zeus wrote:So, what is the point in spending thousands of dollars on camps and videos and boot alignments chasing that incremental change to conform to a standard someone else has set? Just ski naturally. It really isn't that hard.
It is true that working on a single movement may only result in an incremental change but putting in the time to master all of the movements typically leads to a radical change in one's skiing and many dove into PMTS for that radical change.
I'm lucky in that I always have fun on skis. Doesn't matter if I'm doing drills, skiing pow, crud, or bumps. However, I have more fun when I'm ripping in challenging conditions on challenging terrain and I couldn't do that at the speed I enjoy without mastering the PMTS fundamentals first.
I have never thought of the PMTS as having a standard. For me there are just PMTS movements and I either do them correctly or I don't. When they are performed correctly my skiing is more efficient and the fun factor goes way up. I subscribe to the "perfect practice makes perfect" theory because I have first hand experience with the results.
All that said there is nothing wrong with learning the basic phantom move and stopping there. It can lead to a significant change in one's comfort on skis and I'm sure many skiers are quite content with that level of performance. But most of us here are working on attaining the highest level of performance we can get given our age and physical attributes. We want to rip in bottomless Alaskan pow, ski smoothly on icy double black diamond bump runs, put our hips on the snow turn after turn, or run gates looking like a racer.
As a professional athlete I have no doubt that learning the movements is easier for you than it is for most of us. But I'd still suggest you get video. I was self taught for the first few years of my PMTS journey. I thought the drills were easy and felt like I was an expert skier because I had "mastered" everything in the books and people were telling me I was a great skier. But then I saw video and reality struck - HARD! What I saw wasn't even close to my mental image and goals so I rebooted and started from step 1 and this time around I got coaching and used video to confirm my progress. Made a huge difference and today I can ski well enough to hang with HH so I'm happy with my progress but the journey isn't over yet (I still need to slay a steep double black diamond bump run at speed).
These threads have many pictures that show the PMTS fundamentals in action when skiing more challenging conditions.
Off Piste SkiingOff piste - technique and tacticsFinal thought - Everyone's goal is different so the level of dedication to learning the movements will be different but even a basic level of PMTS goes a long way.