 Poster: A snowHead
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I see a lot of "old school" skiers that scissor a lot and have a very pronounced inner tip lead. They think they are countering well and getting their shoulders square to the fall line but are really just twisting at the waist and not separating the upper/lower body, and, typically have a straight, stiff outer leg with a large inner ski lead of 20-30 cms.
What drills do you use to eliminate this problem?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I think I gave an example of one I was taught last year in Tahoe about doing a boot arc exercise, the idea being to push your outside foot forward through the turn, then holding it into the next turn. (would need to search for a better description).
it worked for me, but maybe not for everyone.
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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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I ran skimottaret's post through babelfish, but it didn't help.
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Wear The Fox Hat, Yeah that's a good one, tah.
richmond, fair point  I could have been a lot clearer and less techy. How bout when you are skiing across the hill how do you make sure your uphill ski isnt too far forward?...
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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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skimottaret, I can understand that. No idea of the answer, obviously.
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skimottaret,
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just twisting at the waist and not separating the upper/lower body
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I think I may have posted this somewhere before, but in certain Pilates exercises, I find that it helps when trying to separate upper and lower body, to think of leaning from the hips (with a straight back) and mentally eliminating the waist from the equation altogether. Would that help for skiing?
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How do people ski like this... ??
Square shoulders and 20-30cms tip lead...!!!! I'd think it would be harder to get into that position that stay out of it.
Having said that, I have seen some pretty horrid shapes akin to that with people trying too hard to stay on the carve...
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Wear The Fox Hat, good video and i see i slagged off that drill in a drunken hissy fit on your previous thread but now sober i think it could help, it is just i dont like ski off drills too much as they take up a lot of time...
JT, I should have said shoulders perpendicular to the fall line, didnt mean to imply square to the skis...
Hurtle, i think so but in a different context... a ram rod straight back isnt too good for skiing but your thought could help with angulation. but, I am not thinking about angulation here but rather countering or twisting.
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skimottaret, oh, OK, I get you. (And ramrod back no good for anything at all!  )
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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skimottaret,
I was thinking square to the fall line..ha ha
20-30cms ...? I think it is a horrid shape contrived by people too concerned with staying on the edges when the turn shape doesn't lend itself, IIUIC.
As to what drills to get rid of it...? stop forcing it and let things slow more naturally would be my guess...but if you had gotten too absorbed in the reading of it, then I can see it happening...
Best thing would be to watch a WC racer and try and ape it...but I think the position at recreational level can be caused by trying to stay on the edge, come what may...
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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| skimottaret wrote: |
| How bout when you are skiing across the hill how do you make sure your uphill ski isnt too far forward?... |
What would count as too far forward ?
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telemarking?
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You know it makes sense.
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20-30cms ...? I think it is a horrid shape contrived by people too concerned with staying on the edges when the turn shape doesn't lend itself
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JT, agreed, but i am seeing this more and more, especially people who think they can "carve" long turns but struggle during short radius turns. Not sure if it is old schoolers on new shaped skis or as you say peeps trying to "carve" when the turn or terrain doesnt lend itself. nothing wrong with a slightly skiddy parallel turn on ice or hardpack....
I am tending to try to have people think about rounding the turns off by driving the outside hand and shoulder around the turn instead of lots of counter. Or having them imagine the tips are tied together with an imaginary bolt that is a shoulder width long and not letting the inside get too forward or the outside lag too much....
david@mediacopy, a bit of tip lead is normal but i am seeing lots of scissoring with a clear gap between lead boot's heal and outer foots toe.. Too much IMO
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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fatbob, 
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Poster: A snowHead
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skimottaret,
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a clear gap between lead boot's heal and outer foots toe
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Blimey, that DOES sound a lot. Hope I'm not doing that in my attempts to eradicate old school habits and stay on my edges a bit more. 
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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skimottaret,
When I first noticed it, I thought it was new skool carving... and then I see it more and more from people who I thought looked like they knew what they were doing. I tried it..and it doesn't make much sense to me...so backed off.
