All those gates/slack-at-ball-1 threads

[andjules]

I just want to say thank you to everyone who contributed to the various recent threads on gates and getting slack at ball 1. I'd been getting fairly tight-line ball 1s @ -28 last season and early this season... then it all went downhill and I've been getting hit every time at 1. Reading and re-reading all those threads last week, I went out Saturday AM and ran -28 off the dock. Hacked around at 32 for a few failed passes and then went back to -28 for my last pass and ran it again.

 

What helped me most:

- unload a little earlier

- hang on with both hands a little longer

It's so counter-intuitive - you'd think that extra tug after the second wake would take you out early (and frankly, at -15/-22, sometimes it seems to)... but as so many of you have been trying to say, it does the opposite (more-so the shorter the line gets). Watching that video of @Sethski talking about the centerline on his iPad got me to realize: the longer your ski is between you and the boat, the less it will cast outbound.

 

Anyhow, thanks everyone, especially @Horton. I wish BoS had been around in the 80s when I was setting all my bad habits in stone ;-)

[crashman]

I too am having an interesting time thinking about Seth's video in the context of handle control. At this point, though, I think that slalom theory is far exceeding my ability to apply it. It did just hit me though, that as I'm working my speed up on the course, I've had success each step along the way speeding the boat up about 1mph beyond what I'm really capable of running, and then backing it down to my "PB" speed and running the course, and I think it might just be that doing this alters the timing enough to train me to release just a little earlier and gaining more width. I think I've been misapplying "handle control" as pulling too long.

 

And continued thanks to the advanced ballers and pros who continue to help out the mortals. What other sport can I post thoughts on a web forum and tap the brains of some of the sports best athletes?

[estrom]

@andjules...."the longer your ski is between you and the boat, the less it will cast outbound." I don't know if you quoted somebody there, but that's the most succinct way I've seen that put. Well said.

 

[sunvalleylaw]

Echoing the "thank you" here. I do appreciate all the good discussion and advice shared here.

[MrBrown]

http://www.usawaterski.org/pages/Instructional%20Articles/Slalom/SlalomTransitionZone.pdf

 

Stay focused on being

away from the handle with the upper body.

Do not engage your biceps, but rather feel

the trailing hip come up. The ski will release

off the second wake, and allow it to land

on the other edge. Essentially it feels like

your upper body stays in the same leaned

away position and your lower body swings

underneath you.

 

It is vital to know that any upper body

work here, like pulling of your biceps only

moves the upper body in, not the ski out.

This is the point where the majority of

skiers lose the most ground in the course.Focus on feeling your upper body slowly

come back up to vertical. Do not try to

make this happen, just feel it happen.

When you feel that your upper body is

vertical, let go with your outside hand.

This lets the ski continue on its most outbound

trajectory. When you let go with

the outside hand, focus on leaving the

handle where it is and skiing away

 

 

http://www.usawaterski.org/pages/Instructional%20Articles/Slalom/ProperEdgeChange.pdf

 

As the body crosses the midpoint of the wakes the boat

begins to pull the shoulders and the upper body back in

toward the wakes. The mistake the skier makes is allowing

this to happen too easily. It’s easy to spot… the lead shoulder

begins to lift back in toward the boat, and the elbows get

stretched away from the core of the body. This pulls your

body out of a leveraged position, pulls the ski toward being

flat, causes the path of the ski to head straight down the

lake (parallel to the boat’s path) and causes the skier to finish

the turn farther down course than is desired.