Exactly "how" is 28 off (and shorter) "different" from 22 off?

[Lieutenant Dan]

I am a long time "15 offer" who finally dropped 15 off last year in favor of just starting a bit slower at 22 off. I made great progress doing that last year and was able to reach a PB of 5 at 28 off (34 mph) a number of times last year. This spring, while the weather has been not so cooperative, has been very successful for me and I even ran 28 off once last night (albeit just a tad slow).

 

Anyway....I've seen mention within this forum numerous times that folks think that 28 off (and shorter) is different from 22 off. I can feel how different 28 off is from the longer lengths, especially with respect to the slack (and subsequent slack hits) I seem to be getting while coming around the buoys (especially 1). What I'd like to understand, from the perspective of you short-liners, is how exactly you think that "28 off is different". I'm hoping that maybe understanding this might help me to put into practice some tweaks to help me ski 28 off (and then deeper) more smoothly and with less scrapping.

 

P.S. I am hoping to get some video of me skiing to post here soon so that you can critique what I'm doing.

[webbdawg99]

This one is going to be kind of tough to put into words. The biggest difference is the "feel", but that doesn't answer your question. But I'll try.

 

Wakes- wake characteristics at 22 are significantly different

Angles- running 22 with shallow angles is pretty achievable. Once you get to 28 and beyond, the angle of the ski's path AND the angles of the skiers body at the ball become much more critical

Whip- simply put, the feel of the line whipping you across the wakes as opposed to having to pull all the way across the wakes.

 

For me, when I was running 22 off as part of my practice sets, it made me ski "lazy", shallow angles, and narrow. When I dropped it, my skiing improved. Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. And for me, practicing 22 only enforced bad habits that wouldn't work at 28-35.

 

Hope this helps a little.

[liquid d]

The rope is 6 shorter.

[liquid d]

You are starting to advance on the boat much more as the rope gets shorter. You must not only get the width, but advance on the boat. By being further "up" on the boat, you will have more time to make the turn and be ready for the pull from the boat. The release becomes much more important. So don't rush the turn.

[RichardDoane]

@Lt_Dan - and stay on the handle

[lakeaustinskier]

22 and 28 are different passes and for some shortline skiers 22 off is a hard pass since the angles are different. Body position and handle control is the key for 28 off.

[Lieutenant Dan]

@liquid d - I knew someone would point out the 6 foot difference!

[jwroblew]

they ski the same, the difference is in your head

[Lieutenant Dan]

@liquid d - I get that with the shorter rope you will need to advance on the boat more just to get outside of the buoy, i.e. its just simple geometry.

 

@richarddoane - I feel the need to stay on the handle longer to get the "whip" that @webbdawg notes.

 

I don't get the need to not rush the turn. Could my trying to rip a tight turn be causing me to lose connection with the rope?

[webbdawg99]

The shorter the rope gets, the smaller is the window to load, and more time is dedicated to the turn.

 

At 22, you could ski to the buoy line, ski down course, the turn at the ball, pull cross course to the other buoy line and do it again.

 

At 39, look at an over head shot of the skiers path. They are almost constantly in a turn. There is a very short segment right behind the boat that the ski is traveling in a straight line. But as soon as the edge change is made, they are initiating the turn. The shorter the rope gets, the more time you're spending in the turn. (Which is from initial edge change to reloading the rope)

[Than_Bogan]

(Edit: This turned out to be a little redundant with folks who posted while I was composing this, but that's probably a good thing: Shows we're independently thinking similarly.)

 

IMO, the reason that -28 feels like a giant leap is because of a symptom: It's the first pass where if you don't get your gate right, you can't get anywhere at all. (I mean when you're first challenging it, of course. A -38 skier can royally screw up her -28 gate and still run it.) So you immediately feel "stuck," which for many people is the first time they've encountered that.

 

Now, as to WHY that happens, that's a much harder question. But I think the core reason is from liquid_d's second, and substantially more useful, response: -28 is where you really begin to notice that you are travelling up on the boat, as opposed to just back and forth. This means your "effective" pull range is getting shorter: consider that not long after you pass the second wake, you are beginning to travel somewhat in the same direction as the boat, so it quickly becomes useless to leverage hard. But you still have to achieve the same width (and much higher rope angle), so you better have some serious speed already built up by the time you hit that centerline.

 

The weird part is, once you really learn to master this, -28 can feel easier than -22 and -15, for the same reason: the pull zone is shorter. If you do everything right, you get a fast "whip" that happens in a short amount of time, and then you kind of glide into the ball. So there's a sensation of using much less effort. But if you do it wrong, it's very very hard to fix things up after the centerline.

