Videos of my skiing - improvements from one year of skiing and multiple lessons

[Jilly]

Mileage is important. Get out for those of us that can't!!

 

[fgor]

The hip rotation in pivot slips is the biggie for most people. That's often why they are doing pivot slips. It's to replace that rotating hip with legs that rotate by themselves without the hip involvement. Being able to do this moves you into more versatile and secure skiing immediately. So keep trying, on blueish terrain, with fairly hard groomed snow. The wedge entry is important too, so I'll discuss this as well.

Practice session overview:
--Start your practice session with sideslips until the intimidation from the pitch is gone.
--Let's assume your skis are pointing to your right as you start your session.
--Then pivot to pointing them downhill, or close to downhill, then back to pointing right.
--Repeat, over and over. This is a half-pivot-slip.
--This backie-forthie movement involves a pivot to your left followed by a pivot to your right.
--Keep sideslipping the whole time.
--Once you've got this, try a half-pivot-slip from the other direction.
--Remember, you don't have to rotate them all the way to pointing downhill with either of these.
--Then put these two together to do full pivot slips, pointing skis all the way to the right then all the way to the left, sideslipping the whole time.
--Later, when you've got this, you can work on doing these pivot slips heading down the hill in a straight line with no left-right travel at all (difficult!). I can describe what to do to eliminate that left-right travel at that point.

Goals:
You have two important goals now. Both of these are important for your regular skiing. I'd isolate them and work on only one at a time. Your choice which to tackle first.
1. Try to do these half-pivot-slips without the hip rotation. Hips should stay pointing downhill as much as possible as legs rotate by themselves. Perfectly pointing downhill is anatomically impossible.
2. Try to do this without the wedge; parallel skis is totally possible. Yes you can!
3. Eliminating the left-right travel and heading straight down the fall line in the narrowest possible corridor can become a goal later.

Hip rotation:
Figure out how to do them without the hip rotation in one direction first, then work on the other, then put them together. Don't expect this to just happen one day. It takes time and persistence. Replacing the hip rotation with leg rotation independent of the hips is a very important thing for your skiing. Getting that dialed in will open up the whole world of upper level skiing for you. Practicing in socks in the kitchen is very helpful for feeling this movement.

Wedge entry:
The wedge comes from your focus on rotating the new outside ski/foot/leg. This focus effectively rotates that ski first because thre's no attention to the new inside ski/foot/leg so it lags behind. This causes the wedge.
--Solution: IGNORE the new outside ski/foot/leg. Shifting this engrained mental focus from the outside ski to the inside ski is hard to do, but amazingly it causes parallel pivoting skis. Once you do this in pivot slips, take it to all your skiing. Yes, shift your focus to the new inside ski/foot/leg for all your turns.
--Let's say you start working on a half-pivot-slip as described above, starting off pointing skis to your right. Your first pivot is to your left, to point skis more-or-less downhill momentarily.
--Focus your mind only on the new inside ski/foot/leg. Focus on rotating the left foot left to pivot left. Rotate it in place; avoid moving that foot out from your body.
--Then you'll need to point skis back to your right. Focus on rotating the right foot right to point right. Rotate it in place, not out from your body. Think of this rotation as like using a screwdriver. Rotate. Rotate only. No pushing the foot out or away.
--Do those half-pivot-slips over and over, until your mind can let go of paying any attention to the new outside foot. That's your big goal.
--Hold that left foot back up under you as you rotate it, avoiding moving it outward. Imagine it's a screwriver and just rotate it. Your right foot is so eager to rotate, it will do so without any help from your mind, so keep ignoring it.
--Then rotate the right foot to the right to get back to having skis pointed across the hill. Screwdriver!

That's about it. Try these every day you ski, whenever you're on terrain that seems tempting. Eventually they will kick in. I learned to do these one morning after two years of failure. I spent three unbroken hours just working on them, and by the end had a half-way decent pivot slip that didn't travel left-right much. Everyone is different. You are a determined skier. If your boots fit (mine didn't), you'll get it faster than I did.

Thank you so much for the detailed instruction - I was looking forward to trying that out this weekend, but as it turns out, we've had unseasonably warm temperatures for the last few days (up to around 45F at the ski area, and remaining above freezing for days) accompanied by hot winds which have both stripped away a lot of snowpack and turned what remained into complete slush. There was no hardpack or ice in sight - on the other hand, it was a good opportunity to try out some steeper ungroomed terrain, since it was all so soft!

Hopefully the cold weather will come back again before next weekend.

As for the boots - I am lucky enough to live not too far from a very reputable boot fitter who helped me and my small annoying feet into new boots last season. I had quite the boot journey, from 25.5 rentals (!) to 23.5 102mm boots (sloppy after two days) to 22.5 98mm boots + custom footbeds + aftermarket liners for extra hold for my narrow heels/ankles. It took a full season to get them fully dialed but now they're great. As a bonus, because I have poor dorsiflexion in one ankle from an injury, I was put into comparatively stiffer boots, so I won't be outgrowing these, ability-wise

 

[fgor]

Mileage is important. Get out for those of us that can't!!

Hell yeah Here's some photos I took this weekend to share!

Really fun, increasingly cruddy slush snow:



With all the snow melting (hot winds stripped a lot of it back - one of the local mountains reported 12" or 30cm of snowpack erosion over the past few days), coverage was a bit patchy at points and small (and large!) rocks emerged:



Views from the summit were lovely as usual though



One of the most challenging ungroomed runs I attempted. Wide angle photo, of course it looks like a green run from this angle ;)



But actually it's the part of the map I've drawn on here (the double red arrow) - at that bend in the cat track, there was a green "OPEN" sign. I watched a few people traverse across and ski down, and decided to give it a go. The short traverse was rocky at points and I was nervous for my skis but they got through unscathed! The run down was challenging because I have not skied much steep terrain, but fun It's nice being able to traverse across to do the lower sections of some of these harder runs.



It's amazing watching the really good skiers do these ungroomed black runs. I try to turn as quickly as I can but my turns end up being quite big with a lot of traversing in between. I see the good skiers doing both big fast turns and also smooth small controlled turns! I think the ones with the smooth small turns must have a lot more fine control over their leg rotation, so they are better able to control both their skis and their speed. It's very cool to watch and aspire to

 

[Jilly]

Patience grasshopper...it'll come.

Oh, I think Oz is on the bucket list for sure. If I can handle the flight...

 

[fgor]

Patience grasshopper...it'll come.

Oh, I think Oz is on the bucket list for sure. If I can handle the flight...

You can do it, for sure! I flew NZ to Vancouver right after 2019 Christmas. 14 hour overnight flight, plus an additional 5 hours of internal flight and transfer within NZ. It was grueling and I wasn't able to sleep on the plane but I got there, slept a bunch, forced myself to get outside and walk around a bit, ate some nice cafe food, and was feeling great within two days I am happy I gave myself a couple of days to recover in Vancouver before heading up with friends to Whistler.

It helped that the air hostesses were absolutely lovely. I'm a nervous flyer and they made the experience good for me. I've thought of them often during this whole covid thing :(

If you're doing Oz, I really recommend spending a few days in Melbourne. It's an awesome city!

 

[Jilly]

I've a friend who's daughter is there. So that's a no braniner...