Need a little advice for 35

[kpickett]

OK, so you all convinced me I should ski more tournaments next year, so I should get a little better at my skiing. I just started working on 35 a couple weeks ago. I've been around 2 ball a dozen times and around 3 ball once last weekend. I'd love some advice on how to break past the two ball wall. Any suggestions?

Here's a video from today. It's not the best 32 I've ever run, but it's pretty representative of a first set of the day after a week off. This is 22, 28, 32, and 2 balls at 35. I'm at 34, LFF, on a Prophesy.

I always appreciate the suggestions from all of you experts on the board. Thanks in advance.

[Old MS Accout]

Looks pretty good but you could use a little less head forward lean while crossing the wakes behind the boat.

You may be pulling a bit long towards the bouy. Get off the lean sooner but keep your outward direction off the edge change. Go to the end of the rope and extend your arm more. It looks like your elbow is bent and you are not fully extended around the ball.  

[kpickett]

Hey MS - thanks. I get the second part, but I don't quite understand the "head forward lean." Do you mean that my head (and leading shoulder) are dipped, or that I'm too upright? Thanks a lot. I'm going to work on it today.

[Boody]

Nice quiet style, your upper body remains still, which is good.  Your wake crossings look solid.  Also, really nice sight.

Your legs are too squated, which means there is not enough pressure on the tip of the ski.  You need to come up on your front foot in the turn.   If you do this with bent knees, it will make it very hard to hold when the ski "bites", it will just fold you in half.  Stand taller, at least in the turn, and preferably all the time.  If you look at all the pros and/or great skiers, they have an obvious movement to the front of their ski in the preturn and into the bouy.  Your compressed legs are causing too much weight to be put on the back of the ski.  When you stand tall and get on the front of the ski, you will feel the ski start to slow down and carve, you can then begin to think about the finish of the turn. 

 

[Old MS Accout]

Kpicket,

if you look at your wake crossings, your head is ahead of your hips and ski. Look at your 28 pass. Comming out of 3 ball, hit pause right when you hit the white wash. You will see your body is out of position and this position will cause you to over pull and run late as you progress down course. Pause again comming off the second wake out of 4 ball. That is an indication that you pulled long to 4 and now are running late and you are now going faster then you should be at 28 off. You have the same look comming out of 3 ball at 32 with the same result comming out of 4 ball off the second wake.

You may try to put your hand on your hip comming out of 3 ball and do not reach for the handle. By bringing the handle back to your hand on the hip, your hips will stay up and ahead of your body which will keep your upper body open and down the rope to the pylon.

I hope this helps.      

[Than_Bogan]

I agree with everything said so far, including the compliments:  You've got a nice base here.  I'm going to repeat using slightly different words, because as a student I've always found it useful to hear the same thing from different people.

I think MS's note about your body position behind the boat is the most critical thing you'll have to change to get through -35.  In both directions, your upper body is slightly inclined forward from the waist, but this is especially pronounced as you exit 1/3/5.  The net result is that your hip is slightly trailing your center of mass on your way across, and that you are slowing down your ski during the pull (the opposite of what you want) by having a lot of weight on the front.  This actually forces you to pull "too long" because you don't have the angle and speed to get wide if you don't.

Changing this will most likely not be easy.  At first it will feel very uncomfortable to try to lead every movement with your hips first.  Some open water work would be ideal, but I realize that's not very fun.

The most critical places to make this change are:

1) Turning in for the gate.  Make sure your hip leads the way and that you are completely turned and in solid position before loading up.  Experiment with consciously keeping your head back to prevent the forward lean, but if that is disorienting then just worry about your hip.

2) As you exit each turn.  When it's time to ski back to the rope, make sure you again lead the turn around with your hip, not reaching for the rope until the turn itself is complete.  Important: If you are finding this extremely difficult to do, it most likely means you are not entering the turn with good body position, and that might be a good time to go and read Bruce's handle control article (on the front page of BOS somewhere) about 20 times.

Then you should find your hip is leading the way, that more ski is out in front of you, and you have better angle.  In turn, doing this again at the NEXT finish-of-turn will be that much easier because of where your weight is on the ski.

You'll know you're doing this correctly when you feel like you're being shot out of a canon as you exit the second wake, and thus aiming wider than you ever have before.

Refer back to all the advice here frequently, but remember to only focus on one thing at a time. 

GOOD LUCK!

[kpickett]

MS and Thanimal,

 

Thanks very much. I see it now, and I think I get it. Last year at our Face-to-Face clinic, that's exactly what Marcus was working on with me. I did have a few times when I led with the hip and had that shot from a cannon feeling. I've been working on other things, and I kind of forgot about that. I will work really hard on the body position and skiing back to the handle instead of reaching for it.

 

I really appreciate the advice!

