Deb Armstrong playing with the pros/short turns question

[KevinF]

Keeping up with her would be a big job.
And yes, they are breathing hard when the stop to talk after 100 turns.

Donna Weinbrecht was at Stowe a few years back holding some clinic and I got invited to jump in with them for a few runs.

I jumped in on Donna's tails as she entered Centerline, which is a pretty standard bump run. Being stupid I figured that I knew this run pretty well, so maybe? I was on the second bump when Donna reached about the sixth one. She was gone.

Yeah. Us mortals don't match Olympic-level skiers turn-for-turn for long.

 

[Steve]

Here she explains how she does and what it feels like to her. Cool video.

 

[mike_m]

Yep, Deb is a lot of fun to ski with. I'll be doing a two-day High-Performance Turns clinic with her in January. One of her go-to cues is "stroking the ski." She mentions that in her video, but doesn't go into it. An important focus, I'd say, because it makes you aware of a neglected facet of effective skiing. Many coaches are very conscious of, and emphasize, moving forward and engaging the tip at the start, but few talk about using the tail to grip at the end. If you watch her videos, notice how the outside tail is very much involved at the ends of her turns. Really, the only difference between her short-radius turns and her medium-radius turns is how long she chooses to keep the tail gripping the snow and shaping the turn before the transition.

By the way, one clinic with her I'll never forget. It was during a powder day at Vail two years ago, but champagne powder, it wasn't! It was heavy, dense molasses, and there was about 14 inches of it! Everyone in the clinic was getting stuck and suffering except her. Deb was on her go-to slalom race skis and just floating and slicing right through it. Impressive wasn't the word.

Best!
Mike

 

[markojp]

Ha! Deb grew up skiing slop at Alpental so I'm sure it's still second nature.

One thing about all three skiers.... they're turning to get down the hill, not to slow down. This is fundamentally different than why most people turn and most likely why the OP's turns are different. Of course world cup podiums, wins, Olympic and world championship medals all help too.

Fun vid!

 

[martyg]

Deb usually has a few PSIA things in the I70 corridor every year. Maybe sign up for her clinic?

 

[Plai]

Deb usually has a few PSIA things in the I70 corridor every year. Maybe sign up for her clinic?

Would love to. But, I'm located in SF Bay area and stuck on kids holiday schedule, regardless of covid considerations.
It's probably half a decade until empty nest.

Edit: PS if I can swing it, when an empty nester, plan to do the mid-week clinics for seniors/silvers. Fingers crossed and all. Surely, more days on snow will help.

 

[martyg]

Would love to. But, I'm located in SF Bay area and stuck on kids holiday schedule, regardless of covid considerations.
It's probably half a decade until empty nest.

Edit: PS if I can swing it, when an empty nester, plan to do the mid-week clinics for seniors/silvers. Fingers crossed and all. Surely, more days on snow will help.

Would totally recommend that PSIA instructor track, and "working" (really volunteering) at a hill if you are passionate about skiing. If you land at a hill with an awesome development program, the improvement of your skill set and knowledge base of skiing with be profound.

Best to you on your journey.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

I watched the video once quickly and have a few comments to make. Take it all with a grain of salt, as I am not an Olympian and have never been on the demo team. I don't think that what they are doing looked easy and effortless. I am sure that it is easy to them, but they are putting in some energy and they aren't all using the most efficient movement patterns. I used to ski with a demo team member every Wednesday morning and we'd start the day with short turns top ti bottom on the mountain. I know he was working hard, so I'm sure that they are too.

 

[LiquidFeet]

The amount of effort and exhaustion probably correlates with working the skis against the snow.
Effort is required to rotate a ski across the snow where there is resistance; repetition is exhausting.
Repeatedly resisting multiple Gs of pressure delivered to the legs at the fall line is going to be exhausting.

If the skier reduces those drains on the body's resources, the effort and resultant fatigue will drop.

 

[4ster]

All of them could make pretty close to the exact same turn on their 1980 skis.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

Great picture, and as much as I want to critique their collective alignment, I think it probably is a carry over of that style of skiing. Except Cooper who keeps dropping her left hand. Maybe align her right foot.

 

[RobSN]

All of them could make pretty close to the exact same turn on their 1980 skis.
View attachment 113562

I'm pretty sure that that is about the same type of turn that I said I could make in 1980 after a few equivalents of the full Pugski Gorvinis.

 

[markojp]

Great picture, and as much as I want to critique their collective alignment, I think it probably is a carry over of that style of skiing. Except Cooper who keep dropping her left hand. Maybe align her right foot.

So we're MA'ing a 30+ year old single still photo..... I can't even find any 4D stuff of her on youtube. This is why people hate ski instructors...

(No, she's not 'current' in PSIA'ese, and yes, it'd be fun to sort out the alignment, but whatever... it's still fun just to watch the three of them ski together.)

 

[Erik Timmerman]

Tucking the knee behind the other was a thing. Don't you see it everywhere in that video? I could see another instructor critiquing that as an alignment thing. I'm not that instructor. Also, I agree that the point of the video was for them to have fun skiing together. I think if Deb wanted to show us her best short turns they'd look different than those. The point of the thread though is that the OP wants to be able to do those turns, I guess we need to discuss them and break them down then, don't we?

 

[markojp]

It's pretty simple... Coop, Cindy and Deb are moving with their skis and not braking even if there's some retro going on with Christine C. and Cindy N. The bigger question is what's holding the OP back? Without video it's impossible to say.

 

[Noodler]

All the OP needs is a strong mix of extension releases + ski twisting. Easy, peasy.

 

[Tim Hodgson]

IMHO, Steve nailed it with the second video of Deb Armstrong.

Those are rotary turns.

Deb says that she is not pivoting. It sure looked like that to me. Like she was standing in the center of the ski and flat ski sliding the tails of the skis out and the tips of the skis inward (note that there is no snow spraying off the tips of her skis).

However, I trust her when she says that she is not pivoting. In the second video she says she is "Right cuff! Left cuff! ..."

And that she is steering the ski by forward pressure on the cuff of the boot and rotary steering the tip to tail of the ski, setting the edge and repeating the opposite direction.

In the first video when the slope gets less steep you will see pure carved GS turns.

Completely different from the rotary, short turns she is demoing throughout the steeper slopes in the video.

Completely different from the edged turn in the still photo above.

 

[Moose32]

Wow, just wow at how comfortable they seem.

Gives me goose bumps. Where is Tamara and Diann?

 

[markojp]

All the OP needs is a strong mix of extension releases + ski twisting. Easy, peasy.

Sure, they're not going to tear it up like Mikaela, but they're clearly having fun and out of respect for their collective and impressive race palmares that put pretty much everyone here to shame by a couple orders of magnitude, I'll just say that there isn't anything better than a ski day with old friends. If we want to give the OP some more better bestest video of all things efficient, effective, and current, there's plenty out there. Let's provide some links that might be more helpful to advance the discussion in a more productive direction.

 

[Plai]

Here she explains how she does and what it feels like to her. Cool video.

Forgot about her rotary video. Have watched this a couple more times to try sink in some ideas.
I particularly like the written commentary/explanation checkpoints.

There's a reference to "stroke the ski" video. Hopefully this is the vid she's referring