My week at winter camp

[skimore]

The February Blue/Dark Blue camp at Sol Vista was FANTASTIC! It was fun, intense, challenging, and rewarding. This was my second camp. I attended the Super Blue camp at A-Basin a year ago. That was a wonderful experience and this was even better because I feel as though I filled in the blanks that were still remaining and now understand how to do some of the pieces that were missing in my PMTS technique.

I can’t say enough about how professional, well planned and executed the camps are. The instructors are excellent, the best I have ever had. The shop staff is great and the alignment and boot fitting services are almost worth the trip in themselves. My friend, who attended camp with me, bought a new pair of boots, had some minor adjustments made and cants added, and was thrilled with the opportunity of being able to have the necessary changes made during the week we were there.

Harald was our coach for the first three days. Needless to say, he really knows what he’s talking about and he walks the talk. It was a pleasure just to watch him ski when he demonstrated the exercises he wanted us to do or what a bullet proof short turn should look like. Harald explains what he wants you to do, why it doesn’t work when it doesn’t and how to do it correctly – all in great detail. When the coaches were switched we drew Diana for the last two days. She is also a beautiful skier and an equally great instructor, with a great sense of humor. She really tailors the lesson to each student so that it is a combination of a group lesson with each of the students concentrating on the areas they need to improve on.

My only regret after the first camp was that I hadn’t made any notes and after a while it all became kind of a blur in my mind. It isn’t that I didn’t learn and improve, but rather that I thought that I probably could have improved more after I returned home if I had some reminders. Granted, I have the books and later got the videos and they are very helpful, but what the camp lessons give you is a much more detailed and personal approach to learning. There is just so much information covered that it is hard to remember it all.

So this time around I made notes at the end each day, even though I was often quite tired and would have preferred going to sleep instead. And looking back at them, less than two weeks later, I am very glad that I did. I’m going to follow up this post with the notes from each day in case they may be helpful to others. I think it is interesting to see how the exercises were used to build on the skills so that by the end of the week we had all made great improvements in our skiing.

Thanks so much Harald and Diana!!!

[skimore]

The following are my notes from each day. They are mostly bullet points with some commentary. Anything that doesn’t sound right is because I didn’t get it right.

Harb Blue/Dark Blue Training Camp

Day 1 - Monday, February 8 – 9,000 vertical feet (this is just the amount of vertical we skied each day, including lessons and afternoon practice)

We started with a ski off – actually we skied twice – and were divided into two groups. Our group of six has Harald as our Coach and includes an Australian, a Canadian, and skiers from North Carolina, California, Washington, and Colorado

Harald began by asking each of us what our goals are for the class. They were fairly aligned with most of us wanting to improve short turns and bump skiing, among other things.

We did the following drills:

• Traverse run on big toe edge with other leg lifted. Try to be on edge and make a straight line
• Traverse run on little toe edge with other leg lifted. Try to be on edge and make a straight line

In order to do this, begin with hips forward (pull feet back) and hold arms forward and out to side. Upper body fairly erect

This was quite difficult to do, especially to actually be on edge. We repeated it several times.

• Next we attempted to do garlands where we made a turn, then released to flat and then initiated another turn in the same direction by tipping to the little toe edge. Pretty much everyone had problems with this. We weren’t tipping enough on the LTE.

Harald showed us that you can really tip your LTE a lot if you flex more and also showed how to loosen up and allow the foot and knee to move and tip.

• We did several traverses where we tipped LTE to make one big uphill turn

• We did traverses where we first tipped strongly to LTE and then moved BTE to the same angle. This helped with initiating with the LTE and also feeling the tipping angles

• Garlands – traverse to a turn, flatten feet and then tip again to restart the turn in the same direction

• Harald explained that the feet are very sensitive and you can learn to feel how much each foot is tipped. We did an exercise where we closed out eyes and tipped and said how much each foot was tipped. (This was news to me. Coming from years of uncomfortable ski boots I always figured that if you don’t feel your feet, that’s a good thing!)

