Skier31
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Well, I certainly triggered a lot of responses with that post. I wonder if there's a misunderstanding.
I am not advocating carving everything. I teach pivot slips, and pivot slipping one's way down the bumps is a great idea. Learning to pivot slip down a corridor the width of the ski length, straight down the fall line, is a great thing to do. Pivot slips, the real ones, involve using a ton of fine-tuning skills, and those skills come in handy all over the mountain. I affirm the virtues of pivot-slips, and of releasing by at first flattening the new inside ski. Teaching bump skiing by starting with pivot slips is a great way to approach bump skiing. A quick pivot is fine in the bumps. If people think I'm against these things, that's definitely my fault for not being more clear.
Teaching "release" with a side-slip is one way to teach releasing, but it's not the only way. Side-slips do not directly lead to pivot slips down the fall line in a narrow corridor all by themselves, either, but they usually do lead somewhat automatically to manually-rotated schmeeeered turns. Those schmeeered turns are fine, as long as their tops are not rushed for fear of gaining too much speed when the skis start to point down the hill.
But cutting off the top of the turn "QUICKLY" with a manual rotation of the skis until they rotate beyond the fall line, when making groomer turns, in order to avoid unwanted speed, is not a good thing to teach. It's the "quickly" part that encourages a pivot & brace turn strategy. Surely this group agrees with this.
Or maybe not?
I'm curious. Maybe there was no misunderstanding at all.
Does this group embrace and affirm pivoting flattened skis fast at the top of the turn --- all the way past the fall line (aka cutting off the top of the turn) --- in order to avoid unwanted speed when making regular groomer turns?
I do not think anyone said sideslipping leads to pivot slips. Pivot slips are not an intermediate maneuver, as I am sure you know.
No, I do not advocate “rushing the top of the turn”. As I stated if the old downhill ski remains on its uphill edge, you must use something other than femur rotation to turn, usually upper or whole body rotation which leads to a host of other issues.