Now, for long turns on edge, I just prepare my position and try and stay in that position..which I hope is good for as long as possible... I let the shape of the body dictate the radius of the turn and just crossover for the next one. If I feel uncomfortable or unbalanced then I have got 'out of shape' and let it go immediately....
We spent a bit of time GS carving this year but I don't worry about keeping both skis connected too much, I am far happier with a heavier outside ski anyway. Posture, stance and angulation are my 3 aims..... not too concerned about anything else. If I don't flow through turns, then I'll have a look at what may be wrong but if I want to go as fast as poss.... not such a big thing for me these days, I'll get as low through the turn as possible.
FWIW, I think it is new skool gone slighly wrong
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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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skimottaret, Yep, does sound a bit much. I see some 'scissoring' on the dry slope but noticed it less on snow.
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skimottaret, In terms of carving on snow, you could ask them to check for 2 clean lines. I doubt to the inside ski will leave a clean line if in a 'scissor'.
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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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and then I see it more and more from people who I thought looked like they knew what they were doing.
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yeah it does seem more prevalent to me as well.. on long radius GS type turns i see it when people "park and ride" getting into a countered position thinking they are racing but are just static. the hip joint is very inactive and the inner ski isnt doing anything. For sure you should dominate the outer ski but too low a stance can exagerate the scissoring problem if you are overly countered.
david@mediacopy, fair point on the dry slope, that does seem to be a common problem with dry slope trained skiers, along with picking up the inner ski.
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david@mediacopy,
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skimottaret, In terms of carving on snow, you could ask them to check for 2 clean lines. I doubt to the inside ski will leave a clean line if in a 'scissor'.
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ahhhh yes i was using just that drill last week more for balance and should have remembered it.  I really like doing railroad turns across and back up the hill in traverse on nicely groomed snow and then getting the peeps to look and see if the tracks have skidded out. A good progression from two footed to one footed on either inner or outer ski. a nice balance drill is to let the student go backwards and have them try to match the same clean carved lines but in reverse...
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skimottaret, nice and 'output' focused too, they can tell for themselves (mostly) if it's working. Tricky on plastic mind .....
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Tricky on plastic mind .....
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Yup, reason 125 why i dont ski on plastic
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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skimottaret,
terminolgy... what do you call counter and scissoring...?
If counter is what I think I see it as...that is the horrid shape I am talking about..... it would come across as the hips being too static...
Personally, I can't see what is wrong with just following the flow of the skis for those long sweeping GS lines...that is shoulders, hips, knees and ankles. Sounds about the most natural position you would want to be in, to me. The only problem to crop up would be between transition of the turn.
FWIW, I don't like to see tram lines in deeper snow...
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I scissor my feet, a relic of old skool skiing I think. It's not something I do deliberately, and it wasn't until fairly recently that I realised I was doing it at all. I was teaching a friend at Milton Keynes last week and she does the same, and I think it is also something she has acquired along the way. I've been looking out for it around the pistes on this trip and I see quite a lot of very proficient skiers doing it, including some of the young racers in the Les Arcs Ski Club for whom it can't be an old skool thing.
I wish I knew a drill which would be an easy fix, but I haven't found any. We talked about it on my L2 course last month (most of us were scissoring to a greater or lesser extent) and addressed it by "unscissoring" our feet when staionary to get a feeling for pushing outside foot forward and drawing inside foot back. We then focused on that while carving medium radius, medium pace turns. What I found helpful was to do some very long runs allowing plenty of turns to experiment with how strong and how weak different stances felt. I'd also be tempted to throw in a few javelin turns to get a feel for a strong, stacked platform. My plan is to keep on focusing on stance on some runs until a more stacked stance is natural for me.
