I love how much discussion was inadvertently prompted by my comments about relating strongly to skiers who hit a plateau through being unable to carve!
Had a busy weekend of skiing in fact, so replying to some things now:
(apologies for some of this inevitably being incoherent, I am quite tired)
@LiquidFeet with regards to doing outside-ski turns, lifting the inside ski - I'm used to just leaving the tip on the snow so I tried lifting up the entire ski as you suggested. Should this be a
lot harder to do? I found it really difficult to physically keep that tip off the snow, I felt like I had to sort of tuck that inside leg right up and
forward (bend it at the hip a lot more to lift the entire leg up, and not have my knee too bent because that forces the tip down) because otherwise the tip brushes against the snow more. It felt pretty odd so I figured I'd just ask about what I'm meant to feel there! I am almost certainly doing something quite basic wrong there, or it's normal and I'm just not used to it!
Anyway I always like trying new things, so it was for sure good to break out of my usual way of doing outside-ski turns.
The more I learn about skiing, the more I realise that everything starts back earlier than expected. Turn initiation preventing me from doing carved turns...? Yeah, probably, haha. Even though my turn initiation is definitely the strongest part of my turn (and the turn completion has always been the weakest! my nzsia level 1 examiner told me that my turn initiation was comfortably above passing standard but my turn completion was initially
below passing standard, hah) I wouldn't be surprised that it has a part to play in the turn completion being bad. Like when I discovered last season that (at the time) my turn initiation was better on one side, because my turn
completion was better on the other side, and that affected how I could start my next turn. It all flows together eh?
Funnily enough I got told to do railroad tracks last weekend. My instructor is currently off work while recovering from an injury, but I ran into them on the lift and they spent 30 seconds demonstrating them for me, for something to work on before I can actually have another lesson. So I've been practicing that. Today I practiced doing giant turns on mellow terrain and trying not to rotate the ski, but just let it follow the edge. I'm positive that I was doing turns that were a
lot bigger than the stated radius of my ski, but hopefully it's a step in the right direction anyway!
I wasn't really flattening my skis between the turns though, because the speed and turn size was such that I was in danger of exceeding the edge of the run, hah. So I was moving pretty quickly from edge to edge. I need to "complete" the turns a little less to have space to roll slower from edge to edge I think.
This was really interesting. My skis are certainly not carving at all even in the top part of the turn, but they're at least following a better line before I completely lose it partway through the turn, hah. It's because of my own technique, but even while aware that I'm not doing carved turns, on very hardpack cord (like we actually had at 8am this morning at the skifield) I get a lot of vibration and complete loss of grip at the bottom of each turn, I really notice the point at which I completely lose grip because the strong vibration is very hard on my shins!! Every once in a blue moon I manage to keep grip all the way around and it feels pretty sweet. I imagine what I'm doing is pivoting the skis midway through the turn which means that they suddenly have a lot of force applied to them - more than they can hold, without building up to it through the turn.
Anyway, my experiences really track with what you're saying. I need to watch some more videos of people doing nice carved turns, and pay attention to what they're doing at the ends of their turns.
Aside from that, sounds like railroad tracks etc are still the way to go, for practicing that tipping movement. I tend to do big movements with my knees and hips while skiing so only really thinking about my ankles while doing the railroad tracks feels very odd. I keep feeling like I need to pull myself forward too, like I'm falling back. I think I'm really used to bringing my ski around in front of me, so I'm always braking downhill.
Honestly!! 99 out of 100 times!
Also, I really liked this. I'd love to see something similar from someone starting from even further back though! Their "starting point" is further ahead than where I currently am