PSIA-Northwest Fall Seminar Report

[Icanski]

What Max says is bang on: it's not mix and match. I tried last season to take kids who had been wedgers and were struggling to get from the wedge into the "intermediate turn"= skidded turns. They had been tapping the inside foot and all that stuff with mixed results in that they learned how to tap a ski (usually with weight on it ) and when they were trying to then just free ski, NONE of that stuck, and they were stuck wedging.
If I took them for that hour and started PMTS with them, and they got going, at the end of the hour, some would go back to the wedge, and some would continue to move towards DP. It took more than one 1 hour class to get them moved over, and in the meantime, they struggled between two worlds.
So I only taught them DP when I got them on my own and knew I'd have them for several weeks (of 1 hour lessons). Also when I didn't have 2 kids on straight skis, and 2 snow bladers thrown in.
the ones where I would use the "eliminate the wedge" moves and then carry on with DP got results and were happy, and next week they paid more attention, because they were learning and (most importantly for them) they would be able to go for the coveted 'blue sticker' which got them off the bunny hill.
It's a bit like teaching someone from England to drive on the right side of the road, if they don't buy in completely: they end up going down the middle causing accidents.

Last season there was that quoting of figures and stats about how hardly anyone comes back for lessons, and as mentioned previously, the solution was to make the session more fun, or a "vibrant experience". Well, they may have a bouncy, happy instructor, trying to get them to do tap the foot exercises, and paddle the canoe, but they often have a hard time seeing HOW that will relate to skiing. They get stuck on trying to master that one exercise rather than using it to develop the skill to put into the turns. Granted, a good instructor would be coaching, helping and explaining how it helps, but that still leaves the person at the end having gone through a workout, but not stronger.
Ultimately, is sounds a lot like it's a "keep 'em coming back" philosophy to keep the ski school busy, rather than teaching them to ski well, so they keep coming back to the resort to ski because it's all been so positive. Rather than being frustrated, not learning to ski (which is what they really wanted) and going to a different place in search of the holy grail of technique. Hopefully, they won't get totally frustrated and leave the sport altogether. If they make progress and learn, like PMTS students, they will not only come back, but they'll keep taking lessons, and so will their friends who've been told about the place. THAT keeps the ski school, the resort and the sport "happy" with lots of enhanced experiences.
John Icanksi

[Ken]

I have the ethical dilemma of the choice between teaching PMTS movements as Ott describes for a two hour lesson, then the students may return for a lesson with another instructor who will teach things entirely differently and tell them that everything I showed the students is wrong (and is wrong according to the training of that instructor).

There is a possibility...PSIA has their stepping stones to advanced skiing, and that has some greatly neglected stepping stones including retraction turns...which are not defined. If I teach PMTS as Retraction Turn Stepping Stones, I might serve the student well.

Also, I'll be teaching a youth group for 8 weekly sessions. I'll have them rippin' the hill, PMTS style.

Another goofy thing they were talking about...
Some of the video showed skiers who were criticized for not flexing their ankles enough. The ankles must be flexed proportionately with the flex in the knees and the hips, they say. Some people, people with many years of teaching experience, suggested loosening the boots to allow more flex.

Hello........the purpose of ankle flex is not to flex the ankles. The purpose is to maintain fore & aft balance while flexing the knees and hips down in the latter third of the turn. Stiff boots aren't going to flex enough for this , so softer boots offering less control are a help for this balancing. These folks never consider the alternative of keeping that outside leg long during the turn, then flexing to release, allowing the hips to harmlessly drop aft when the skis are light, then pulling the feet back under the hips to regain fore & aft balance when the new outside leg is allowed to lengthen. It just works, we stay in balance, and we get the benefit of control from stiffer boots.

We also gain more benefits including much less strain on the knees and quads, but that's part of another topic...the new senior skier instructor certification where they expect senior skiers to ski with the same knee-killing movements taught to younger skiers.

[BigE]

ISome of the video showed skiers who were criticized for not flexing their ankles enough. The ankles must be flexed proportionately with the flex in the knees and the hips, they say. Some people, people with many years of teaching experience, suggested loosening the boots to allow more flex.

Ken, now lets be fair here.... I have not seen the video in question, but my guess is there was a lot of hands holding poles up in the armpits, and rigid ankles, butt sticking out and straight backs going on.

Hello........the purpose of ankle flex is not to flex the ankles. The purpose is to maintain fore & aft balance while flexing the knees and hips down in the latter third of the turn.

Most skiers could benefit from a softer boot to allow them to flex their ankles precisely to maintain balance at ANY point in the turn.

Stiff boots aren't going to flex enough for this , so softer boots offering less control are a help for this balancing.

"Less control" is relative. The newbie would say they have very little control in a WC plug, and far more in a boot that let's them flex. What is wrong with that?

