Videos of short turns and one ski jump

[Bruno Schull]

Hi folks,

Last week I posted some videos of my wife and I skiing off-piste in a few inches of powder. I asked for some feedback about our technique, and the comments were really interesting and helpful (link to older thread: https://www.skitalk.com/threads/videos-off-piste-skiing-to-critique.22690/). In those video, I was skiing with touring boots, touring bindings, and 95 mm touring skis, not super-light, but touring gear. I thought it might be fun to compare those videos to some videos on piste.

Here are some videos of me making short (for me!) turns on piste, with slightly different radius and speed. I'm using downhill boots, bindings, and skis (Stockli Laser SLs...great skis!). These are sort of "slaved" turns. I can't carve turns at such short radius, but I am curious about how a slarved short turn of this kind could become a short carved turn with more skill.

What are my goals? One of the things I took from the last thread was the importance of fundamentals, so that's what I'd like to focus on. Basic things like fore-aft balance, upper and lower body movements, arm position, pole use (or misuse!). I don't have a specific goal in mind, for example, skiing bumps, or anything like that. I just want to get the basics in place, so that I can apply them whatever and however I'm skiing, slow, fast, small turns, big turns, carving, on piste, off piste.

Here, I was concentrating on not inclining too much, keeping my upper body facing down the slope, separating my upper body from my lower body, angulating a little, and trying to ski more with my legs and feet, which are all things I took away from the last thread. It felt OK, but I'm sure there's lots I can improve.

One of the things I constantly struggle with is keeping my weight forward to maintain consistent pressure on my skis. I've tried many things over the years, including focusing on pressing my shins onto the boots, flexing my ankles, bending my knees, shifting my hips forward, pulling my skis back, keeping my arms up, and so on. The most effective so far seems to be focusing on shifting my hips forward and/or pulling my skis back under me at the top of each run, but it's hard to keep this consistently, and whenever I get a little off balance/out of control I find myself in the backseat. In one portion of the video that I trimmed, I could clearly see myself in the backseat: lower legs coming up off the skis at 90 degrees, knees bent and femurs pointing up and back, upper body aligned vertically over my hips, most of my weight on the tails of the skis. Like I said, it's something I constantly struggle with, although there might be points in the videos where I'm in a better place.

In any case, I hope this is an interesting comparison to the off-piste videos.

(For those who might wonder, I'm from the US, but I had the great luck to marry a Spanish/Swiss woman, so we live in Switzerland. These videos were all shot in Grindelwald, in the Bernese Oberland, where we go skiing often. This probably doesn't make any difference, but I'm not a doctor, dentist, lawyer, or finance guy with lots of disposable income...far from it...I'm a high school science teacher. My 11 year old daughter just passed the "Black league" in the Swiss ski school, so she's a really good skier. Much better than my wife and I--I'm really proud of her! Below is a shot of my daughter taking a small jump--that's what it's all about!!! . If anybody is considering a trip to Switzerland or France to ski, let me know, and I might be able to help with planning).

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or ideas--I really appreciate it.




My daughter after completing the black league!

 

[Bruno Schull]

No ideas about these videos?

 

[Ogg]

To my untrained eye you are too far aft and pushing with your tails. I learned a long time ago and still have a somewhat old school style(drive the tips, reaching pole plant, legs too close together etc) so take it FWIW but concentrating on my poll plants helped me a lot with timing and fore/aft balance. It looks like you dropped your hand to your side a couple of times which, in my experience will make you too far aft and behind in the timing for the next turn. This is particularly important when skiing moguls.

 

[Bruno Schull]

Thanks Ogg--that's really useful. I have a very bad habit of dragging my (outside) pole behind on steeps when I feel a little out of control, as if I could slow down a little, however futile that is. I don't do that when skiing casually/comfortably, but when I'm at the limit the habit comes out. I think the fact that I drop my hands ocasioanlly is part of this--it's a hard habit to break. I've been trying to start every run thinking about my hands and poles. And the need/wish to get more forward has been with me since I started skiing It will be a lifelong preoccupation, I suspect.

