by Harald » Thu Jan 19, 2006 3:01 pm
I managed to get a look at our friend who posted the video. I will be blunt and to the point, if you can?t take it, go back to Epic, they love this stuff over there.
This is immature skiing. It is using the side cut, but that?s as far as it goes. Some concerted coaching needs to happen for this skier to become a successful racer. This is skiing like the PSIA boys love, wide stance, parking on the side cut, up unweighting, coming square to the skis before or at the falline, all the stuff that coaches don?t see (and if they see it, they like it) the stuff that makes racers slow and makes them frustrated and they don?t know why..
This skiing reminds me of a bad skiing version of Pranger. By the way Rusty, where is your favorite poster boy these days, not in the running!!!! He?s probably skiing with his feet too close together.
I coach Diana and I can tell you on any day, she can beat the daylights out of this skiing. Not that that?s a comparison anyone needs to know, but I?ll tell you why Diana skis differently than this skier.
She is the antithesis of these movements. The skiing in the video is lazy, has little technical discipline. It?s not the Bode type of discipline omission, its just immature movements. I have no idea how old or how long this skier has been skiing, but it looks like a high school level type of skier, who skis with a self learned technique.
The upper and lower body are not supporting pressure building. The turn arc is not reduced or shortened by pressuring the ski, the side cut is grinding into the snow doing all the turning, this is OK for a recreational skier, but for a racer this won?t hold up. This is evident because the upper body leans away from where pressure needs to develop. When the upper body leans away, the turn has to have a hard hit at the finish, because the pressure was not loaded higher in the arc.
There is little preparation in the High C phase of the turn. The upper body comes square much too early, which is also a pressure robber. The square upper, to lower body position reduces hip angle, this is demonstrated by where the inside leg resides. You see the inside leg is not flexed under the hips, it is at the same angle as the out side ski, this tells me there is reduced pressure on the outside ski.
I can verify that by the release, as it is an up movement release, which means the rebound to send the skier to the next turn with a float, did not happen and will not happen. Diana has conquered all of these faults; in fact she never developed them, as she was on a completely different track then this skier. There are plenty of good examples of skiing out there. Use Darren, he?s the PMTS poster kid, as is Rocca. The Epic posts about Rocca?s skiing are hilarious; they have no clue about what he?s doing. Some call it rotary movements. Reminds me of the joke about how many PSIA guys does it take to screw in a light bulb.
Darren is a great model why not copy him? He used to come to Alaska to ski with me when he was a junior. His Dad used to bring him up to see how our junior racers were doing it, as we had two kids from our small program go to the World Junior Championships in one year out of the whole country. Mr. Rahlves wanted Darren to see how our guys were skiing and what we were doing.
A program for this skier, first his feet are too far apart, that?s part of the reason the CM is sitting on or over the inside leg rather than inside the turn, and why he has to extend to get out of the turn. If he could ski without weighting his inside ski it would really help develop balance. This skier has yet to make a turn that demonstrates the use of balance, that I?ve seen. It would be a building process to undo and rebuild a real project. By the sounds of his mouthing off on Epic, I doubt he has the commitment or the industry to want go through the steps to do it right, He thinks he?s already there and got the goods. He never really wanted to know what he should do to change; he just wanted to be told he was a great skier. Sorry, we have standards here and we don?t BS anyone.
"Maximum Skiing information, Minimum BS