is already some of it going on now. But I didn't want to write a research-paper and footnotes about it to start the discussion.

For example, "What are proprioceptors anyway and why should we care about them? They are sensory nerve endings located in your muscles, tendons, and joints that relay information about positions of the body and its parts in space. If you can hit baseball without focusing on the bat, your using proprioception, what some people describe as a “sixth sense.” A pretty important part of the anatomy for skiing, snowboarding or any action sport, don’t you think? ....Like any physical or cognitive skill, proprioception can be trained. Just like your nerve endings and receptors can monitor sensations like pressure, sound, heat and light without you consciously thinking about it, your body manages the fine adjustments to keep you balanced and avoid collisions with your own body or with other objects. Proprioception is sometimes termed “kinesthetic awareness,” however the terms are not interchangeable. Kinesthetic awareness is the conscious effort to react to the situation, whereas proprioception is an unconscious or subconscious brain process. Take an example of a skier moving through different types of terrain; the skier’s body acts subconsciously to stay upright while their mind process the upcoming terrain of bumps, trees, and steeps and makes the appropriate adjustments."
https://www.lastfrontierheli.com/news/proprioception-skiing-snowboarding/

What happened with this particular instructor was confirmation-bias and failure to communicate. She expected someone away from skiing so long to not have a clue, and that's what she saw. The Ski-Patrol guys who see me ski every day say that I am an advanced skier, who is always safe and under control. I can ski as fast as I choose to ski, with turns as tight as I want to make them. I am 63, and I skied 7 straight days between XMas and New Years. I could not do that if I was wasting energy and skiing poorly. I can do that, because I have been developing and strengthening my proprioceptive-sense my entire life, and proprioceptive skiing works. If you have good proprioception, the snow and your skis teach you how to ski intuitively. Unfortunately, most people are proprioceptively hard-of-hearing and color-blind, and you can't teach someone to ski intuitively.

Olderscot, I used to use my upper body more to turn, and it may look like that's what I am doing now, but my upper-body is following the direction of my skis, to put less strain on my lower back, because I have disc-problems down there. My upper body is not leading the skis, it is following them. The fact that I ski with no back-pain is evidence that the skis are doing all the turning. I only do that skater-turn very rarely, maybe three times in twenty outings, when it doesn't feel like the edges will hold the turn at high-speed on hard piste. I understand that the skis would probably hold that turn if I used more topple, but I don't want to risk it, at my age. I am using the poles for timing and balance, not to help me make the turn. I understand why they teach kids not to use poles, when they are learning from scratch, but I am not learning from scratch. I feel like I learned how to ski on 2x4s and everything is easier on these skis.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

@GinaMae, what makes you think you need to get 30-40% onto your inside ski? Most (all) modern technique is about weighting the new outside ski, tipping it on edge (& also the new inside ski) then applying weight/pressure to it, which is all you need to do to turn. The instructor was certainly correct about modern techniques you don't "pop up" to unweight (I also learnt years ago and took many years to stop the unweighting habit), she was incorrect IMHO that skiing involves back pain!

I kind of understand what you are saying, but perhaps it is using too much upper body and using the poles to move weight around when you could make your life much easier, less rushed and more controlled by trying to reduce the upper body and get the weight and edge elements correct down at foot level.

As @KenX, says some video would be interesting to watch to try and understand more.

regards,

Greg

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

snow reports

@Layne, doesn't proprioception get discussed in volleyball coaching?

It was discussed on my BASI courses and also the concept in the hockey coaching I've done.

Do the Austrians still teach newbies to ski with knees/ankles clamped together?

You know it makes sense.

@Layne, do some reading up on it....it must be part of volleyball coaching/understanding/team mgmtn. ie Copilot suggests this

Proprioception is crucial in all sports and fitness activities. It allows athletes to perform complex movements without looking down or thinking through each step. For example, it allows soccer players to dribble a ball and run without looking down.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

@kitenski, So I got this:

https://getphysicalrx.com/2023/05/step-up-your-game-how-proprioceptive-balance-training-can-improve-athletic-performance/

But that is stuff we do anyway - we tend to talk about plyometrics.

