Finding "the Flow" of Skiing

[liquidfeet]

@newbieM, thanks for those answers. They can help people know where you're coming from so they can gear their responses to your specific situation.

I'm going to pick a few things you just said to respond to. Your words are in red.

1. Your fear and rigidity come from lack of speed control.
I get scared... freak out a bit... my body positioning is too rigid so it’s just all tense ...tense muscles.
--It sounds like you cannot go slow enough to purge the fear. Your skis take off on their own. Learning to go slow has to happen before learning to go fast for everyone. You can't skip that step. Your body is telling you with its rigidity and fatigue that your speed is out of control, and your mind is telling you this with its fear and panic. The fear is legitimate. It's protecting you. Once you are able to go slow, once you have real speed control, your rigidity and fatigue and fear will fall away. You will be able to feel confident and safe. Learn to go slow before learning to go fast.

2. Purge the speed, not the fear.
I want effortless speed... not be scared by speed but just embrace it... to feel comfortable with an appropriate amount of speed for the terrain and still feel in control
--Going fast effortlessly is something to look forward to later as your skills increase. Asking for effortless and fearless speed now is premature.
--Your current fear is legitimate. It's telling you your speed is too fast. Listen to that fear. You need to learn to go slow, not learn to go fast. Going slow is a technique thing.
--Your next learning step is to learn how to go slow without fatigue or fear. The solution is not to purge your fear so you can go fast effortlessly. That's something that comes much later in your learning curve, years later. Right now you need to learn how to go slower. I know I'm repeating myself, but it's a very important fact about how we learn to ski.

3. Your lack of speed control is a technique issue. It can be fixed with better technique. Fix your technique.
I sometimes find I gain speed so I stop and then start again. I can’t usually do a whole run without stopping... the turning feels like hard work.... working too hard through the turns.
--Learning to go slow will purge the fatigue and the fear and the rigidity that accompanies fear. It sounds like right now you are gaining speed on every run. Your body goes rigid because of the fear that comes from skis not doing what you tell them to do. This fear is good. Better technique will get your skis to do what you tell them to do, give you confidence, purge the rigidity, and help eliminate the fatigue and breathlessness. You can find that effortlessness you seek when you ski with better technique.

4. What technique issues need to be addressed?

4a. You probably need to get out of "the back seat."
my legs get tired... This is all on the easiest greens... I just get tired... it’s so much work... working too hard through the turns... turning feels like hard work
--Beginner's fatigue is often in large part caused by skiing with hips too far back over the tails of the skis. You are probably skiing "in the back seat." This is normal. Your large quad muscles in your thighs are working hard holding your body in a squatted position (known as the "toilet seat position"), demanding an enormous amount of oxygen, and consequently getting you out of breath. When more of your body weight is over the back of the skis, the fronts of the skis are light on the snow; they are not helping you to turn. So your turns are uncertain, wobbly, likely to not work very well. This leaves the poor skier legitimately insecure and afraid because some turns work but others don't. This is not imaginary, it's real.
Solution: Stand up taller and bend forward at the ankles; these actions will move your hips forward from where they usually are as you ski.
--Stand tall to bring your hips up. Bend forward at the ankles, with shins contacting the tongues of your boots, to bring the hips forward. This stance will feel insecure at first. But it's absolutely essential.This will help you get the fronts of your skis pressed down onto the snow. The control that's available when skiing with this stance will take more than an hour of deliberate practice. It will take lots of days on skis with this specific focus. The easier the terrain, the lower the pitch, the easier it will be for your body to discover that it can control your skis better from a "forward" position (not back seat), with ankles bent forward and hips up higher. Work on this exclusively on beginner terrain.
--Note: do not swing your arms as we do when walking and running. Keep them hovering forward as if holding a cafeteria tray. Weird, I know. Just do it. That's pounds of body weight forward over the fronts of the skis.

4b. You probably need to complete your turns.
I sometimes find I gain speed so I stop and then start again. I can’t usually do a whole run without stopping.
--Gaining speed comes from not completing turns. This is a major reason beginners need to stop mid-run. "Completing the turn" means you get your skis to point across the hill at the end of every single turn. Every Single Turn. The skis will take you directly across the trail instead of down it so they will slow down as they do this. Work on getting the skis to point ever-so-slightly uphill at the end of each turn. This will stop the skis from taking you for a long ride across the hill. This is an essential skill.
--Completing turns can be difficult for beginner skiers who are in the back seat. The tails of the skis are not powerful enough on their own to shape the turns this way; the fronts of the skis need to be involved.

4c. You may be using "upper body rotation" to turn. If you suspect you are doing this, take a lesson to learn how to turn without using the upper body that way.
--It can be impossible to complete turns if the skier makes the turns happen by turning the shoulders and hips first. This is called using "upper body rotation." It's a common problem for beginners because it's an easy way to start each turn, and it works. To complete turns using upper body rotation, you'd have to turn your shoulders to look uphill at the end of each turn. That's awkward, and throws balance off, and is obviously not how other skiers ski. Upper-body-rotation skiers gain speed because they can't complete their turns.
--Take a lesson if you think you are turning your shoulders (and hips) to face the new direction in order to get the turn to work. How to start a turn is a big deal and using the upper body shuts down learning the better way to start your turns.