 

Every rope length from here in is largely this same pattern: The effective pull zone is even shorter and you have to figure out how to build up even more speed in an even shorter amount of time then "manage" that properly during the up-course phase. I personally do not really understand how to do this at -38, and haven't a clue how to do it at -39.

 

One cool thing: From here out, an awful lot of what you'll be trying to do is very similar to the highest end skiers. They just do every aspect a little better (than either you or I!).

[liquid d]

@dan, what happens if you are not riding the rope sufficiently long to advance enough on the boat, is that you'll have the boat pulling you back towards centerline. It will make the approach to the bouy narrow, and hot, and you'll end up with the slack hit or hard to hold on turn. You can be wide enough to get around the bouy and still not advancing near enough . That video will get you some good feedback..hurry up- It's June!

[6balls]

The reason it becomes easier shorter is that as you become a shortline skier, you ski more like a shortline skier...I know, sounds stupid. 28 becomes some work, 32 and 35 become so cool, then at 38 things become pretty difficult again. At 28 when skied properly the boat begins to do some serious work for you if your technique allows it, and this is magnified at 32 and 35. It's like "holy crap", I allowed the ski to finish at the right angle, pulled only for a moment and look I'm over here waiting for the next buoy...cool!

The challenge as I see it is becoming a skier that understands better how to manage wake to buoy rather than buoy to wake. It's easy to crank a turn, set up a big load pull with tons of angle and bust ass to the wake. It's difficult to use energy and position gained into a smooth transition of energy outbound up-course of the next ball in controlled fashion.

At 22 you can simply pull all the way to the ball and turn. At 28 if you continue in that fashion, you will find the slack at the ball you mention. Trouble is you may feel like you need to pull longer to get out there at 28 off, but it's not the way to go. Your active, leaning away "pull" needs to be shorter, but your edge change/transition and outbound carry needs to be managed...which is another thread entirely. Hardest part of buoy skiing to master in my estimation and becomes even more important at each and every line length shorter than 28.

[SkiJay]

@Lieutenant_Dan I'm not a big fan of the statement, "28 skis the same as 22." Yes, the technique that produces consistent 28s will also deliver consistent 22s, but technique that barely delivers 22 will only produce the occasional scrappy 28.

 

+1 for the main difference being after the second wake. Continuing to pull after the second wake will get you around the next ball ok at 22. At 28, pulling after the second wake will pull you narrow and into slack rope after the ball.

 

The oversimplified answer to your question is that to ski 28 and shorter, you have to learn to edge change at the second wake while maintaining your lean angle with the handle held low and close to your core until you release it late in the pre-turn. This gets called all sorts of things like "maintaining your connection with the handle," "keeping your elbows pinned to your vest," "the-reverse C," etc.

 

It's all about using your upper body to harness the energy made available by the geometry of a short rope being whipped forward on the boat as it passes the center line, while casting your ski wide off the second wake with your lower body. It's very different from what you've learned on long line, and you will be studying this fabulously entertaining phenomenon for a long time to come.

[Dusty]

Most everyone here has posted some great stuff. I'll add- that at 15/22 you can 'get away with' pulling a little longer/less eficiently. At 28 and shorter, pulling after the second wake makes you faster and narrower at the ball, with less hope to manage a uselful turn.

[Lieutenant Dan]

Great stuff everyone. Thanks!

[SkiJay]

@Lieutenant_Dan I know the question here is specifically about how 28 is different from 22, and we are talking like there is a night and day difference. The truth is that lots of skiers can get athletic enough to scrap their way through 28 consistently while pulling way too long, but 28 is the real limit on this long-line technique.

 

Where 28 benefits greatly from a move towards proper shortline technique, 32 demands it. That, in my opinion, is why there is such a logjam of skiers stuck at 22 & 28 for so long. The sooner you can develop good wake-to-ball technique the better.

[Jordan]

I think at -15/22 the pull phase feels like a tug of war, while 28 and lower it feels like a pulse.

 

I also think that the speed changes and edge changes are more distinct making you ski more efficiently.

[SkiJay]

@Lieutenant_Dan Anyone who is making the course at -22 @ 34mph needs to start acquainting themselves with the dynamics of rope shortening, and -28 is perhaps too small of a glimpse into your shortline future to fully highlight these dynamics and the technique that they require.

 

I'm a fan of -22 and -28 skiers spending some quality time free skiing or shadowing the course at -35 or even -38. 35 off will teach you a lot about getting comfortable at higher speeds, developing a bulletproof stack, rope control (avoiding slack), and how to harness the considerable amount of energy available behind the boat and beyond the second wake. The experience gained during these enlightening sessions will relate directly back to your efforts to run the course properly at 28 off.

