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Practicing failure on purpose

liquidfeet

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
^^ That is called "parameterizing." It can be done with any isolated thing in skiing. It's very good for learning how to improve your control, as well as for improving one's recovery ability.

Try it with both lateral and fore-aft weight distribution (already described upthread), for angulation timing (early to late in a turn), angulation amount (leaning in aka banking, to angulating), amount of counter (much to little), upper body rotation (early to initiate a turn, to late which means the upper body is following the skis), pole plant timing (early to late), staying low between turns to staying tall between turns, pole plant placement (forward of foot to behind the foot), arm swing (a lot to none), visual target (eyes waay up ahead vs down in front of ski tips), and so on. Vary the radius for each run while doing one of these parameterizations, and notice the difference in how much control over the turn you get.
 
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snoWYmonkey

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
@liquidfeet skiing intentionally to the point of minor failure, not dangerous catastrophic failure, is the fastest way to learn at times.

Good drills!
 

MissySki

Angel Diva
I always see the little racer kids on only one ski, that seems relevant here since they are working on one footed balance for things that may happen during racing. In that case I assume they want to have it be second nature eventually to be able to ski that way due to how quickly that could become necessary at high speeds in the gates?
 

liquidfeet

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Yep. Skiing on the inside foot, the wrong one, can occur when one loses balance or loses a ski. That's the weak foot balance-wise. It's good to not be reacting dysfunctionally when that happens, no matter whether you're in the gates or not.

We are supposed to be skiing on the outside ski. Lifting the inside ski to confirm that we are doing that is a great exercise for everyone to try, and it's not so difficult to do. It can also be a diagnostic tool to see if one is relying on the inside ski too much (you are if you can't lift that ski, even after the turn starts).

Skiing down the whole run on one ski puts one on the inside ski with every other turn. That's why the race kids have to learn to do this.

Undiagnosed boot alignment and footbed problems can make skiing on the inside foot difficult, as can weakness in the ankle and lower leg. But these issues don't impact skiing on the outside ski in any notable way.

Fear of lifting a ski and resulting heavy reliance on the inside ski is what messes up one's ability to ski on the outside ski. Well, it screws up many things about one's turns. Learning to lift the inside ski and balance only on the outside ski is much more easily accomplished through training and practice than learning to ski on the inside ski or on one ski all the way down the hill.
 

MissySki

Angel Diva
Yep. Skiing on the inside foot, the wrong one, can occur when one loses balance or loses a ski. That's the weak foot balance-wise. It's good to not be reacting dysfunctionally when that happens, no matter whether you're in the gates or not.

We are supposed to be skiing on the outside ski. Lifting the inside ski to confirm that we are doing that is a great exercise for everyone to try, and it's not so difficult to do. It can also be a diagnostic tool to see if one is relying on the inside ski too much (you are if you can't lift that ski, even after the turn starts).

Skiing down the whole run on one ski puts one on the inside ski with every other turn. That's why the race kids have to learn to do this.

Undiagnosed boot alignment and footbed problems can make skiing on the inside foot difficult, as can weakness in the ankle and lower leg. But these issues don't impact skiing on the outside ski in any notable way.

Fear of lifting a ski and resulting heavy reliance on the inside ski is what messes up one's ability to ski on the outside ski. Well, it screws up many things about one's turns. Learning to lift the inside ski and balance only on the outside ski is much more easily accomplished through training and practice than learning to ski on the inside ski or on one ski all the way down the hill.


I was just having this discussion with my instructor yesterday. This is the instructor for the all mountain group, so focusing heavily on bumps/trees/off piste.

He mentioned that in all mountain skiing we want more weight on both skis versus when we are carving groomers or racing. So he was encouraging me to be more two footed in general in my skiing so it becomes more habitual. I've got to tell you, over the years I've been told back and forth about having most weight on your outside ski versus being more 2 footed so many times it makes my head spin. Or maybe it is just more dependent on the terrain and focus I guess versus based on instructor.. It just seems that I've gotten the two extremes so many times it gets a bit cloudy on what I want to be doing when sometimes depending on who I'm skiing with. I mean in 3D conditions and terrain I get it, but the piece of doing it more on groomers was like eek in all of my other early season groups we've focused a lot more on outside weighting so I've been focusing on that when on groomers obviously.
 

Pequenita

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
I was going to post earlier today that I bit it doing an inside ski drill a couple years ago. I don’t even know what happened, other than I went down fast and hard on a mellow but firm slope. Coincidentally, it was before I had some boot-related alignment fixed. I wouldn’t recommend trying to mess up that drill, though. I think the only reason I didn’t break my wrist was because the fall happened too quickly for me to react.
 

liquidfeet

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
I was just having this discussion with my instructor yesterday. This is the instructor for the all mountain group, so focusing heavily on bumps/trees/off piste.

He mentioned that in all mountain skiing we want more weight on both skis versus when we are carving groomers or racing. So he was encouraging me to be more two footed in general in my skiing so it becomes more habitual. I've got to tell you, over the years I've been told back and forth about having most weight on your outside ski versus being more 2 footed so many times it makes my head spin. Or maybe it is just more dependent on the terrain and focus I guess versus based on instructor.. It just seems that I've gotten the two extremes so many times it gets a bit cloudy on what I want to be doing when sometimes depending on who I'm skiing with. I mean in 3D conditions and terrain I get it, but the piece of doing it more on groomers was like eek in all of my other early season groups we've focused a lot more on outside weighting so I've been focusing on that when on groomers obviously.
Sorry, I wasn't thinking about bumps and off-piste skiing, just groomer skiing, when I talked about skiing on one foot.
 

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