5. Learning to go slow must be done on friendly low-pitch terrain where fear is not present. Work on getting out of the back seat and completing your turns on the beginner slope.
I get scared of perceived steepness...
--We all get scared when our minds recognize danger. That's good; it protects us. So, use the beginner slope to practice staying out of the back seat and completing your turns. Monitor your perceived fear. Keep at both of those new skills until the fear is gone. No one can learn a new body movement pattern when their mind is trying to save them from a threat. Fear inhibits learning. Fear causes body rigidity and brain fuzz. You and everyone else needs to work on new stuff where you feel fearless.
"Speed before Pitch"
--This is a general rule of building skills in skiing. Ramp up the speed on that beginner terrain once you can go snail-slow -- before heading to anything with more pitch. Go faster before going steeper.
--Go faster by not completing the turns as much. Turn completion controls speed, on all terrain, always. Monitor your fear and rigidity. If the fear/rigidity comes back as you speed up on the beginner slope, go back to completing your turns more. Be able to go a bit faster on the beginner slope without fear, and without stopping before the lift, before heading up to terrain with a bit more pitch.
--Increase pitch slowly, always completing turns and trying to go so slow that you can stop between each turn at any point.

6. Knowing you can slow waay down between each turn on a green or blue pitch will eliminate the fear.
--This is your ultimate goal. If you know you can complete your turns on a pitch, then you can speed up. You will know you are in total control of your speed, not the pitch. You may even discover "effortlessness" comes to you.
--One day when you have become an "advanced" skier, this will still be your goal - to get on increasingly challenging terrain while controlling your speed so as to purge the fear.
--The call to do this never goes away. It's a big part of skiing.

 

[Iwannaski]

I learn so much every time I read these threads. @newbieM ... might that be part of the challenge? You learn a lot of the mental part and then repeat it all in your head while skiing? Can you pick 1-2 WORDS (not even concepts) that will help you just shift your weight forward on the green?

Just repeat them. Mine, from a thread here somewhere early on this season (probably some combo of @liquidfeet and @Ursula, were FORWARD and COMMIT. If I move forward and commit, my skis will turn me. They turn me fast, so I took a lesson to improve my confidence and control, but they will do a lot of the work, even on a fairly hard, icy surface.

Also, when you say you’re going fast, when you look down it feels like you’re moving MUCH faster than when you look to the bottom of the hill. You may be more comfortable with speed if you put it in more perspective.

This concept really landed for me when I tried it after reading @vickie’s focal point commentary. And then I compared my speed to my son, who I was trying NOT to watch while we skied together. He got to the bottom when I was halfway down. I felt like I was going fast (in control but fast) but OBVIOUSLY, I couldn’t be going THAT fast if he could lap me like that. It really helped me perceive that I am skiing comfortably and IN CONTROL and that I’m not going that fast.

And also, with this, NOT looking at my tips really helped. ;) FWIW, until this year, I’ve always been the skier you described. Frequent stops, sore legs, heart racing. Having that 2 word mantra and a focal point way forward of my tips has been game changing. This week, I was skiing with my daughter (her first run off a lift, and I had just taught her how to use the lift) ... we were on a narrow green in trees and it was BEAUTIFUL. But because it was narrow, I was worried about her. Mind you, at this point, I couldn’t even see her she had blasted down it so far ahead of me. LOL. I froze and couldn’t figure out why. My tips were crossing and I was on the struggle bus. I stopped and took a deep breath and realized my tips crossed when I looked at them. I only look at my tips when I’m not focused down the hill, which inevitably throws me back.

 

[newboots]

What great posts! I want to add that the first time I got really forward (thanks, @nopoleskier!) I could feel immediately how much more control I had over my skis. They do seem to speed up a bit because the shape of the ski is doing the turning for you. That’s why it’s so important to choose a very shallow trail and to turn across the trail until you get comfortable with it. (Okay, I won’t keep beating the horse that @liquidfeet killed above!)

And, um...DO practice this nonstop like she said. Otherwise you have to KEEP having this revelation year after year. :’(

 

[vickie]

Vicki-I am one of the divas who has posted about losing my gusto for skiing. I realized I have been at it for ten years (I think?) based on my age. Started at 38 and am 48 now. The first several years I had a kid on a snowboard team and our weekend, holiday, Spring Break lives were on ski hills based on her training and comp schedules. I put in a lot of hours during those seasons and got better quickly. I am told I have good skills/form but after a fall with injury catching an edge unexpectedly and then getting hit a couple of times I am a nervous wreck every time I go! Now we don’t go as often and COVID times have really slowed it down with resorts closing early last year, slow snow start here in CO and this reservation system (I won’t go on about that). I have noticed when there are not many people around I can do everything right - lean forward and confidently charge down even steep blues and be ok with skiing kinda fast. The minute it gets a little bit crowded I need a tranquilizer! My form goes to hell as I am afraid to go even a little fast so I can be ready for whatever shenanigans other skiers/riders might pull near me like sudden crashes, near collisions, straight lining , etc. I find myself holding my breath it seems, praying I will be safe, and then thanking God I made it down in one piece. Then my husband and younger daughter are excited to do it all again and I just wanna have a drink by the fire pit! You mentioned hypnotherapy. Did that help? I bought snow shoes last season and am about ready to just do that while my family goes skiing.

Sorry for the delay in responding. I responded right away in my head. It just took a while to work its way out my fingers.

Hypnotherapy has helped me with a number of things in my life. For skiing, I approached it as a performance issue. In the course of talking about it -- because a hypnotherapist is getting all of the information from the client -- we talked about fear, confidence, etc. One of the things he addressed during the session was managing fear and confidence with respect to skiing as if they are radio dials and dialing them up or down as we choose.