A snowHead

A snowHead

@Layne, I think you are misunderstanding, its not an exercise you do like plyometrics, its being unconsciously competent of a skill(s) as another way of describing it.

Proprioception is your body's ability to sense where its different parts are without needing to look. It's like an internal GPS that helps you move smoothly. Special sensors in your muscles, tendons, and joints send signals to your brain, letting it know where your arms, legs, and other body parts are about each other. This helps you do things like touch your nose with your eyes closed or walk without constantly watching your feet. It's a crucial sense for coordination and balance.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

I am no athlete and have no relevant training but I know what proprioception is, and how important it is, especially when recovering from any kind of injury. I understand it as "knowing where your body is" (for example when standing on one leg with your eyes closed....). I have an exceptionally good little book by a physio, entitled "Treat your own Knees" and it gives quite a lot of attention to proprioception. There's nothing new about proprioception and awareness of its importance.

You need to Login to know who's really who.

Too much going on here, and although I agree that the instructor could probably have been better at communicating things, if she was hit by all the above information during the lesson I'm not at all surprised that she was overwhelmed, felt that her methods were under attack and fell back on things like "we don't ski like that anymore".

I think someone's already said it, but it's worth repeating, if in slightly different terms.

If you want to ski better then you really need to be open-minded and accept that everything you know and do needs to be re-learned from scratch. This is not to say you throw away all that you know or do, but learning the 'new' way can only ever be a good thing, allowing you to incorporate both sets of tools into your toolbox and pick whichever works best in any given situation.

If you want to insist that your intuitive skiing is good enough then don't expect any instructor to be able to help you. It's not clear why you were taking a lesson anyway - do you feel that you could be better, faster, skiing with less effort, more style? What exactly were you hoping to achieve?

I'm a very awkward student myself, and found that some instructors (e.g. the aforementioned Phil Smith) were much better than others at being able to deal with me, by listening, understanding and turning it around to be relevant with what they're trying to say. As an instructor I try to follow suit, but there are limits.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

@kitenski, @pam w, well sorry but I've never heard the word. I knew of it, if you like, how could you not - we all have it. Just didn't know there is a word for it.

I can clearly see it's importance - in terms of, if you have an illness or injury that impedes it. Just don't see how it relates to skiing or volleyball training.

The link I gave above says "Proprioceptive balance training focuses on improving an individual’s proprioception, which is their ability to sense their body’s position and movement. Through a series of exercises that challenge balance, proprioceptive balance training helps athletes to improve their ability to control their movements." Just seems to me a case of all muscles including your brain. By using it regularly you will keep it working well. But that can be achieved in all sorts of ways.

As I say we do balance exercises - we just don't use the word proprioception.

Sorry if I am sounding obstinate.

What's not clear to me is the difference.

You'll need to Register first of course.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

@Layne, TBH I think it's just a bit if a buzzword - the concept and the terminology are not at all new, but it seems like some people are trying to capitalise on ideas that sound a bit different to help them stand out (as coaches, web-experts whatever). I've not really come across it very much in the context of BASI instructor training, although I confess that it's now about 4 years since the last course I did with them.

The OP here seems to be trying to focus on proprioception and centripetal/fugal force as if these are a starting point for them to improve, whereas I might suggest that they're probably much better off forgetting all about them, listening to an instructor, doing what they say, seeing what difference it makes... and then, perhaps, being in a position to talk about how these factors influence the old and new ways of skiing, or of learning to ski.

The other key point they need as a student is to understand that the instructor is not (or should not be) ever saying that what they're doing is 'wrong'. If it gets them down the mountain safely it cannot be wrong. There may be better ways of doing it, there may not be, but if you refuse to learn the alternative ways you'll never know which of them may better get you through a long days skiing in advancing age without feeling exhausted at the end of it.

After all it is free

@GinaMae, I am not sure how you can be talking about relying on intuition when you are using completely different equipment to what you were so very used to. Your intuition will default to making you ski like you did on your old skis and not how you should be skiing your current skis

I illustrate by my own example... when I began my instructor training lessons, I had been skiing for years and had developed a lot of bad habits. If I were to progress and improve, then I realised that I had to undo these bad habits.
As a result, I initially found that whenever I skied correctly - it felt odd and unnatural and whenever it felt right, more than likely that I was skiing with my old bad habits on display.
It took a long time for muscle memory to absorb better posture, better turn shape etc etc.

