Initiating a Turn

[perma-grin]

Under the plastic directly on top of the tongue, I like it snuged up but not so tight as to restrict comfort or circulation. The idea is to keep the liner in better firmer connection with the shaft of your lower leg and ankle hense transmitting the driving lateral power to the shell of the boot and the ski. If the liner and cuff are loose and sloppy, energy and control are lessened. You want your tongue to respond with a progressive flex. Your tongues of your boots should be moving laterally as your legs are knees and lower legs are tipping into the new turn also. (pretend you are standing on the face of a giigantic clock. Your skis are pointed directly at 12:00,tipping both boot tongues and knees to 10:00 for a turn to the left and to 2:00 for a turn to the right. ) If your boots are loose and slopy these tipping movements are less efficent to tip the ski up on edge( because of the slop in the boot). Nothing should ever be worn so tightly that it restricts your ability to open and close your ankle joint to maintain kinetic balance over your ski and to allow yourself to accept terrian changes( bumps ,crud, ruts in the course). Or for that matter the energy that the ski may give back to you in the form of rebound.

 

[Delawhere]

Nothing should ever be worn so tightly that it restricts your ability to open and close your ankle joint to maintain kinetic balance over your ski and to allow yourself to accept terrian changes( bumps ,crud, ruts in the course). Or for that matter the energy that the ski may give back to you in the form of rebound.

Ah. This explains my skiing last night. I tried really tightening the top of my boots and found myself really, really struggling with skiing in the backseat which I used to think was not a common problem with me. Now I don't know....

I did find that it took longer for my shin to hurt when they were tight but I eventually loosened the top buckle a bit and found it easier fore-aft and no longer had shin pain. I still seemed to have medial/lateral boot control.

Time for a video of my skiing and more importantly, a lesson.

 

[mountainxtc]

Lifting your toes up WILL facillitate moving your thigh and hips forward in vertical alignment closing your ankles this will aide in vertical stacking of hips over arches.

I played around with this today and I am unable to lift my toes without engaging my quads....

We have done this at the national academy with several different D-team members for stronger turn initiation. However when you are curling /clinching your toes under you tend to push your shin into the mid part of your boot tongue and stand on your heels forcing your thighs into a more horizonal position because your ankles are to open. You want to avoid both the crushing of the boot down totally closing the ankle joint, but you most definetly don't want to leave the ankle joint to open that will cause major thigh burn and a major case of being in the back seat.

ok, so let's set some things straight.... we are now starting to talk dynamic balance. your weight is going to move around throughout the turn as the forces acting on your body change. you will feel it more on the ball of your foot at initiation, and it will move back to (approximately) the front of the heel pad towards completetion. this needs to happen.

skiing is basically the art of moving down the hill at speed, making turns to control that speed, and dealing with the resulting forces that act on the body. for that reason, balance cannot be static, you must always be moving as the forces on you change. so it is true that your ankles, for example, are more closed in parts of the turn than in others. but you are constantly changing this to maintain a centered, mobile stance.

another example; we can get away with teaching the basic stacking of joints (e.g. hips over the feet, shoulders over the hips, etc) to beginners, as their speed will be slow enough that not enough force builds up to require an overly dynamic stance. but once we start to ski at higher speeds, we need to constantly adjust our balance in many planes. in this example, we need to become lower, which results in bending the legs more. we therefore move mass behind the feet and hence, in order to stay centered, we need to move the shoulders forward accordingly.

that was kind of a splurge of information, sorry if it doesn't read well, please question at will.

I guess my summary is this: a move that puts you in balance at one point in the turn will not keep you in balance all the way through it. this will be magnified with more speed/pitch, etc. any kind of "staticness" (I'm positive that this is not a real word but you know what I mean) will result in some type of muscle stress. I would throw in an exercise to demonstrate but this post is already plenty long enough! I wonder if there is a word limit??

 

[SkiBam]

I guess my summary is this: a move that puts you in balance at one point in the turn will not keep you in balance all the way through it. this will be magnified with more speed/pitch, etc. any kind of "staticness" (I'm positive that this is not a real word but you know what I mean) will result in some type of muscle stress. I would throw in an exercise to demonstrate but this post is already plenty long enough! I wonder if there is a word limit??

Keep these great posts coming. I love your explanations, mountainxtc, and they can't be too wordy for me. I'm off to teach today, and will tell my people that no "staticness" is allowed LOL. I'm joking, but people do get the idea that there's "one" position they should be in, rather than constantly adjusting their balance.

 

[Mary Tee]

Keep these great posts coming. I love your explanations, mountainxtc, and they can't be too wordy for me.

Me too...I think I will have to go to Whistler just to take lessons from Mountainxtc!

 

[Delawhere]

I would throw in an exercise to demonstrate

If you have the time, could you please...

Thanks

 

[marzNC]

2nd. when you put on your boots, do up the power strap first and do it up as tight as you can. make sure the power strap is underneath the plastic shell or it will not be effective.