In a general conversation with the hypnotherapist one time, I mentioned being incredibly afraid of snakes ... all snakes, not just venomous ones. He said "we can work on that". I know we can and I never have. Why? I don't know what I would want instead of being incredibly afraid. That fear has kept me safe. No snake has ever bitten me or even touched me. That fear has been pretty darn useful. But I also know that if I ever do use hypnotherapy for my fear of snakes, I can define what my desired outcome is. I don't need to let go of ALL of my fear of snakes. I can keep the amount that is right for me to feel safe but, at the same time, not panic at the mere sight of a snake.

The same would be true for approaching your concerns with skiing ... you would determine what you are wanting to change and what your desired outcome is.

 

[vickie]

Lesson 4, or Ski Lessons are Like a Box of Chocolates

Going into this lesson, I had started to see a shift in technique that was happening consciously. Instead of a mental cycle of Where are your hands -- Are you forward -- Where are your shoulders pointed – Etc, I was starting to manage more by exception and just checking in on other things now and then to make sure I wasn’t straying from the technique I was trying to engrain. I won’t claim to own these things yet. But I am starting to see a transition from a very active conscious management of technique into relying on muscle memory.

During practice, I noticed some things I either wanted to work on or wanted Bruce to assess.

Speed Control. I was skiing faster than I wanted to and needed to feel I determine my speed, not my skis. We worked on this a lot in that lesson.

Hip Position. A couple of times every day, when making right turns, I felt as if my left hip was pushed way out to the left. If this was an occasional Oops, no big deal. But this never happened on a left turn. So I also had concerns that my turns are not symmetrical. I wear an ACL brace on my right leg and have always wondered if the brace causes me to use that leg differently. Bruce watched my turns for a while and said they are symmetrical.

Moguls. I told Bruce previously that I hate moguls, mostly because I don’t know how to approach them. I wasn’t ready to start skiing moguls, but wanted to prepare for it through drills or building the skills I would need to ski them.

And with that, we headed to the lift.

I learned that Loveland does allow ski school to have priority in the lift line. At Chet's, they can duck the rope over on the far left as you face the lift. There is a Closed sign and/or Ski School sign hanging on that rope.

Up the lift, around the cat track to get to the top of the trail itself, and Splat! My skiing fell apart. I felt some of the ‘stuff’, but apparently it was worse than what I realized. What happened? As I skied down the cat track, I moved over to the left side of the path to stay out of the normal path of the snowboarders – they tend to gravitate to the right side and pop up and down the embankment. A snowboarder crossed in front of me – not cutting me off, just turning to the left – and promptly went up the lip and over the side, down into the black diamond-pitched trees. He was stopped by the orange mesh fence that runs along the edge and was probably 15 or 20 feet below the trail. I slid over to the edge to check on him. He was not injured, but was caught up in the fencing. Another adult skier stopped near me. We stayed with the snowboarder and tried to help him get on his feet. He was actually able to get back up onto the trail before patrol arrived.

I did not realize how much that incident affected me. Bruce did. He kept things kind of easy, reviewing things we had worked on before. Once he saw my skiing coming together again, he realized that I hadn’t actually regressed, but that, in my terms, a part of me went over the edge with the snowboarder.

I didn’t realize at the time that this was part of my lesson. That incident happened on Friday. On my very next ski day, going down that same cat track for my first run of the day, as I came to the end of that path where it merges with a blue mogul run, I slowed down to look up the hill for traffic. Before I could turn my head, snow blasted up in front of me, right at the front of my skis. It was from a runaway ski. It was followed by another runaway ski. Then a pole. Then another pole. And finally a human, sliding past within about 3 inches of the tips of my skis. A teenager had yardsaled on a really deep mogul trough and almost took me out with him. The guy was fine. I started to ski off, then stopped myself. If Friday’s incident was a lesson, I needed to learn from it. I hung out in the middle of the trail for a while, clearing my head, taking some deep breaths. When I thought I was ok, I skied off slowly and took it easy for a while. If the lodge had been open for regular service, I would have skied down instead and sat and talked to a cup of hot chocolate until it and I decided I was fit to hit the snow.

The Rest of the Lesson

Skiing Slowly. I wanted to slow down my skiing. Normally, I would do that by finishing my turns more. But focusing on upper/lower separation and locking my shoulders on a target downhill limits how much I can finish turns … my legs are going to rotate only so much. We worked for a while on making slow turns and, lo and behold, up popped a flaw. Or two. When I ski slowly, I get lazy. I don’t maintain my stance. I stand up a little. My weight goes back a little.

Short Radius Turns. My default turn size is a medium radius. Short radius turn is simply making turns within a narrow corridor. Bruce said short radius turns are very active. I picked it up very quickly. (Yay.) I caught myself with my weight back a little on a couple of turns, but I felt it immediately and corrected my stance.

Mix Up the Turns and Speed. Moguls, especially skier-made moguls, will not have a consistent size, shape, or distribution. I can’t be locked into a turn shape. So we skied runs varying the speed and turn shape every few turns. The difficulty for me is that I lose my rhythm and sometimes I have difficulty shifting from fast to slow skiing. I expect to ski moguls slowly so I need to practice being flexible in my turns, especially when I am on uncrowded trails.

Awarenesses. Developing my awareness of movements is becoming a big learning.