Skiing current day skis is very different to what you had beforehand. If you ski how it feels natural for you, then the likelihood is that you will not be using your skis efficiently or effectively.
If you want to ski fluidly and efficiently, then I suggest that you will have to bite the bullet and learn again with the new equipment - pretty much from scratch, and accept that it will feel odd initially.
But it depends what you want to get out of skiing.
If you want to just get down the mountain, then it doesn't really matter...

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

snow reports

@Chaletbeauroc, doh Smile

You know it makes sense.

I want to thank everyone for all the feedback. I am sure I will learn something from everyone who is genuinely trying to be helpful. That being said, Librarians look at teachers as being of three types: Facilitates learning, teaches, and delivers instruction. Librarians also look at learning-modalities (visual, auditory, kinetic, etc) and right-hemisphere/left-hemisphere thinking. My best learning modality is auditory, which means that I am picking-up on many sorts of sound-cues that kinetic-learners (and helmet-wearers) are not. My primary way of thinking is right-brain, I am seeing the forest more than the trees.

Kitenski, you may have glossed-over the passages where I say how much video I have watched, and that everything I have said here is supported by something in at least one instructional-video. There seem to be two schools of thought about where to put your weight, either all on the outside ski (or nearly-all), or alternatively some percentage between 20-40 on the inside ski. In regards to unweighting, I do not mean unweighting both skis doing jump-turns, which is what the instructor also thought I meant when I brought it up. I am referring to a slight unweighting of one ski by pressing harder on the other ski, changing balance point between bigtoe, ball of foot, and pinkytoe, or pole movement, pole-tap, or pole-plant. There was one particular expert video talking about how to unweight up or unweight down, that was deep in the weeds on this topic, but instructors who talk about driving the inside-leg are really talking about unweighting the outside-leg. I can see, and follow. better skiers who are skiing the same path down the mountain as I am, but faster, using more topple and more severe edge-angles. I don't think they are burning fewer calories or putting less strain on their muscles that way. I think they are just using the big muscles in their thighs and buttocks more.

Layne, I had read that article, and alot of the CARV stuff. In my opinion, in the three parts of the turn, the pictures show the girl weighting and unweighting her skis with up/down body movement.

Obviously, proprioception has been around as long as eyesight, but the science of figuring out where does proprioception reside and how does it manifest only started in the 1990s. Archery is almost all proprioception, and the sense is highly developed in golf and basketball. I started developing mine playing pool at a very young age. Putting balls into pockets is highly mechanical and can be defined by vector-math, but having the cueball end-up where you want it to be is intuitive and uses proprioception. Estimating distance to the green and how hard to hit a putt do as well. Shooting a basketball and throwing no-look passes are highly intuitive and use proprioception. Larry Bird's court-awareness showed highly-developed proprioceptive-awarenes. Just as the human-eye only sees color in the very center of our field-of-view and the brain fills-in the rest - proprioceptive-awareness is the brain filling forming a 3-D model of everything going on around the body, using incomplete sensory-cues. When I hear somebody coming in faster behind me on the right, proprioceptive-awarness makes me instantly turn left faster than I could consciously make a decision to do so. In short, centrifugal force wants to throw your body out of a turn like a rock out of sling, but skiers counterbalance that force with centripetal-force generated by a bending ski. However, it can also be done with the other view of centripetal-force, conservation of rotational-momentum. Finally, yes, I realize that this particular deliverer-of-instruction was a bad match for my learning style, and I could learn more from different instructors, but I am not about to play whackamole at $100+ a pop, trying to find the right instructor.

Adding to what Kitenski is saying about volleyball, when your setter is already moving to where the ball is ball is going to be, before the opposing-player strikes the ball, that is proprioceptive-awareness. Kitenski, you are talking about basic-proprioception, way short of proprioceptive-awareness. The difference is that proprioceptive-awareness connects your body-awareness and motion to everything around it, moving or stationary.