3rd. tighten the top 2 buckles of your boots so they are tight. re-tighten after the 1st couple runs and again after lunch.

4th do up the bottom 2 buckles so that you can snap them closed easily with one finger. not too tight.

Tried this last weekend. Definitely can feel the difference. Thanks!

 

[Skisailor]

Me too! Thanks mountainxtc! I have never, in all my years, tried tightening the powerstrap under the shell. I saw your post and tried it during my last two ski days. I found that I got much more even shin pressure against the tongue of the boot that way, and it translated to even more control - more consistent and constant connection - is the way I would describe it. Great! Tx!

Wow. And I just got finished buying brand new boots after a long bootfitting session. The bootfitter told me to strap it in the normal way. Went to InnerBoot Works at Stowe without any pre-conceived notions of any boot I would like (cause I just didn't know) and they put me into the Lange Banshee Pro. I'm loving them so far . . . . but am noticing some differences from my old Nordica boots.

Boot is stiffer and there have been a few examples of "dicey" situations where I found myself in the backseat when I never would have been there under that same circumstance before. Hmmm . . . .

Do i just need to adjust? Or should I be thinking about asking the bootfitter to help with the flex. . . . .

 

[perma-grin]

I played around with this today and I am unable to lift my toes without engaging my quads....




ok, so let's set some things straight.... we are now starting to talk dynamic balance. your weight is going to move around throughout the turn as the forces acting on your body change. you will feel it more on the ball of your foot at initiation, and it will move back to (approximately) the front of the heel pad towards completetion. this needs to happen.


I believe we a saying the same thing you with the term "Dynamic "balance and me with "Kinetic" balance, balance or rather being out of balance and seeking to restack or rebalnce The balancing adjustments that are made at the lower levels of skier ability are less subtle and tend to be more noticeble, than the ones made at the upper levels. A greater ability of skill blending is taking place at levels 7-9 than at say 1-6 skill levels. As for lifting your toes up at the initation of your turn to restack, and you are going to engage you quads and gluts, to some degree to pull your pelvis forwards as you seek to pull your feet underneath you and bring your feet back under your hips. And I do agree, Balance or rather being balanced is ever adjusting as you move through the turn. We do use are quad muscles when skiing. Your quads are some of the most powerful muscles in your body, and your thighs do start burning when your body is out of balance, usually because your feet are being pushed out infront of your pelvis all the while your toes are desprately curled under trying to draw your feet back under your hips. It's difficult to do this with your toes curled under because your weight rest primarily on your heels and the metatarsal heads of your toes are not in contact with your boots footbeds leaving your ankle joint to open. I can hang easily in my boots resting on my heels with my toes curled under by breaking at the waist to compensate for my loss of balance but lifting my toes up rest the metatarsal (sp?) heads flat and facillitates pulling my pelvis forward and drawing my feet underneath me by closing my ankle joint(Note not locking it) That's why the "Crane drill" and the "pole pass" drills work so well they both force you to move forward to initiate the turn. And if "scarving and skeetching" can be words then so can staticness! As a matter of fact I intend to use it tomorrow with my group! LOL!

 

[mountainxtc]

and there lies the good and the bad about learning from different instructors. we are all saying the same thing, some people respond to one way of thinking about it, others to another. but students get confused, thinking that instructors are contradicting each other....

I often teach my students "opposites" (for example, if they are getting back seat, I have them try making some turns thinking about moving the hips forward into the new turn - the ever popular "push the bush" idea. then I have them try pulling the feet back underneath them. this can appear on the surface as being two entirely different moves, but it is actually two different ways of doing the same thing. I ask the students which felt easier/better/more natural to them and have them continue with that method).

I'm not familiar with the crane or pole pass drills... but I'm willing to bet that we have the same ones, just with different names!

And if "scarving and skeetching" can be words then so can staticness! As a matter of fact I intend to use it tomorrow with my group!

ever played that game where somebody gives you a word and you have to use it in a sentence with your clients that day (it has to make sense)? it's hilarious, especially if you have witnesses!

 

[perma-grin]

"Push the bush" but "don't tip the tits" (banking) we do teach alike. LOL! A few years ago I had a group of gals chanting that outloud as they worked their way through their turns, one of our male examiners on ED staff skied by and stopped dead in his tracks with the most perplexed look on his face!!! Then he burst out laughing! I stopped and held out my hands on either side and asked "whaaat? You've never heard of word association teaching before!? Pssssft! Sounds like you need a clinic! He said not with this group your makin' me blush!!! LOL! :ROTF:

 

[badger]

power strap instruction.

Ok. I feel like an idiot here. I simply cannot figure out how to make this happen.
My power strap will not go under the shell save for about a quarter inch just over the tongue, but could never stay put if I moved. The tucking in of the strap? I can't tuck the strap in anywhere. When my bootfitter worked on my boots, he never once mentioned this procedure; but then again, maybe he was more interested in the soles. (but if the strap is not used correctly it would affect on-snow performance, yes?) I'd really like to try this technique!