Bruce commented that I extend my new outside leg well as I get to the end of a turn and asked if I feel it. I never knew I did it. I skied a few turns and could feel it in my left leg. Then skied a few more and felt it in my right leg. This is a nice cue for me … if my turns start feeling wonky, I can check to see if I’m feeling the extension of the uphill leg at the end of a turn.​

​

Bruce noticed that I don’t start actively skiing at the start of a run. I make a couple of turns and ease into my skiing stance. And as I approach the lift, I stop skiing and straighten up and just coast in. He said these are picky things, but just wanted me to try eliminating them. I did. And my form fell apart. Consistently. It wasn’t long before he told me to go back to what I had been doing, that trying to change it was really hurting my skiing for even longer than those one or two turns did. After the lesson, as I thought about this more, I started thinking of it as On-ramping (at the beginning of a trail) and Off-ramping (as I approach the lift). Because I do the On-ramping, I have difficulty entering a trail that has any kind of lip or edge. If I need my first turn to be an honest-to-goodness turn, I’m kind of lost. And it gets even more convoluted. My right leg is dominant. (My left leg is like a stoner.) To enter a trail with a lip, I have to enter from an angle, but it has to be from right to left so my dominant leg is happy. Weird, huh? Long-term, I need to break the On-ramping habit. Off-ramping as I approach a lift isn’t really a big deal, except that I give up all of my stability and my “edge” should I need to react to an out-of-control skier or rider. Off-ramping should be an easier habit to break, so I started working on that in practice.​

​

I still wasn’t getting forward quite enough in my stance. As far as awareness of this, I am clueless. I can do it standing still, but have a hard time maintaining it in motion. Long story short, I went to the bootfitter to start the process of getting new boots sometime before next season. As he was evaluating my ski stance in socks only, in unbuckled boots, and in buckled boots, he noticed that my current boots do not let me get far enough forward even when I’m crushing the tongues of the boots. He increased the forward lean on my current boots from 13 to 17 and will ensure I have sufficient forward lean in my new boots. It took 3-4 hours of practice before I felt stable and skiing normally with the new setting. Hopefully, that problem in my stance is on its way to being resolved.​

The last thing we did during the lesson was start working on “variable terrain”. It didn’t go well. I got to the top of the run and all I saw was moguls … and mentally froze up. I was not supposed to ski the moguls, but rather the ungroomed snow on the side. I couldn’t see ungroomed snow, just a sea of moguls. It was a short run and I managed to get to the bottom, but with no form whatsoever. In practice the next week, I did that same trail every day, just meandering around the moguls to get familiar with them. On the second day, as I reached the last section, I saw 10-12 perfect moguls and decided I could ski them. Properly. (Why I decided that, I have no idea. I swear it was my stoner leg talking to me.) I planted my pole on the mogul. I skied around it. Boom. Boom. Boom. Just like I knew what I was doing. I was ecstatic. I haven’t been able to repeat that performance on that trail or any other moguls since, but it was a great confidence booster.

 

[vickie]

Lesson 5

Good news! The increased forward lean in my boots seems to be the right move. My body position is better. Bruce said my practice is paying off, that he had never seen me ski better. And that’s the end of the good news for that lesson. Seriously.

The rest of the lesson was more preparation for skiing moguls:

Shuffle. Shuffle both feet back and forth as I ski.

500 Steps. While skiing, the first half of the turn is done normally. For the second half of the turn, lift up one ski and then the other, stepping through the last half of each turn.

1 Step. While skiing, when you get to the middle of a turn where the skis are basically pointed straight down, lift up the new inside ski then the new outside ski in sequence.

All of these drills required me to play around with my stance. Did I need to be a little more (or less) upright in order to be balanced in shuffling or stepping with my skis? Developing that flexibility will be important as I get into moguls.

I did okay with the shuffling -- meaning I was able to do it, but it wasn’t pretty. The stepping? No. By comparison, my drunken shuffling was poetry in motion.

Then we moved over to a trail that is usually moguls. The exercise was to traverse across moguls – moving on a diagonal to eliminate most of the pitch of the trail – and try to stay level, not bobbing up and down with the bumps. That meant I needed to absorb the bumps with my legs. The moguls had been filled in by a storm and hadn’t re-formed well. They were more piles than bumps. I never got a feel for absorbing anything.

Skiing ungroomed terrain. We stayed on the same trail to take advantage of the piles of snow for practice on variable terrain. This should have been a matter of taking the skills I had developed on the groomers and applying them on the ungroomed run. If only. I had actually been practicing this over the previous two weeks and ran into lots of problems … as in, nothing was working. And that continued through the lesson.

To get to that ungroomed trail, we ski an easy groomed trail. So for each run, I would ski properly on the groomed and then promptly fall apart 2 or 3 turns into the ungroomed. I have skied ungroomed runs before. It made no sense. Nothing I tried made a difference. And nothing Bruce said. It was as if I had no control over the skis … or apparently my own body. We moved over to a short run that is sometimes groomed. No moguls, no piles of snow, just more loose snow than is on the main groomers. Basically, we were decreasing the degree of difficulty. After one run, Bruce commented that I had a lot of tip lead and he’d never seen me do that before. He thought it might be an anomaly. I wasn’t so sure, thinking back about all of the problems I had practicing on ungroomed runs over the previous two weeks. Bruce talked “tip lead”. My mind said “wide stance”. I tried narrowing my stance and my skiing started to come back. We were at the end of the lesson. I didn’t have time to put all the pieces together, but have thought about it a lot since.