When I was teaching my friend at MK she thought that a scissored stance was stronger and it took some persuasion to show it was biomechanically weak. To show this I got her to remove her skis and stand side-on to me grabbing the ends of my poles while I tried to pull her over sideways. In an exaggerated scissored stance I could pull her over easily because she was not stacked, but when her feet and hips were relatively square to me it was impossible to pull her over.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| skimottaret wrote: |
| ... but are really just twisting at the waist and not separating the upper/lower body |
The main sensation that I am aware of when I am skiing is that of twisting my waist.
Where do you draw the line between upper and lower body ?
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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rjs, aren't there two points of rotation: legs rotating in hip sockets; and waist? I was doing braquage (sp?) drills yesterday using both rotation points as independently of each other as I could manage.
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You know it makes sense.
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| rjs wrote: |
| Where do you draw the line between upper and lower body ? |
I'd be thinking in terms of legs rotating in hip sockets as far as "upper and lower body separation" is concerned.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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rjs, you are probably right and it is hard for me to explain this in writing. What i was trying to get across was was keeping the lower legs firm when twisting at the waist. david@mediacopy, and rob@rar, explain it better.
for me "bad" countering is twisting the whole body and allowing the hip joint to rotate and letting the outer leg to go straight at the knee joint. THe inner side hip goes forward and the inner knee is more bent.
"good" countering is holding the hips square to the feet, both knees staying bent at a similar angle and twisting more at the waist as you correctly point out.
if you think about trying to twist into countered position on "dry land" and you dont have weight on your outside leg the outside foot will twist along with your shoulders.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Just a clarification:
Scissoring - to me - is tip lead (inside ski ahead of outside ski) PLUS diverging skis (hence the shape of the scissors infront of the pivot point).
Tip Lead - is just tip lead, but skis are still fairly parallel (to each other).
Do we mean scissoring, or tip lead in the posts above?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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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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rob@rar, There are two possible points of rotation, I wanted to know which one skimottaret was seeing in the scissoring culprits.
I try to work on getting more rotation at the waist, the scissoring effect goes away by itself.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| veeeight wrote: |
| Scissoring - to me - is tip lead (inside ski ahead of outside ski) PLUS diverging skis (hence the shape of the scissors infront of the pivot point). |
me too.
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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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You'll need to Register first of course.
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veeeight, david@mediacopy, I had always assumed scissoring meant pure tip lead and was called scissoring because if you looked at the skier from the side view that the knees are the fulcrum and when the tips go fore and aft you get a scissor effect with the shins. Hadnt thought about the "top view" with the inner ski tip diverging.. learn something new everyday....
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veeeight, I think I'm mainly talking about tip lead, but I think if my weight slips back I end up scissoring a little as well.
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rob@rar, Fastman makes a good point in the thread veeeight, linked to and may be relevent to your Les Arc racers demonstrating more tip lead.
" For performance skiing, the general rule will be; the higher the edge angle, the more counter/lead is appropriate."
V8 makes a good point as well ...
Tip lead should occur as a result of something else (inclination, steep terrain etc) - but should not occur as a deliberate action.
BUT, neither has any tips on how to improve skiers exhibiting too much tip lead (and) scissoring the inner leg
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Scissoring - When a skier gets their inner ski too far forward weight goes onto the tail of that ski and it wants to go up the hill faster than the outside ski and leads/diverges from the outside ski. When viewed from above the skis appear to "scissor" open.
Tip Lead - When one ski is leading the other whilst both skis are parallel to each other. Inner tip lead is when the Inner ski is forward of the Outer ski and visa versa.
Sound any good for the glossary?
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skimottaret, yes he does, as ever, ditto V8. But what I was seeing (and occasionally do) was excessive tip lead which was apparent immediately at cross-over, not something that appeared progressively as edge angles were increased. There was one guy (not in the LA Club) who I watched from the chairlift as he did long radius, short arc turns down a red run, not really coming out of the fall line too far: his tip lead was so pronounced and so immediate in each turn that it look like he was adopting a particular body shape rather than reacting to the forces that were building up in the turn. It was sort of a leg shuffle at cross-over.
I have no idea how to cure it, other than saying "well, just don't do it" which is commonly the advice I get these days from Trainers 
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