 

[mwendell]

Ok. I feel like an idiot here. I simply cannot figure out how to make this happen.

Don't worry - I was feeling like a total idiot too and am so glad you chimed in. I don't have my boots in front of me (Tecnica Inferno), but if memory serves, I have no idea how I would secure the strap under the shell.....

 

[altagirl]

I think some boots are better designed to work that way than others - I think it depends on how the cuffs overlap and how the powerstrap attaches. I could be wrong though.

I'm an oddball who hasn't actually tightened a powerstrap in years. Heh, and now I'm in tele boots where I only buckle the top 2 buckles (though my boots are tight enough they don't really need to be buckled) and leave the powerstraps so loose you could fit your hand between them and my boots, and have decided I prefer skiing with my boots in walk mode. Which seems ridiculous, but it seems to make my knees feel better without affecting my skiing much, so I'm going with it. (In some ways, I suspect it helps my skiing - my fore/aft balance is all me, not my equipment. But I still have good lateral stiffness.)

 

[mountainxtc]

I think some boots are better designed to work that way than others - I think it depends on how the cuffs overlap and how the powerstrap attaches. I could be wrong though.

You are correct. Some boot plastic configurations make this harder than others. The workaround I've used on people whose boots have plastic that comes up really high is to place the power strap under the top layer of plastic but over the bottom layer (argh, sounds complicated but it's really not!). Usually these are soft boots and the single layer of plastic does not interfere too much with the tightening of the power strap.

 

[badger]

MWendell, You have the Inferno? Is that this year's new race model? I have the Junior Diablo Race Pro 90...might be very similar in construction. Low calf height, and the outer shell does not come quite as high as the power strap on the sides and front. I imagine lots of boots are built this way, and maybe there are other brands that can accommodate this useful cinching.

 

[mwendell]

MWendell, You have the Inferno? Is that this year's new race model? I have the Junior Diablo Race Pro 90...might be very similar in construction. Low calf height, and the outer shell does not come quite as high as the power strap on the sides and front. I imagine lots of boots are built this way, and maybe there are other brands that can accommodate this useful cinching.

Yes, it is definitely listed as a Junior Race, 90 flex. It looks similar to the Diablo on ski.com. Here is a link to my boot:
https://www.skis.com/junior-race-sk...no-90-junior-race-ski-boots-2011-p199703.html

I am really going to try doing up the strap under the shell, but I'm not sure if I will be able to. I will report back after skiing this weekend.

 

[frenchgirl]

I ski with the strap under the shell because my calves are so narrow that I have a big gap otherwise.

 

[Choccyaddict]

Can someone do me a huge favour and take a picture of the power strap under the shell? I'm confused and need a visual aid.......................

 

[litterbug]

Sorry for the long post, but I’ve been really excited about this. It may apply only to those just starting to try to ski parallel, and some ‘expert’ skiers disapprove, but it’s been really great. Before this I was low intermediate trying to carve, thinking that was the only way to go. But carving is fast, and the only way I knew to slow down was a wedge, which made my inside leg stiffen and move forward, moving my center mass back and uphill, widening my stance, causing the inside leg to carve inward towards the downhill ski, crossing my tips and sending me over the handlebars. I started to think I just don’t have it anymore.

So here was my aha! moment, which came partly from a lesson and mostly from epicski.com's ski instruction forum:

1) At the transition from one turn to the next, I press on my old inside (now uphill) ski. I don’t lean into the uphill ski or twist or try to put either ski on edge. I just gently push my CM downhill.

2) Now, even though my skis are pretty flat relative to the hill, the movement of my CM tips them a little downhill, and they start to turn downhill, towards the fall line.

3) At some point, my CM starts to cross over my skis, and I approach the end of the turn. If I used gentle pressure to start the turn, the crossover is more gentle and my skis stay flatter, creating friction and steadying my speed. If I pressed harder I get faster crossover and can put the skis more on edge, but even then, I can flatten the skis at any point to control my speed, even in the fall line.

Some ‘experts’ think this turn is a bad thing, creating bad habits. :mad: Even my instructor was trying to get me to pivot the skis, but that felt wrong ( though I'll try it again later). But even after I’ll learn other techniques this I can always use this to control speed, and it was very easy to learn. All I have to do is move my CM downhill across my skis, allow the skis to travel back and forth beneath my CM, and manage the angle of my feet against the snow (I call it thinking with my feet). I feel connected to the snow, and gravity is my friend.

Last Friday I was able to use this to float over ice, chopped up hillsides, ruts, and much much steeper hills than ever without thinking about anything but the pressure on my feet. I may have even carved a turn or two. Can you say CONFIDENCE, my friends? Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!