When I got onto ungroomed terrain or even on steeper groomed terrain, I believe I widened my stance – perhaps falling back on old technique. When my feet are farther apart and I pivot my legs to one side, I will automatically have more distance between the skis’ tips than if I have a narrower stance. This means my uphill leg will be farther out in front of me … I will have less ability to extend that leg to start a new turn. And if my weight is farther back on my downhill ski, any weight on my uphill ski will be even farther back. So now, I’m not going to actually initiate a turn with the uphill leg, I’m just going to be pushing ahead (across the hill) on my uphill ski. I have very little chance of making a turn. My skis are just going to shoot across the trail. That is exactly what had been happening on ungroomed runs during practice. Every time it happened, I just thought I “Did Something Stupid”. Instead, I believe I just fell back into the old habit of using a wider stance (which started a chain reaction of tip lead, weight being back, etc.). I had developed and started engraining new habits for easy groomers. But I had not transferred that over to other types of terrain.

The notion of focusing on a narrower stance on ungroomed terrain makes sense to my logical mind, but I’ll have to experiment to see if there will be more to the solution than that.

The lesson was on Friday just before the holiday weekend. It made for a long weekend – a lot of emotions, a lot of wanting to be out on the hill working this out. But I think the time and distance was good for me. By the time I got on the snow today, I didn’t feel disappointment or frustration about last Friday, just an acceptance that things had not gone well and I needed to get to work on it. I’ve posted before about how we have to be our own best friend on the hill. I’ll certainly be walking that walk for the next couple of weeks.

 

[ski skuhl]

@vickie I am so impressed with your ability to basically scribe a lesson - that's a skill! Seriously, I believe writing it all out and thinking on the lessons will be great exercises in themselves and you are leveraging your investment by doing so.
I've only just returned to the forum after a long hiatus (was too busy skiing, lol) and you've been a big reminder of what I'd been missing by not participating in this great community. You are helping newbies with your posts and giving great reminders to more veteran skiers. I'm grateful for your posts and am shaking pom-poms for you this morning. Keep at it, you'll get it and when it synthesizes and clicks you will swoon!

 

[ski skuhl]

I learn so much every time I read these threads. @newbieM ... might that be part of the challenge? You learn a lot of the mental part and then repeat it all in your head while skiing? Can you pick 1-2 WORDS (not even concepts) that will help you just shift your weight forward on the green?

Just repeat them. Mine, from a thread here somewhere early on this season (probably some combo of @liquidfeet and @Ursula, were FORWARD and COMMIT. If I move forward and commit, my skis will turn me. They turn me fast, so I took a lesson to improve my confidence and control, but they will do a lot of the work, even on a fairly hard, icy surface.

Also, when you say you’re going fast, when you look down it feels like you’re moving MUCH faster than when you look to the bottom of the hill. You may be more comfortable with speed if you put it in more perspective.

This concept really landed for me when I tried it after reading @vickie’s focal point commentary. And then I compared my speed to my son, who I was trying NOT to watch while we skied together. He got to the bottom when I was halfway down. I felt like I was going fast (in control but fast) but OBVIOUSLY, I couldn’t be going THAT fast if he could lap me like that. It really helped me perceive that I am skiing comfortably and IN CONTROL and that I’m not going that fast.

And also, with this, NOT looking at my tips really helped. ;) FWIW, until this year, I’ve always been the skier you described. Frequent stops, sore legs, heart racing. Having that 2 word mantra and a focal point way forward of my tips has been game changing. This week, I was skiing with my daughter (her first run off a lift, and I had just taught her how to use the lift) ... we were on a narrow green in trees and it was BEAUTIFUL. But because it was narrow, I was worried about her. Mind you, at this point, I couldn’t even see her she had blasted down it so far ahead of me. LOL. I froze and couldn’t figure out why. My tips were crossing and I was on the struggle bus. I stopped and took a deep breath and realized my tips crossed when I looked at them. I only look at my tips when I’m not focused down the hill, which inevitably throws me back.

I concur - a mantra/word or even a song (yep, I used a Jason Mraz song to psych up my kids and get them to focus on the mountain yearrrrrrrrs ago) - can go a long way and carry you through executing techniques. Skiing isn't so different from another sport I love - distance train running - which many say is 2% physical aptitude and 98% mental focus.

 

[MissySki]

@vickie thank you for keeping up with your very detailed lesson posts! I definitely feel like I pick up a lot from your commentary and also drills I want to try. It seems like you’re making great progress even if sometimes it doesn’t translate everywhere that you want it to on the mountain at first. Keep up the great work!

 

[Abbi]

I concur - a mantra/word or even a song (yep, I used a Jason Mraz song to psych up my kids and get them to focus on the mountain yearrrrrrrrs ago) - can go a long way and carry you through executing techniques. Skiing isn't so different from another sport I love - distance train running - which many say is 2% physical aptitude and 98% mental focus.

Not exactly in line with the post, but the music image took me back to getting psyched for exams, Gmats, job interviews etc. back in the day! Way back when, because I am that old, I sort of liked the Go-Go’s ”Can’t Stop the World“! The lyrics go, sort of, ...’can’t stop the world why let it stop you!‘ I’ve tossed that one out skiing a few times. Someone or other who addresses ski fear suggested singing while you skied. I admit, and @ski diva knows this, that one day I was singing the Super Chicken theme song to myself as I went down some thing threatening! Yes I am as crazy as you think I am!!!

 

[liquidfeet]

....Keep at it, you'll get it and when it synthesizes and clicks you will swoon!

...and we will swoon with you!!!
@vickie you are indeed a Ski Diva Extraordinaire! And Bruce is your ski instructor extraordinaire!