• Ski straight down a very mild slope and feel the feet tipping about 10 degrees on edge and them switching to the other direction and tipping each foot, concentrating on how the feet feel during tipping.

Turning, in a nutshell, is getting off your big toe edge.

• Harald explained counterbalancing and a little bit about counteracting. He said that if you drag your poles, especially the inside or uphill pole, then you get several benefits: no up movement, automatic counterbalancing without much effort, and quieter upper body. We did several turn drills with pole dragging. Poles should be out to side and forward of ski boots.

• Railroad turns. The goal is to leave two continuous tracks. We did several runs where we followed Harald’s turns, each of us one after the other.

Other stuff: he pointed out how if you don’t keep tipping on the little toe side then your uphill ski flattens and tends to turn into the downhill ski in a small wedge.

Initiating a turn: when you flex the stance ski it’s like kicking a leg out from a table and you then collapse across the hill and into the next turn.

Harald videotaped us twice, both times without telling us, which was probably a good thing, though tomorrow we’ll probably know when he’s going to pull that trick. After lunch we watched the videos.

He pointed out one good thing in my positioning as I came toward the camera – hips and upper body were all aligned correctly.

Things I need to work on:

Keep tipping the LTE all the way through the turn.
Let the stance leg get long by tipping more aggressively on the big toe edge once the turn is in progress.
Begin tipping on the BTE earlier and do it more aggressively.

[skimore]

Day 2 - Tuesday, February 09 – 7,000 vertical feet

• We started by doing some warm-up stretches at the top of the run

• Then Harald asked us to make short radius turns. He said that it was obvious from my attempt why I have trouble in the bumps. It is because I am letting my inside foot lead at the end of the turns and that puts me behind in being able to initiate the next turn, or sets me up for doing a wedge at the start of the turn, all of which is not helpful in the bumps.

• The solution to the above problem is to “finish the turns”, which means pulling the LTE foot in close to the stance foot and continuing to tip it on the LTE.

• At the top of the next run, Harald demonstrated the two footed release.

• He also showed us how to position our poles. The outside pole tip is pointing down the hill out from the heel of the binding. The palm of the hand faces forward, toward the tips of the skis and the elbow points straight down. The inside pole tip points up the hill just behind the tip of the ski. The palm faces down so that the knuckles are up. After a turn the position of the poles is correctly changed to the reverse just by the counteracting movement of the upper body. You just need to touch your pole to plant it. No other arm movement is necessary, which allows for a very quiet upper body.

• We tried the two footed release just once or twice with not great success.

• Then Harald said that we needed to do something to get more comfortable with moving while the skis are flat. We did an exercise that we called “sashaying”. You started in an edged traverse, tipping the LTE so that you turn uphill. Then you flatten your skis, which causes you to start sliding backwards. Once you have picked up a little speed backwards you keep your skis flat and let your skis turn back around forward and then tip to the LTE into an arc in the other direction and then repeat. This exercise was a lot of fun once I got the hang of it.

• Harald explained counteracting and how the body moves from one turn to the next across the fall line.

• We practiced changing from one set of edges to the opposite edges while standing in place across the fall line. You need to leave your upper body alone at first. First move your stance leg to the LTE, followed by your free foot to the big toe edge, THEN counterbalance with the upper body. To do this well you need to fully commit to the edge change. When used in turns this movement allows you to get on your new edges before crossing the fall line (get upside down in the turn), which results in a very powerful turn.

• We did exercises where we started from different angles and finally from a straight flat run and then tipped to an arc. This is one of the first exercises on the Tipping DVD.

• One thing I need to remember is to loosen up the lower body, hips down, and allow it to move independently of the upper body.