 

[Mike King]

Bruno, you are effectively controlling your speed down the hill in these turns. The way that you are controlling your speed, however, is by pushing the skis to create edge that eventually deflects the skis. It is also a braking movement. The edges reach their highest angle in the finish of your turns. And you are rotating your upper body. Because of the rotation of your upper body, the skis start to turn in the shaping phase of the turn, but they stall there until the deflection from the skis being pushed on edge happens in the finish of the turn.

What would be more ideal would be to see the skis rotating at a similar rate through all three phases of the turn. The edges should build to their highest angle at the apex of the turn, then start to diminish through the end of the turn. So what you should see from your skis is that they are engaged and taking you somewhere -- there should be a push coming from the shaping phase of the turn that takes you across the hill. This will allow you to control your speed through the line you take rather than by braking your speed by displacing the ski across the path of travel.

What I'd ask you to do is to explore starting your turns by tipping your feet and lower leg. You should feel the ski engaged with an early edge where the ski is moving along its length in the snow rather than smearing across it. Try to go through the edge change without pivoting the ski -- see if you can go from edge to edge and have no pivot.

A drill that may help is to skate. Roll onto the big toe edge by rolling the knee inside and down toward the snow. Don't push off of that edge until the edge has been established and the ski is moving along the length of that edge. Land on the little toe edge of the other ski, then roll that lower leg over onto the big toe edge -- in and down toward the snow.

When you have a good skating action, try some medium radius turns on green terrain with the skating action. That is, first skate, then take the skating action into turns. This should give you the feeling of establishing that edge high and early in the turn.

You might then practice some J turns. Start with your skis oriented in a moderately steep traverse -- say at a 45 degree angle to the fall line. Roll the knees into the hill and ride the carve until the skis are actually pointing up the hill. The objective should be to leave two pencil lines through all of the turn.

Once you have that, try combining the skating to turn with the feeling you had in the finish with the J turns. This should start to get you to feel creating a turn through use of the edge to redirect you rather than pushing the skis to deflect and redirect you.

As the slope steepens, we still want the ski to take us someplace. So search for the feeling of the ski that you had in the finish of the turn. If you need to introduce more speed control, it's ok to shape the turn (let the tails take a wider path than the tips) by rotating the skis, but do it after the clean edge change and try to keep the ski engaged in the finish of the turn.

Mike

 

[Delicious]

My initial thought was that this whole project should be taking place on a much less steep run. Terrain of ZERO CONSEQUENCE.

 

[Corgski]

One of the things I constantly struggle with is keeping my weight forward to maintain consistent pressure on my skis. I've tried many things over the years, including focusing on pressing my shins onto the boots, flexing my ankles, bending my knees, shifting my hips forward, pulling my skis back, keeping my arms up, and so on. The most effective so far seems to be focusing on shifting my hips forward and/or pulling my skis back under me at the top of each run, but it's hard to keep this consistently, and whenever I get a little off balance/out of control I find myself in the backseat. In one portion of the video that I trimmed, I could clearly see myself in the backseat: lower legs coming up off the skis at 90 degrees, knees bent and femurs pointing up and back, upper body aligned vertically over my hips, most of my weight on the tails of the skis. Like I said, it's something I constantly struggle with, although there might be points in the videos where I'm in a better place.

The mental approach that works for me is to think of lowering myself onto and resting on the boot cuffs. Then add foot pullback as needed to keep yourself there. Same mindset when tired and waiting in the lift line, lower yourself into and rest on the cuffs, and let the rest of your body take the most relaxed possible position from there. For me this is what I call my reference stance. From there, your basic adjustments are pulling feet back to keep yourself on the cuffs, hinging forward at the waist and moving hips back. While coasting on a a flattish section, starting form the relaxed resting stance, play with those basics and see how it feels and your skis respond. The idea is to develop your fore-aft balance so that you are relaxed, forward, resting on the cuffs and however upright you want to be for the skiing you are doing at that moment.

Practice pivot slips, they really do not work if your fore aft balance is wrong. I do try to limit rotational movements in my skiing but really like doing them early in the season when I am trying to remember how to ski again. Also, lose the poles, hands clasped behind back for a few runs at least. Really forces you to focus on your feet and reduces unnecessary upper body movement. And even if it doesn't achieve that, think how easy skiing will feel once you allow yourself to use your hands again . And yes that is a real drill, I think @Swede posted that one once, become one of my favorites.

And ditto on the skating.