Thank you so much for putting this all in words for us. It's just magic to read such posts.

 

[MissySki]

Not exactly in line with the post, but the music image took me back to getting psyched for exams, Gmats, job interviews etc. back in the day! Way back when, because I am that old, I sort of liked the Go-Go’s ”Can’t Stop the World“! The lyrics go, sort of, ...’can’t stop the world why let it stop you!‘ I’ve tossed that one out skiing a few times. Someone or other who addresses ski fear suggested singing while you skied. I admit, and @ski diva knows this, that one day I was singing the Super Chicken theme song to myself as I went down some thing threatening! Yes I am as crazy as you think I am!!!

I find it useful at times to listen to music or just sing to myself, especially when skiing alone. It helps me loosen up and find a rhythm. Last week I was skiing some bumps that duck under a lift and very abruptly stopped singing because I wasn’t sure what people would think from above. Lol I don’t think they would have heard me per se, but I had my mask pulled down at that point and thought it’d look like I was very actively talking to myself

 

[MrsPlow]

I find it useful at times to listen to music or just sing to myself, especially when skiing alone. It helps me loosen up and find a rhythm. Last week I was skiing some bumps that duck under a lift and very abruptly stopped singing because I wasn’t sure what people would think from above. Lol I don’t think they would have heard me per se, but I had my mask pulled down at that point and thought it’d look like I was very actively talking to myself

I love to sing along to music I'm listening to when I ski - and sometimes dance a bit too. It backfired a bit on me today when I had a song that makes me feel like I should be skiing fast and I ran into a field of enormous moguls that weren't there last time I did that run. Had to dial things back a bit at that point...

 

[newboots]

It backfired a bit on me today when I had a song that makes me feel like I should be skiing fast and I ran into a field of enormous moguls that weren't there last time I did that run.

Aaaaaugh!

(Reminding myself not to do this)

 

[MissySki]

I love to sing along to music I'm listening to when I ski - and sometimes dance a bit too. It backfired a bit on me today when I had a song that makes me feel like I should be skiing fast and I ran into a field of enormous moguls that weren't there last time I did that run. Had to dial things back a bit at that point...

Haha I’ve had those kinds of experiences with it as well! At least you were feeling the groove.. until you weren’t..

 

[vickie]

Continuation of Lessons

In the most recent lesson I posted about, I mentioned some problems that surfaced. Since then, I have been on a winding road that included some U-turns and dead ends. As with all trips, it’s a good idea to look at the map to see where you are relative to where you intended to be. The fact is, prior to that lesson, I had already accomplished everything I set out to do this season. In the next lesson, I told Bruce that. We needed to pause, if for just a moment, and acknowledge “We Did It”. Everything we might work on after that was gravy.

The other thing I want to mention is that when I started lessons this season, I figured I would ski 2 or 3 days a week and schedule my next lesson when I had digested the previous one. It didn’t work out that way. Loveland was busier than ever on weekdays. They didn’t require reservations for season pass holders or for parking. I think their simplicity was attractive to a lot of people. Also, I quickly realized Bruce was as committed as I was. I had to ask myself “how committed are you?” So I upped my game. I skied most non-holiday weekdays. In practicing, it’s important to not get so fatigued that you start getting sloppy. My ski days were usually 3-4 hours. Very little of that was wasted in lift lines. Normal wait was less than a minute. I had 5 lessons this season and skied, so far, 43 days.

The previous lesson I posted about was the one where I could not ski 3D snow. And when Bruce noticed I had a lot of tip lead. He was surprised to see it because he had not noticed it before. Eventually, I came to realize he had not noticed it before because it was not there before. It took a month to work and figure things out. Bottom line … it was my boots.

I figured this out through lots of trial and error. This is so similar to @contesstant's experience with boots. We work on skills. We get gear changes. Problems crop up and we assume they are our own doing. We struggle and struggle, then finally the light comes on.

First, I assumed the real problem was that I was having difficulty in transitioning my modified technique from the green trails to the blue trails. And the difference between greens and blues is Pitch. So I skied these same blue trails over and over to adapt to the small increase in pitch. And I decided, for a change of pace, to go over to Copper and ski the blue trails around the Timberline lift and play on their moguls. I call this my “Bumps Don’t Bite” training … no skiing of moguls, just sliding over and around them, no shoulders facing downhill, no form, no rules, just play. I’m pretty sure those blue trails at Copper are actually steeper than the ones I was skiing at Loveland. And the snow was fast that day. I’d ski down the trail to the bumps, play on the bumps, then ski down to the lift. Some of the trails had bumps over on one side and only for about 30 yards down the trail. Skiing on the groomed snow, I made elongated S-shaped turns all the way down … at whatever speed the skis ran. I made no attempts to slow down. I skied way above my normal speed. Several times, my brain said “Slow Down!” Finally, it was like a voice inside of me that replied, “Hang.On.And.Ride!” And so I did. Lap after lap, I raced down the almost empty trails. One time as I was leaving a group of bumps, I waited to let an uphill skier go by. As he passed, I noted that he was skiing kind of fast. Once I pushed off, my skis tried to catch him. He had a running start and was skiing fast. I gained on him, but couldn’t quite catch him by the end of the run. That day at Copper was nuts. Reflecting on it, I realized that Pitch was not the problem on the trails at Loveland. It was totally the ungroomed piles of snow.

