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Gear Tele skis for learning

Yo Momma

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Two good articles w/ exercises:


The next says for "Fat" skis but most of the younger gens are using this technique w/ all Tele skis. The boots are so good nowadays that they allow you to focus your body movements and weigh your skis w/a level of precision we could never dream of on older gear. I find it's actually super efficient and allows for more versatility in all terrain and conditions:

 
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Wendy

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John Wayne?!?!?
Nah; Fred Astaire.

Oh, and low blows.
I’ll never get “low.” But can see its value in bumps, whatever for max absorption, I guess.
My neighbor is one who goes super low, but just to show off.
 

Paul Lutes

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If you're still wearing knee pads due to possible knee banging, you're too low. The occasional lower than appropriate drop can and will happen, but if you stay low you've lost that adjustment range for the next time you need it and may need a full face helmet to protect your jaw from your knees. Part of my crankiness in this regard is simply that Ii can't get low any more, even if I wanted to, so now I preach about quiet efficiency and grace :Teleb:
 
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Wendy

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If you're still wearing knee pads due to possible knee banging, you're too low. The occasional lower than appropriate drop can and will happen, but if you stay low you've lost that adjustment range for the next time you need it and may need a full face helmet to protect your jaw from your knees. Part of my crankiness in this regard is simply that Ii can't get low any more, even if I wanted to, so now I preach about quiet efficiency and grace :Teleb:
Knee pads? Moi? Nope. I’m still trying to master the turn! :roflmao:
Was hoping to get to the mountain today but it’s pretty foggy up there and not a great condition for a slow-moving tele skier when minimal terrain is open.

I think I also need to remember to stay loose and relaxed.

I do have a lesson booked at Killington next Monday.
 

Yo Momma

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John Wayne?!?!?
Nah; Fred Astaire.

Oh, and low blows.
Only in reference to the cowboy bowlegged theme!! Ha ha ha......... but yes Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers all day long! :hail: Interesting fact that Michael Jackson said he would spend hours watching and mimicking Fred Astaire's moves while tweaking his own dance moves.
 
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Wendy

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One thing that was super interesting after my day out Friday…my legs felt GREAT afterwards. I was doing a circle drill where I was skating back up the bunny slope after making a turn in either direction and I loved the feeling of getting a good leg workout. I am one to crave hard workouts with some aerobic aspect to them.
 

tomahawkins

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Silly tele question: Why is flexing the ball of the foot a requirement? It seems like the boot bellows and the binding mechanisms to support this movement adds complexity and weight and drastically limits available boot options. Flexed vs non-flexed toes results in only 1 or 2 inches of height difference of the rear foot.

I'm not suggesting telemarking in AT bindings, but we if we had a tele binding with a return spring that accepted AT boots what would the riding experience be like?
 

pais alto

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^ Effective (and elegant) tele skiing requires weighting the rear foot (especially in powder or crud) and that’s not possible unless the foot flexes. A fifty-fifty (more or less) weight spread between the feet is considered ideal.

Weighting only the front foot is often referred to as ‘fake-a-mark’ and doesn’t work well anywhere besides groomed/hard snow.

@Wendy, try imagining dropping your hips straight down, like between your feet, to distribute your weight.
 

tomahawkins

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^ Effective (and elegant) tele skiing requires weighting the rear foot (especially in powder or crud) and that’s not possible unless the foot flexes.

Why is that? I mean I can balance on my toes with Alpine boots. I can drop down into a simulated teleturn with weight on both feet. Still not seeing what the flexing the toes do for you.
 
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Wendy

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Why is that? I mean I can balance on my toes with Alpine boots. I can drop down into a simulated teleturn with weight on both feet. Still not seeing what the flexing the toes do for you.
I’m guessing that it would be very, very difficult to put enough weight on the rear foot unless the foot is flexed. Remember high school physics? Pressure = Force/Area? So if you decrease the area by balancing on and weighting your rear toe as opposed to the entire area of your toes, your effective area decreases, which increases the pressure required. NOT FUN. It’s NOT easy to apply adequate pressure to that rear foot when just learning tele. (Take my word for it, haha). I’d wager a guess that even if one is an accomplished tele skier, it still wouldn’t be a whole lot of fun weighting just the boot toe.

If you‘re dropping into a tele turn in alpine boots, with the heels locked down, your upper body/pelvis would be tilted forward. As @pais alto mentioned above, the hips need to be centered over the skis. But lifting the heel still doesn’t solve the problem above.
 

Scruffy

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Why is that? I mean I can balance on my toes with Alpine boots. I can drop down into a simulated teleturn with weight on both feet. Still not seeing what the flexing the toes do for you.

Try squashing something tough to squash, let's say you want to squash an orange with your bare feet. Would you use the ball of your foot, or your toes up on edge?
 

pais alto

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Why is that? I mean I can balance on my toes with Alpine boots. I can drop down into a simulated teleturn with weight on both feet. Still not seeing what the flexing the toes do for you.
theres much more to the back foot in a tele turn than just lifting the heel - the ski needs to be steered and have significant pressure on the edge. That can’t be done effectively on tiptoe.