Chaletbeauroc, another way I look at skiing, comes from teaching English as foreign language to Chinese-people over the internet. Their native tongues do not have all the phonics and phonetics we use, so the first thing I would do with students new to me was observe the way they try to make those sounds, such as the TH-sound, and how they shift between phonics to speak words like “thirsts”, because if they are forming the sounds fundamentally wrong, then everything subsequent is practicing the wrong-thing. That is what I was seeking from this lesson, early in my return to skiing. I scheduled the lesson for my second day back, but the school didn't have an instructor until my fifth-day, when the skis and the snow had taught me alot already. I listened to the instructor, I don't think she listened to me.

Ray, intuition is teaching me how to adapt to the new skis with every run. My skiing is very smooth, and feels effortless. The sun is usually behind me on the slopes, and I can see my shadow. I think I look a little sloppy because of the balance-microadjustments I am making in the micromoment. To me, it looks like better skiers are imposing their will on the mountain, whereas I am dancing with it.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Has Masque been having fun with ChatGPT?

A snowHead

A snowHead

How smart you think you are:

How smart I think you are:

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@GinaMae, IMV. This blog gives a very good description of high level modern skiing:

https://fedewenzelski.com/advanced-skiing-10-key-tips-to-help-you-achieve-higher-edge-angles/

I am also someone who has had to "unlearn" what I'd been taught over many years....and if not concentrating, it can creep back.

I also totally agree with @Chaletbeauroc when he says an Instructor shouldn't label Old School technique as "Wrong"....but explain why newer technique is designed to make the most of current ski design and is thus much more efficient.

Straight skis were usually 180 to 2m and had a turn radius of 55-60m; whereas a modern Piste ski will likely have a radius of 13-16m and be 160 - 180....which is what has driven the changes.

You need to Login to know who's really who.

I started on 165s, and skiing 167s now. After about two years, I moved up to 190s. My body and brain remember those other skis, but it was clear in the first-minute that the way I skied those 190s was not going to work, and I started adapting. My skiing evolved and is still doing so. I never was a mechanical-skier, so I don't have mechanics to unlearn. My little-gang of high-school skiers learned on a 300' hill near Detroit. Our mentor was a certified-instructor, my neighbor's Uncle Dan. Dan taught paying customers the techniques and mechanics of skiing as his day-job. But for 'family', he had three-lessons: how to snowplow, how to parallel, and "You will learn more from your falls than I could ever teach you." He used to yell at us from the chairlift "Don't think about it!" There was also a book, long out-of print, called "Intuitive Skiing", which argued that you can learn how to ski, the same way you learned how to walk. Walking is also counter-intuitive: It's a controlled-fall interrupted by the timely-landing of the next foot. When I graduated and went to college, I started going to Petosky and started skiing the 600-footers with a father-son pair who had season-passes and a trailer up-there. The dad was doctor, and the son had skiied since he was 10, and they had been all over the country. The son even had worked two seasons at Aspen, between highschool and college. I could ski with the dad, doing his perfect GS turns, and the son, who was skiing super-g before it was an event. He and I were trying to ski right on the edge of control, all the time. We called ourselves crashnburn-skiers, and our motto was "If you never fall, you are not really skiing." Today, I am more cautious, and more fragile. I ski toward the edge of control, and back-off before I get there. I fell twice the first day, and one time since.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

You'll need to Register first of course.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

I don't think age has much to do with it except that the more efficiently you ski the longer you can carry on. But that applies at any age!

After all it is free

@GinaMae, I think you may get on with Tom Gellie's philosophy who teaches ski by feel is most important, but also 'feel vs real' (which involves getting video of yourself and then analysing it ).
It is a subscription site but I think he does a 7 day free trial - bigpictureskiing.com.

I am going to take a deeper dive into understanding PMTS, and see how that works out, Snowheid.
Pam, how old are you?
OF, my point has been that I am incorporating those principles already, intuitively. If I was trying to get sideways like that, then it might make sense to start again from scratch to get there, but that's not my goal, ergo, there is no reason to go back to 5th grade.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

Help!!

Return to skiing after 35-years

snowHeads Forum Index >>> Bend ze Knees