From that point, I approached my “tip lead problem” differently. I skied only ungroomed trails and started tearing apart individual turns, movements, being bounced around. I started futzing with my boots. I noticed that if the boot cuffs were loose, I could get forward and make the turns but I’d also get bounced and be thrown back to the back of the boot liner. And that’s when the light came on. I had gotten new boots the week before the tip lead problem surfaced.

Next: Boot Saga

 

[vickie]

The Boot Saga

I have had some issues with my boots for a couple of seasons and figured I was going to need new boots by next season. I went to the bootfitter (Jeff) to determine what boots I should buy either now or at the beginning of next season. In addition to assessing my feet and lower legs, he looked at what my then-current boots were doing for/to me. In the end, he determined the boots did not have enough forward lean. The forward lean of the Atomics can be adjusted from 13 to 17 degrees. They were set for 13 degrees. He moved them to 17 degrees. This made a huge difference in my skiing. Before that change, I was not able to get forward enough – and if I got forward, I couldn’t sustain it because the boots were pushing back.

Note: The measurement for forward lean in boots is as consistent across brands as boot flex ratings … there is no consistency. Boots are measured in different ways. Atomic’s 13 degrees might be Lange’s 12 degrees.

The question is … how do you test whether the forward lean is correct? There are probably a number of ways bootfitters can do that. I’ll describe my experience. First, I assumed a skiing stance in sock feet – first facing Jeff, then turned to the side. I think this is just to see what my normal stance looks like without the effect of boots. Then I put my boots on and buckled them as I normally do, and assumed the same stance. His first comment was “you're not forward". (Wow, as if I had not heard that in every single lesson!) And he also noted that I was crushing the tongues of the boots. (Yes, I was. It’s the only way I could even begin to assume a skiing stance.) At this point, he knew I could get forward when standing in sock feet, but I could not when wearing my ski boots. The Atomics, set at 13 degrees, do not conform to my natural stance.

Then I had to move my legs to the left and then to the right as if edging skis. He noted that I drop my hip when I do that … and pulled up a full length mirror to show me. I saw what he meant, but what stood out to me was how my legs didn't align with each other on that angle. It's as if they were all over each other … like a twisted kind of A-framing meets the “I Have To Pee RIGHT NOW” stance.

Then he had me unbuckle my boots – completely unbuckled, not just loosened – and assume the ski stance and then emulate edging. It was all totally different. I was more solid on my feet. I was far enough forward. And the edging motions didn't make me feel like my legs were fighting anything, including each other.

Jeff changed the forward lean of the boots from 13 degrees to 17 degrees and I went through the same stance and movements. Everything looked fine. On the mountain, I was able to get forward on my skis without crushing the boots. I was able to open and close my ankles as I chose. If my ankles were more open, I would feel light contact with the boot tongue; if they were closed, I would feel pressure from the tongues but not as if they were resisting me.

Then I bought Lange RX90s (from a different, but affiliated shop). These are the boot Jeff recommended for my very high instep and narrow heel. I was able to wear them out of the box. Jeff told me to ski them for 5-20 days and come in for tightening. Later, I asked about the tightening (wondering how he knew they would need to be tightened that soon) and learned that the shells are women’s and the liners are women’s, but … boots are designed based on the foot proportions of men. Sweet, huh?

Skiing in the Lange boots is when the problems started with excessive tip lead. The Lange RX90s are built with 12 degrees of forward lean and no adjustment. I didn’t realize this up front. When Jeff said they would be a little more upright, I thought he meant from the Atomics set at 17 degrees, not the Atomics set at 13 degrees. Skiing groomers, the Langes worked really well for me, other than again not being forward enough on the skis. It was the 3D snow that kicked my butt. I spent four weeks fighting tip lead and getting bounced around by any small pile of snow. I thought it was me. Finally, all of the pieces came together and it dawned on me that I had changed boots just before this problem developed. I checked the Lange specs online and made a beeline to the bootfitter. He built shims to create the forward lean I need. And he marked the liners for placement of pads to tighten them.

The shims are the brown material, below. They are glued in place and have duct tape to protect the bottom edge when I put them back into the shells. The shims are a very dense foam.


This is the pad Jeff added to tighten up the heel and ankle. (I keep typing "heel" as H-E-L-L. Gonna tighten up the hell in those boots! How appropriate!) Also with duct tape at the bottom. You can also see how thick the shims are at the top of the liner.




During this process, I learned that when skiers need extra forward lean, they shove trail maps between the back of the boot liners and the shells. Kind of a nice tip to know. If a skier is not able to get forward enough, they can test it out while they’re on the hill. Also, if they have multiple skis with different bindings (and therefore, perhaps different deltas), they might be able to fiddle with the forward lean to try to create a similar feel across their skis. Or if they ski switch, they might want a different amount of forward lean when they’re on twin tips than when they’re not. They could also accomplish that by having different boots, but shims and trail maps are cheaper and travel easier.

Now I have new boots with sufficient forward lean. After this, "tightening up the hell" has to be done in lessons!

 

[vickie]

Back to Ski Lessons ….

Lesson 6

I have already posted about the boot saga, but at the time of this lesson, I was still under the assumption it was a Vickie problem and not a boot problem. I went into this lesson hoping for a miracle … hoping I would suddenly be able to ski chopped up snow. I worked on it for two weeks, but saw no progress.

At the beginning of each lesson, I give Bruce a summary of what I’ve been working on and how things have been going. So we went into this lesson with him knowing I was struggling.