• I got quite overwhelmed at one point and wasn’t really doing anything right. Then Harald mentioned that “in order to turn right, move the right foot (to the LTE) and in order to turn left, move the left foot”. That was my epiphany of the day. I dropped all the other stuff and just focused on that and IT WORKED!

• Things to work on:
o “Finish” turns by continuing LTE tipping and pulling free foot in close to stance foot and making sure free foot is not forward of stance foot.
o Do a little more countering on right turns
o Loosen hips to allow for more tipping
o Tip more strongly on the big toe edge.
o Eliminate early flexing and “sitting down”. Flex should be timed with beginning of new LTE tipping – start tip then flex.

[skimore]

Day 3 – Wednesday, February 10 – 9,000 vertical feet

• We started with short radius turns for a warm up. Everyone had reverted somewhat. Harald’s point was that we should start thinking about what we want to concentrate on right at the beginning of the first run of the day. I needed to remember to “finish” my turns. I was allowing the free ski to move ahead of the stance ski.

• We did some more short radius turns. Then Harald talked about what you need to do to get a long extended stance leg. He said to flex the inside leg until the thigh was almost at a 90 degree angle to your lower leg. Then turn yourself to look towards the stance leg, moving your butt to point up the hill. (We started from a cross-hill position with the skis.) Voila! Your lower, stance leg straightens out. That was a revelation to me as I hadn’t been able to figure out how that position is attained. We practiced with some bigger radius turns to try that out.

• We worked on tipping to bigger angles. I also tried to make the transition faster to tighten up the turns. I started to feel the bigger angles and also more comfort on the new LTE ski. I tried to complete the change to new edges before the ski started to turn into the fall line. Harald said my left turns were good, but right turns not getting the same edges and tried a 1 degree change on my left boot. It did the trick.

• We moved to a different chairlift that has some steeper runs, groomed blacks. They looked as though they hadn’t been skied much because the corduroy was untracked.

• We started with two footed release turns. Our goal was to stay within about a 10 foot wide corridor and make controlled turns. Counteracting was very important, also getting on the new edges early.

• Harald pointed out that completing your turns and maintaining countering enables you to be “right and ready” before beginning your next turn. The point is to take a moment before you launch into your next turn and make sure that you are correctly aligned – balanced fore/aft, counter-balanced and countered. Though it doesn’t seem that way, there really is a moment available when you can do it. That helped a lot. I focused on being right and ready and felt like I had more control.

• Next run Harald wanted us to transfer our weight to the LTE edge of our uphill ski at the start of each turn. This is a one footed release. It was quite discombobulating to most of us on the first attempt. The advantage of it is that it prevents any early wedging of the uphill ski at the start of a turn. After a few tries it started to feel more natural.

• We did some more railroad tracks at the flatter bottom of the hill. We formed a line and skied right behind each other in Harald’s tracks. That exercise is a lot of fun.

• We did some quick edge changes from a flat ski heading straight ahead on a mild slope. The idea was to get the skis quickly on edge, while always starting by edging the LTE. Complete the turn after edging.

• Then Harald demonstrated the Robo drill. It involves moving on to each edge distinctly – one = right LTE, two = left BTE, three = left LTE, four = right BTE. Sounds easy. Looks easy when Harald does it. Ain’t easy. Harald said we will achieve another level in our skiing when we can do this.

• Looking at video revealed that I need to concentrate a little more on countering and arm position so that pole planting doesn’t throw everything else off.

• Harald explained how to approach bump skiing. Begin the flex and release on the uphill side of the bump, turn at the top of the bump and then extend down the back. Repeat. Avoid skiing the troughs.

[skimore]

Day 4 – Thursday, February 11 – 13,000 vertical feet

Diana is our coach for the next two days.

• At the start my turns were skidding somewhat toward bottom of arc – due to small up movement, especially on right turns

• Also, I was allowing free foot to move ahead of stance foot

• Short radius turns – need to be tipping – keep it continuous. Tip harder right at the end of the arc to create a tighter turn and produce momentum to move you easily into the next turn

• Outside pole drag exercise – helps increase counterbalance. Tap uphill pole on the ground at the point of transition into the next turn. Continue to drag it through the turn.