These folks never consider the alternative of keeping that outside leg long during the turn, then flexing to release, allowing the hips to harmlessly drop aft when the skis are light, then pulling the feet back under the hips to regain fore & aft balance when the new outside leg is allowed to lengthen. It just works, we stay in balance, and we get the benefit of control from stiffer boots.

That is an excellent synopsis of a PMTS turn and release.

But that's a HUGE mouthful to swallow even if you have considered it: You've actually just said "These folks never consider PMTS movements."

No they don't. Regardless of what school of skiing you have, any movement takes time to learn. And a lot of time to learn to do well.

What traditional methods do is bring you to the top of the hill very quickly. You'll get down, and you will be "skiing", but not as well as you could with other ways. It matters what you want out of skiing.

People choose a path to learn skiing, some because it is shorter to expert skiing, others because it is shorter to riding "the big chair". There are those that really don't care too much about skiing technically well, they just enjoy going down the hill. That's the market many schools of skiing attempt to satisfy.

It is "right" if it matches your model of skiing.

[4Slide]

...

There is a possibility...PSIA has their stepping stones to advanced skiing, and that has some greatly neglected stepping stones including retraction turns...which are not defined. If I teach PMTS as Retraction Turn Stepping Stones, I might serve the student well...

Retraction turns or "suck ups" are another articulation of crossunder turns...the whole crossover versus crossunder, up versus down unweighting terminology has been discussed elsewhere on here better than I can do it, most recently in a thread where Harald was analyzing Ligety, I believe, in a GS montage where his hips clearly were "crossing over" in a pendulum but he equally clearly was flexing to release. While the mechanics of what you would be teaching would differ in many respects from the way retraction turns would often be defined, conceptually that approach may work.

[Max_501]

Most skiers could benefit from a softer boot to allow them to flex their ankles precisely to maintain balance at ANY point in the turn.

Most skiers are already in a soft boot and they still have issues. If soft boots made it significantly easier to learn to ski well then HH would be putting students in soft boots.

[BigE]

Max,
Most skiers don't ski to ski technically well; it is not their driving force.

That being said, don't forget that most skiers don't bother getting proper stance alignment either. We're talking sunday only skiers, if that much...

So, they don't get aligned and their boots are too stiff because the higher end boots look cool.

Softer boots can mitigate alignment problems, especially those caused by the excessive forward lean of their cool boots or the ramp/delta. Often they've overtightened the boot, it won't flex, and it does not mate with their own geometry anyway. Or it's overtightened and the foot won't slide all the way to the bottom -- result: no snow feel.

I see nothing wrong with giving new skiers a softer boot than experienced skiers. I see a whole lot wrong with giving stiff boots to less experienced skiers.

[Max_501]

I see nothing wrong with giving new skiers a softer boot than experienced skiers. I see a whole lot wrong with giving stiff boots to less experienced skiers.

Should a less experienced skier be on a less stiff boot than the expert? Sure. Should they be in a boot that would be described as SOFT? I'm not so sure about that.

[ginaliam]

No, No, No, foot forward in PMTS, Max is right, the inside foot already gets there too easily, no need to focus on anything that happens too much already, without thinking.

Can't just paste PMTS on top of regular traditional, no, no, no, Ott, you have to understand PMTS before you can make such comments. I know it is so desperate out there that anything will help a traditional lesson, but let's be fair to the student, why not start correctly instead of hiding behind a failed system. This is not Communist Soviet Union, you should be able to teach what works best, sorry lost my head again, it is like the old Soviet system.

While I agree that you can't paste PMTS over PSIA technique, I can't believe how many low intermediate friends and aquaintences whom I showed the idea of the Phatom move, lift and tip (which yeah, in light of Essentials is a ways from flex and tip) and watched them have an instant 'AHA!' moment. Then I mention the free foot pull back and there's a second aha-then I get the request'Show me more"-which I tell them-I can't, I'm not qualified-but I steer them to harb's books (or just lend them a copy--if they're really good friends.).

The notion that skiing begins with foot movements (and not upper-body yoga poses) seems surprising to everyone I share it with who has struggle with PSIA type lessons.

[Ken]

BigE,
These were very good skiers making very good extension turns, but didn't flex their ankles enough. The striking part to me was the suggestion that did not get rejected for them to loosen their boots. These very good skiers showed no signs I saw of being hindered by the flex rate of their boots. Plus, I saw no sign these skiers were ever in the backseat, and the fore/aft balance point was never raised. They just didn't flex their ankles enough to meet the standard, whatever that was.

The other thing I'll show all my students next winter will be edging. Edging is one of the Fab Four...Balance, Pressure, Edging, and Rotary. I'll devote 15% of the time to balance, 15% to Pressure (weighting and balance distribution), 70% to Edging, and just happen to run out of time in the lesson before I get to Rotary....