Kyle

[kpickett]

Boody and Brent - Thanks, also. I've been told many times to stand up taller at the ball. I'll work on that, too.

[Than_Bogan]

Btw, one reason I "know" about this is that I just realized recently that I was getting my head forward on my gate.  It took me about 2 weeks to improve this (I won't say "fix"), but then all of a sudden my -38 gate went from pretty horrible to pretty managable.  Thinking I might even have a shot to run it this fall, which I haven't done in quite a few years.

I find everybody tends to be working on the same things, just to different degrees.

[RichardDoane]

kpickett - you look very comfy in your skiing position, a very good thing.  At 35 and shorter it's all about getting a good start, that's why everybody gets hung up at the 2 ball whenever they get to a new line length.  "Stuck @ 38" was one of the very first discussions I got in on as a BOS member a couple of years ago.  Work on running lots of 32's (get to the point of running 4 in a row without a miss), and get a nice wide "up on the boat" start, and if you don't overspeed coming into the 1 ball you'll be poised to run that -35.  Good Skiing, that's a nice looking site.

[LakeOneSkier]

Excellent post, and great timing as I too started consistently working on 35 off a month or so ago.

 

One thing I just can't seem to get is 'up on the boat' to start. If I pull out to early I'm drifting back in and then get a terrible angle through the gates. If I pull out later I'll be late coming back to the gates and screaming over to 1.

 

When do you start the pull out for 35, how far do you go out, and how do you maintain it?

[RichardDoane]

I go out as the boat's nose hits the greens, and back in as the the boat goes thru the gates, but everybody's gate is a little different so you do have to practice gates alot to get them consistent.

[Thomas Wayne]

EDIT: For whatever reason I currently seem to be unable to post any photos to the forum, so I deleted my comment - since it's useless without the from-the-boat Chet Raley photo sequence I created...

If I can figure out what I'm doing wrong (posting photos) I'll bet I can point out something that will greatly improve your skiing.

TW

[jimbrake]

Forget Pickett. Please send to me personally via email. I would like some free Chet Raley coaching and don't want anyone else to know what this "something" is.

Just kidding - I hope you can figure out how to post the sequence.

[T-UP]

Lakeoneskier,Try removing your wing. Since I removed mine I have become a lot more consistent with my 35’s. I don’t seem to draft back in while waiting to turn in and I really don’t notice not having it in the course. 

[Ed_Johnson]

kpicket,

Lots of good advice here and I would just like to add ONE simple thing. From the Hookup through the edge change add LEAN to increase your leveraged position. Good old Hip to the Handle, Arms Straight, Elbows to the Vest, Shoulders Back, Chin Tucked In "LEAN."

I thought I had lean till I skied with Andy Mapple who really showed me what lean was all about.

Also, if you can emphasize the lean in the Direction of Travel, there will be a substantial increase in acceleration and sustained angular momentum for carryout. With carryout being a key ingredient to your shortest line lengths.

Good Skiing,   ED

[Thomas Wayne]

It's hard to analyze a YouTube video because of the difficulty to study it frame-by-frame, but just hitting the pause/play button a few times convinces me that your edge-change and the release of your off hand are pretty much simultaneous.  A quick review of the Bruce Butterfield article on handle control will show that this is not the best technique for shorter line lengths.

I have lots of video of great skiers the I personally shot from the boat, and  - to a man - the release typically is delayed until 5 - 7 frames after the ski has switched from the accelerating edge to the turning edge.  At 30fps this amounts to about 1/6th of a second, which is quite a bit of delay (relatively speaking).  Here’s an example of Chet Raley at –39’, which I shot last year:

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n293/ThomasWayne_2006/Chethandlecontrol.jpg

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n293/ThomasWayne_2006/Chethandlecontrol.jpg 

In the frame immediately before #1 his ski was dead flat – not on either edge.  In the frame immediately following #6 he has released his right hand from the handle.  It might be noted that similar results occur (with Chet) at ALL line lengths from –32’ on.

So, while I can't dissect your YouTube video frame-by-frame, there’s no question your edge-change and handle release are not separated anywhere this much, if at all.  Regardless of whatever else you might need to change about your skiing, this is definitely one of those things.

TW

(PS: In case the photo sequence doesn't pop up I included a direct link)

[lakeo]

Nice job TW. Chet was able to explain exactly what you have shown here to me and it made all the diff in getting consistent shortline skiing for me.

[kpickett]

Richard, Ed, and Thomas - Thanks for your comments, too. Lots of great things to work on.

Thomas, thanks for those images. One of my friends has been telling me this for years. It's amazing to see how Chet does it. I like the idea of separating the handle release from the edge change - that's a way I've never thought of it before.

(By the way - the new Arm-Guard is great! Thanks.)

Kyle