You can drag the back ski along on hardpack without weighting it or edge pressure, but that’s fake-a-marking, and it’ll eat your lunch in unpacked snow or moguls.
 

markojp

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Why is that? I mean I can balance on my toes with Alpine boots. I can drop down into a simulated teleturn with weight on both feet. Still not seeing what the flexing the toes do for you.
You're not flexing your toes, you're keeping the ball of the rear foot in the ski to pressure, tip, steer it correctly. Imagine how hard it is to walk or dance on point... it'd be a bear to try to ski that way, which is what you're wondering if it's possible to do.
 

Paul Lutes

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On the other hand, you could always try the tele stance with locked heels - think of the tip pressure!! We'll just ignore the ruptured Achilles tendon for now. I suppose you get get away with this if you unbuckled the tops of your fixed heel boots ...... but I'm just being silly.
The biggest challenge for many alpiners converting to free heel is the reduced interface between boot sole and ski; forcing that interface to shrink all the way to just front toe edge (extreme version of the dreaded tippy toe in 75 mm boots) would induce hilarity but it would be short lived.
I'm doubtful that the current free heel bindings would even function properly with a fixed heel boot.
 
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Wendy

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I had an interesting experience this week. I went to Killington with some girlfriends for 2 days of skiing. I brought only my alpine gear because this was a social trip and I wanted to ski with my friends. Well. The first day out, I realized I wasn’t having that much fun (fun company aside). As we took our runs, I mentally contrasted the alpine turn with the tele turn and how those two moves felt different to me. The alpine turns make my left hip feel weird. It’s like I can’t find enough range of motion to work out a kink or something, and then that translates to IT band irritation later on. And the fixed heel prevents me from stretching my achilles’ tendon and for some reason that ends up making me feel out of sorts. It was like my body was rebelling.

So, I ended up renting tele gear from Base Camp Outfitters in Killington. LOL. It drove me a bit nutty to spend the $ on rental gear that I had and foolishly left at home, but oh well. I rented the same boots I have - Scarpa TX Pros - albeit not dialed in like mine, but good enough, and some Atomic Vantage skis with Rottafella Freedom bindings. So hey, I get to use a different NTN binding.

Immediate relief. I spent the first part of the morning on the magic carpet at Snowshed, a nice learning area that was blissfully quiet. I worked on drills to increase the pressure on my inside ski and after a bit, was making turns down that little slope. I then went to the chairlift. On the green run at Snowshed, I noticed how the increase in slope brought out my deficiencies, which was good. I had some decent turns and some crap ones,, and I alternated between tele and alpine turns to give myself a rest.

Now the main issue appears to be getting enough spread between my feet (pics taken by a friend showed that I didn’t have my front foot far enough forward/rear foot far enough back), and I had some difficulty pressing into the boot tongue on that front foot. Facing downhill and putting my hands forward in that direction helped some. But I need a lot more time on snow to figure it out. It’s easy to get into the tele “stance” at a standstill, pressing into the boot cuff, but balancing in motion is more difficult.

Nevertheless, and this is the key part: I had a ton of fun. Even when I felt I was flailing around a bit, it was FUN. I could move around and stretch out the bits that needed stretching. I could skate uphill easily. Despite starting to feel fatigue in the early afternoon, I didn’t want to quit. So I headed back over to the magic carpet to take it easier.

It ended up being a great day. I even got to see @Tony S in the Snowshed lodge. ogsmile

My snowboarding friend who went on that trip with me told me, “When I first was learning to board, I’d switch back and forth between that and skiing so I could ski with my friends. Then I realized I’d never learn to board if I didn‘t focus on it. So I spent 2 seasons on beginner terrain and working my way up.” Her advice was for me to try the same. So that’s what I’ll do. I don’t mind being relegated to learning terrain to be able to do something that already feels like a lot of fun.
 

James

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Did you pick a pair of skis?
I fear you are way over thinking this. It’s tele. Applying alpine ski choice obsession isn’t for tele. People usually get into it by mounting up old skis, even race skis. If the ski ain’t broke, mount it tele. If it is broke, it’ll probably work too.

Don’t steam roll over the dirt bag element too much, that’s where the good karma is.
 
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Wendy

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Did you pick a pair of skis?
I fear you are way over thinking this. It’s tele. Applying alpine ski choice obsession isn’t for tele. People usually get into it by mounting up old skis, even race skis. If the ski ain’t broke, mount it tele. If it is broke, it’ll probably work too.

Don’t steam roll over the dirt bag element too much, that’s where the good karma is.
Yeah, I chose skis awhile back. I didn‘t obsess over it. I’m not overthinking! When I realized I wanted to go shorter and didn’t have anything here like that to mount, I chose a pair of new old-stock Blizzard Black Pearl 82’s. I had skied them in a demo and found them fun and easy going and I didn’t pay much.
 
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