[h.harb]

Inside Foot pull back or hold back:

How can I put this delicately, OK here?s a try, if you are a WC skier, when you ski at average speeds in control, you can keep your inside foot even or lined up or back with the outside ski foot, almost all the time, in every turn.

It is due to this ability that you can crank hard, high speed turns and not lose balance, when you are skiing all out in a WC race course. A regular expert skier or even a Nor-AM racer compared to a WC skier, is relatively more back, their inside ski is more forward and they take more time to transition; therefore they are often late for the next gate.

As the quality of skier decreases the inside foot gets more difficult to maintain, when they are at their technical limits. So, skiers of less ability should be perfecting movements, especially movements that even WC skiers lose, during the heat of the battle.

With the inside foot forward, your CG has to move and travel further forward to get over that new outside ski for the next turn. Not desirable.

In recreational skiers this is a major problem, especially when skiers push the limits in tough or steeper terrain. With WC skiers, in recreational or free skiing, this is not a problem. So, if you want to say that you don?t need to keep the inside foot back, because WC don?t do it all the time in a race course, you are fooling yourself by using the old, ?it?s OK for them, so it must be OK for me.? argument.

It?s one of those if you haven?t been there; you can?t make the call, or you get on the wrong track.

If I ski race courses, I have to work much harder to keep my inside foot back. If I have a lapse in concentration and that foot goes forward; I lose balance backward.

When I?m recreational skiing, the amount of effort I need to pull my foot back, is much less than when I?m in a race course. The reason I don?t need as much effort or concentration to maintain, foot pull back, in free skiing, comes from my background and training. I was conditioned for years to ski with much harder efforts and technical demands from my race training.

What I?m saying is, the closer you ski to your limit, the more things fall apart, so you have to work harder to keep then. Even with WC skiers, they also lose some of their technical excellence (some call it making mistakes) in a race course. The argument that you shouldn?t have to develop or own a movement, that is good for your skiing, because the WC skiers don?t ?always have it? just doesn?t hold up. (And I can show you countless WC skier turns, in one run, where the outside knee is right on the inside foot, this imeans the inside foot is back)

The foot pull back movement is one of those key components of movement, where it doesn?t serve an argument well, when applied to WC examples. This is where many coaches, and especially instructors, go wrong, not recognizing, a specific, technical, movement necessity.

[h.harb]

Boots:

I?ll chime in on the ski boot discussion in more detail later. In my experience get as stiff a boot as you can handle. It?s not the stiffness that causes the problems, it?s the set up. I see many skiers limited because they are in stiff boots, not because they are stiff, it?s because their shins are at the wrong forward angle (sometimes due to a low, big calf), they are pushed forward too far, or the boot board ramp is incorrect, the forward lean is too strong etc. Rarely is the boot too upright.

It becomes a real dilemma when you have boys who shoot up and weigh nothing, but their feet are size 11. There is a fine line of cutting slots into the boot to make it softer. Too soft, they lose control, to stiff; they can?t stand over the boot. Again, I say it?s mostly the angle of the shin and how it comes out of the boot you have to watch for in setting up skiers. Some play (movement forward and back) can be built in, but there has to be support when you lean your whole body into the front of the boot at the top of the turn.

[BigE]

re: boots

The thing here is that unless a stiff boot is well set up, it'll be a nightmare for the skier that has little experience -- thus soft would be better. Not "Soft" as kn marketing tricks, just so that it's incorrect set up could be overcome by the skier.

Ken, re: flex the ankle MORE? Just enough for balancing is a good idea, I'd say. I really though you were referring to beginning skiers. I guess these skiers were not back seated then?

[Max_501]

The thing here is that unless a stiff boot is well set up, it'll be a nightmare for the skier that has little experience -- thus soft would be better.

I can't picture this as helping. Can you provide some detail?

[Ken]

I always include the pullback as part of the lighten-n-tip, but didn't mention that in my posting. Never quit tipping & never quit pulling back until the release.

I learned the benefit of adequately stiff boots after I began to learn to ski right (thank you, Harald & Rich). I previously preferred a moderately stiff boot, Nordica 90 flex index, and now really like my Dobermans with a Nordica 130 flex.

[BigE]

The thing here is that unless a stiff boot is well set up, it'll be a nightmare for the skier that has little experience -- thus soft would be better.

I can't picture this as helping. Can you provide some detail?

Sure. The softer boot is not setup properly, and the skier's stance is able to better "over power" (for want of a better word) the softer cuffs of the boot to stand in balance.

If the stiffer boot was worn, with the exact same geometry (or worse more fwd lean), it is the skier's stance being overpowered by the boot, putting them at a distinct disadvantage.

Of course it is optimal when the boots are set up right, but most are not.

Consequently, I believe you should go to a good bootfiiter to either get the stiffer boots set up right OR you should just get softer boots. It's way easier to find softer boots than getting stiffer boots set up right.