 

[Mike King]

Yes, work on your fore/aft balance as well and pivot slips are a great diagnostic tool to see where your balance actually is. If you are drifting forward, then the pressure is on the front of the ski, and if backward then your are aft.

I'd caution, though, about settling onto the cuff of the boot. As one of my mentors said: "stand on your bones, not your equipment." You should feel the front of the boot at (almost) all times, but crushing the front of the boot will replace one issue (being aft) with another (being too far forward).

 

[pchewn]

Try to do a more active pole plant. Your left hand almost does a good pole plant. Your right hand never does. Experiment with timing of the pole plant and position (towards tips, towards tail). I think you'll find a more forward active pole plant will help you get more centered on your skis.


EDIT: I see that @Ogg already mentioned this. Great minds think alike.

 

[Seldomski]

I can't carve turns at such short radius, but I am curious about how a slarved short turn of this kind could become a short carved turn with more skill.

Agree with @Mike King - he's the trained instructor. I am not. Other words below that describe the same thing he is seeing:

It looks like you are doing more of a "Z" turn shape, closer to linked hockey stops than a carve turn. You are rushing the top of the turn, which does not allow the ski to carve. The skis are being pivoted at the start of the next turn, which is out of the direction of travel of the ski. The edge does not have an opportunity to bite into the snow at the top of the new turn.

In the other off-piste video, it looked like you were rushing the start of the turn as well. There was some upper body stuff going on in those videos to pivot the skis at the start of the new turn. So it is the same 'problem' in both videos.

A drill that helps/helped me with 'patient turn initiation':


Note that skiing like the video all the time is not good - it's very static, very little knee flexion.

 

[Corgski]

I'd caution, though, about settling onto the cuff of the boot. As one of my mentors said: "stand on your bones, not your equipment." You should feel the front of the boot at (almost) all times, but crushing the front of the boot will replace one issue (being aft) with another (being too far forward).

I was wondering if what I wrote would come out wrongly. For clarification, my explanation was not meant to be a way to ski, it was intended as an exercise to explore a range of positions and movements and to feel what the effect is. There are multiple ways to be too far forward and too far back and I found it useful to spend time to really feel that. Basically attempting to advance from skiing with a particular stance, to skiing with whatever stance you want as long as you can own it. Analogous to skiing with hands behind back, part of the benefit is that it can increase one's awareness of what hand movements actually do.

 

[Bruno Schull]

Hey folks--Thanks for all your thoughts. Really helpful.

I should say that, while I can't carve short turns, I very much enjoy carving medium and long turns. That is, I can roll a ski onto edge, and follow the edge and the natural curve of the ski and the turn. J turns are fun--I was experimenting with this the other day, and I found it amazing how far back up the slope you can come! If I'm on my carving skis, and I choose wide pistes that are blue or blue-to-red runs, I can spent most of my time on edge carving, with only short transitions at the tops and bottoms near the lifts bases flat. I also have had lots of fun on long, meandering green runs, sliding along as slow speed, doing very gradual and gentle back and forth edge to edge gliding...sort of running on one ski a little, and then onto the other ski.

What I can not do easily is translate that kind of carving--medium and long turns on wide slopes, or slow gliding on gentle slopes, to shorter carved turns on steeper slopes. That's why I posted these shorter turns on steeper terrain--I think you can see many of my fundamental problems come out, like fore/aft balance, excess upper body movement/rotation, and Pole use (or misuse).

I'll keep at it--all ideas and feedback welcome.

 

[Chris V.]

Beg to differ with some of the responders. Your tails are washing out at the ends of your turns. This is a product of being too far forward at that phase of the turn, not too far aft. It's great to get forward, but you want to be moving forward toward something as you start the new turn, rather than staying statically forward all the time. My suggestion on what to work on first is the same as I linked to here:

https://www.skitalk.com/threads/ma-request-please-feb-2021.22826/post-587206

If you practice flexion and extension while striving to keep the entire soles of your feet in contact with the footbeds, and your shins in light contact with the tongues, and just can't do it after diligent efforts, you very likely have an alignment issue--in which case, see an expert by all means. You shouldn't have to fight to move forward.

 

[freeskier1961]

appear to be slightly in the backseat, indicated by hand position and flat back.