The lesson started as they all do with a warm-up run. We got back to the top of the lift. I got my poles on and was ready to ski. Bruce stood over near the edge of a trail, surveying it. I stood way back because, at the beginning of the season, I had identified this as a Trail That Shall Not Be Skied. It is a blue trail and really is no big deal unless, of course, you want actual snow under your skis. This trail gets scraped off so fast, I don’t even look at it anymore to see if it’s skiable. That is, until Bruce slid over the edge. Aw, crap! I was going to have to ski it. That particular day, the trail not only had snow on it, but also had some nice chopped up stuff over on one side. Fortunately , the excessive tip lead and other issues kicked in and I was able to demonstrate my complete inability to do anything more than survive. At the bottom of that section, we stopped. I explained exactly what happened – the same thing I posted here previously about tip lead hindering my ability to initiate a turn. I explained what I was doing to fix it (pulling my uphill foot/ski back). And I described my cue for knowing I’m doing it (the 2 skis begin to feel like one single platform). Bruce agreed and then segued into an entirely different topic. Later, I realized that once I demonstrated that I knew what I was doing wrong, knew how to fix it, and knew how to identify if it was right, there was nothing for him to teach me with respect to tip lead. Yes, I still needed to work on it, but I didn’t need to pay an instructor to watch me do my homework. So he moved on to a new topic to teach.

Increasing Edge Angles

I’m sure there are detailed explanations of this, but for me, it was simply Tip the Skis More. I did this on one run. Bruce followed, watching my tracks. And he was excited. He said there was a lot of increase in the angle and my downhill ski was “trenching”. He suggested that during practice, I focus my attention on the uphill ski and see if I can get it to start matching the downhill one. The next run, I decided “Now" ... Now is the time that I should focus on that uphill ski for that run. Bruce followed. At the end, I stopped and told Bruce I was starting to feel the uphill ski engage. He blurted out, “I KNOW you were!” and said that my uphill ski was tracking exactly with my downhill one, but only cutting about half as deep. He seemed really excited about my having this easy win. It was a nice balance for the struggle I was going through with boots/tip lead.

Also during this lesson, Bruce talked about using forces, especially gravity, instead of resisting it. I was nodding my head and said “soft skiing”. I told him it was on my list to talk about, that I want to work on that next season. I mentioned Lito Tejada-Flores’s book, Soft Skiing. Ski technique, and especially reducing the amount of effort it takes, can be the difference between skiing for decades and skiing for just a few more years.

 

[vickie]

Lesson 7

It was shortly before this lesson that I went to Copper, had the revelation about my boots, and got shims to fix the forward lean of my boots. I had 2 sets of shims to try – a thick one and a thin one. Jeff knew I needed at least the thick one, but might need a combination of the 2 shims to get the best boot setup for me. I had tried these on my own, but wanted Bruce’s observations before getting shims glued in.

The first part of the lesson was not about boots and shims, but rather “soft skiing”. [Yes, the topic I wasn’t going to start until next season . When what I want aligns with what Bruce sees I need, we are off to the races!] I had started reading Lito’s book again. Something from the book was stuck in my head and it really threw off my ability to do some simple things. Lito uses words like flop, fold, collapse – that when you shift your weight to the uphill ski to start a new turn, your downhill leg may flop/fold/collapse. I stored “collapse” in my brain. On the hill, the whole notion of letting my downhill leg collapse was a complete No-Go. My brain got into a knot and I had to take a break from listening and thinking and just go ski it off. I’ll jump ahead and say that once I read some of the book yet again, this walking motion that Lito promotes came to me pretty easily. It is still a conscious activity and I will need to practice it a bit. As I work on it into next season, I’ll probably ski part of a run aggressively, then finish it softly. I want to be able to shift between those easily, much like switching at will between short, medium, and long radius turns.

Then came boots and shims. I picked a familiar ungroomed, lumpy run and did one run with my boots in their normal state, one with the thick shims, and one with both thick and thin shims. And I skied through the lumpiest stuff I could in order to challenge my balance. Bruce then wanted me to use the thin shims as toe lifts (“gas pedals”) and do another run. Bruce focused on the behavior of the skis, not the skier. He felt the skis were best with both thick and thin shims between the liner and shell. That was consistent with what I felt when I tested the shims on my own, so I had a lot of confidence in the decision.

Sadly, that was probably my last lesson for this season. I don’t expect our snow to hold up well enough and for long enough for me to squeeze in another lesson plus enough practice days to make it worthwhile.

On the positive side, we had accomplished two lessons ago everything I wanted for this season. By preparing for moguls and working toward soft skiing, I have a head start on next season. Plus I got the boot stuff sorted out.

This season, our snow was late and lazy. I didn’t even venture out until early January. Late snow, low snow totals, dressing in the car, limited base facilities – and yet this has been the best season and most productive ski season I have ever had. It will be hard to let it go ... well, it already is.

I am so looking forward to recapturing all of this at the beginning of next season.

 

[contesstant]

@vickie, that fore/aft balance is HUGE, as you have found out, and often overlooked! My skiing has gone through the roof this season, particularly in the past 4 weeks since I put ZipFit liners in my boots, which snug things down even when my feet shrink through the day.

One thing that has helped me immensely is short-radius turns. I mean as short as you can. They get me on my edges, and get me out of what I call the "park and ride" mode, where I get very static during my turns and am not actively steering my skis at all times.

I'm also sad to see the season ending, just when I'm making great strides. I'm excited for you that you have found a good boot fitter as well as had the time to spend working on your skiing so much! It's not an easy sport to conquer, but especially when you're over 50!