• Our group’s racer requested some long leg/short leg exercises and they looked like so much fun we all joined in:
o Separate skis parallel and wide apart. Start aiming about 45 degrees down the fall line. Tip LTE strongly, flexing the leg as much as possible and allow stance leg to be long. Try to make LTE boot buckles scrap the snow. Turn in an arc finishing up the hill.
o Start as above, but just before arcing uphill, as pressure begins to mount under the stance leg, flex the stance leg so that it is flexed the same amount as the uphill leg. Tip the skis leading with the LTE and turn, allowing stance leg to be long in the opposite direction. Fly down the hill with total control (almost). What a blast!

[skimore]

Day 5 - Friday, February 12 – 11,500 vertical feet

• We started with warm-ups and I was letting my uphill foot move ahead of my stance foot again. Next run I concentrated on pulling that foot back, but Diana said that I wasn’t tipp-ing my little toe edge through the end of the turn. I stopped at some point. So she introduced the Bonanza exercise. That involves holding on to the old LTE while starting to tip to the new LTE. The result is that for a minute you are on both LTE’s, causing a bowlegged look. (Performed while humming theme song from old TV western Bonaza.)

• Edge change garlands. Traverse slope with skis well edged. Switch to the opposite edges, making sure to counter balance. After you begin turning switch back to the original edges. Repeat across the slope. This is a really good exercise to get the feel of being upside down in high C.

• My request for today was to get my pole plant back before leaving camp. We had been dragging poles all week to remove any traces of the dreaded up movement from our turn initiation.

• Pole plant drill. Poles are held at the sides with elbow pointed down. Look at the top of the pole handle like it is the top of an ice cream cone. Sight down the pole. When skiing, first change edges then switch focus to the other ski pole, sighting down the pole. At first we tried to switch focus to the new pole before we were in the fall line. Later we tried to move that even earlier, even while still looking uphill if possible.

• Add pole plant, a tap, to the above. Right after the tap, switch edges again.

• As always, we finished up with a final video review at lunch and discussion about what we need to continue to work on. Diana discussed tip-ing, keeping the tip going throughout the turn. She said that rather than forcing it, the way to achieve it is to relax into the turn.

And that’s it. All that remains is to take all of this back to the hill and keep improving on it. What a great week, what a great class!

[oggy]

Wow, thank you for taking the time to put that together, skimore! Very informative, especially for those of us who haven't had the privilege of attending one of the camps.

[dbntina]

Skimore, thank you so much for posting all that. Fantastic! Great look into what can be expected at that camp! Thank you for putting all that information down.

David

[MonsterMan]

Bonanza exercise

??

If it looks like a pig, and smells like a pig, then it most likely IS a pig.

Don't try to hide it Hoss, you're a pig rider!



Great summary of the camp. Thanks a lot for doing that.

[skimore]

LOL!! Are you telling me Diana was trying to make a silk purse out of a pig's exercise?

[ibMED]

Skimore,
Thanks, a great summary. I can't help but be impressed that what you get at a PMTS camp is the same in information available in the forum. Basics rule!

[skimore]

I can't help but be impressed that what you get at a PMTS camp is the same in information available in the forum.

Tha't s definitely true, because of course they are basics. But you get the following bonuses:

* Immediate feedback to your skiing. You find out what you are doing right and wrong and try again right away to fix issues - and more feedback

* The interaction with fellow students who are working on similar exercises. You can see what they are doing and learn from them, too

* The interaction with the coaches. Ask all those questions you have when they come to mind.

* And one of the biggest in my opinion - you get to see the coaches skiing, up close and personal. It's like the difference between watching a movie and seeing a live play... or going to the Olympics or watching it on TV.