[rodltg2]

So should the wing stay off at 28 or go back on? I'm thinking I will leave it off until can run 32 consistently .

[Steven_Haines]

Try both

[Bruce_Butterfield]

The simple answer that most skiers overlook is that every time you shorten the rope, you have to have more speed to run the pass. How to generate and control the extra speed is the dilemma that plagues everyone from the 15 off'er to Nate Smith. But if you can't generate more speed, you have no chance of running the next shorter loop.

[Bruce_Butterfield]

Scot, its actually the opposite. When the rope gets shorter, the skier's path gets longer. More distance in the same time means your average speed has to be higher. Too many people over-analyze things.

[Horton]

What Butternut said ^

[Than_Bogan]

I overanalyze for a living, and my overanalysis agrees with what Bruce said. I've studied Dave Nelson's stuff a little. It's eye-opening and very interesting, but in the end I disagree with some of his methodology and most of his conclusions. (I should note my own analysis is quite flawed as well; it's damn hard to really do something worthwhile.)

[Than_Bogan]

@scotchipman One of Nelson's core assumption is that the path can be modeled as a sinusoid with a few harmonics. That essentially ignores the rope length right from the get-go, and in my opinion is not a sufficiently accurate model to draw any useful conclusions. According to my analysis, which explicitly takes account of the rope length, the path looks VERY little like a sinusoid and is very asymmetric coming into the buoy vs. leaving it (which harmonics don't help to model).

That's all I'm going to say about it here. This sort of stuff is far too complicated to discuss on a forum, and doing so wouldn't be likely to make anybody a better skier anyhow. If for some reason you want to get a lot deeper into it, send me an email: nathaniel UNDERSCORE bogan AT alum DOT mit DOT edu.

[Than_Bogan]

The main reason I haven't published anything is that all I can really do is refute stuff, including my own attempts. It's easy to find where the bad assumptions are; it's damn hard to figure out all the right ones AND get the math to work. I have no useful conclusions at this time, and quite honestly I doubt there is much that will ever be learned from serious math that will get anyone more buoys.

[Than_Bogan]

Whoops I lied about harmonics in parentheses above, but I can't seem to fix it with my phone. If offset in phase as well, harmonics _could_ help model asymmetry in and out of the buoy. My bad.

[ral]

@Scotchipman, on a simplified approach, it is easy to prove that the path is longer, assuming that at any length the longitudinal path component (downcourse) is equal and then using simple trigonometry.

 

Now, if you ski REALLY wide at longer lenghts, you will get a longer path (and obviously larger average speed).

[liquid d]

all I know is when I'm running 39, it sure seems like I'm hauling ass!

[liquid d]

that comment comes after reading Nelsons articles on scnitzskis.com 30 minutes trying to grasp his ideas...but they don't seem to jibe with the difference in speed I feel between 15 and 39....

[liquid d]

ps: Click on Wim's video running up the rope through 39 for you height challenged guys.

[SkiJay]

The difference in the distance traveled between long-line and short-line is not enough to account for the huge difference in speed. Most of the speed increase is due to the geometry of the rope. With short-line, time is squandered while falling back on the boat from the ball to the first wake. The boat's not waiting, so all this lost time has to be made up between the first wake and the next ball.

[ral]

@Skijay, totally agree. I did the calcs a while ago (maybe if I have time I will do them again), but it is marginal.

 

Mathematically speaking:

 

1) the average speed is larger when the rope is shorter

2) if skiing skiing similarly wide, the average speed of a world class skier and average joe at the same line length and boat speed are not that different.

 

Now, the top speed is indeed different at different line lengths and abilities. Unless you ski coordinates...

[ral]

@scotchipman, I will bite.

I did the same exercise for TW a while ago...

[ral]

@Scotchipman, first thing I can tell you is that in David Nelson's graph, the skier is skiing a wider path at 32 than at 35 and 38 (see my posting).

 

Also, to find significant differences, I will do the math comparing 15 off with 35 off. Differences between 35 off and 41off trajectorywise are marginal compared to the one between 15 off and 35 off.

[will]

Guys, Has no one pulled out the radar gun and mapped the info?

We did this a couple seasons ago. The data is very interesting.....

 

First of all. The top speeds reached by the pros are amazingly lower then the commonly sited speeds. They are also not that different then the average skier.

Our tests were far from "scientific" but consistent enough to ensure the results where meaningful.

 

So, anyone guess the top speed of say T Gas? On passes of 32, 35 and 38? We shot speeds off the second wake.......44mph. He was the top speed tested at the event.

 

This is far less then the oft sited 60-70 mph that is kicked about.

 

The truly interesting data was that the guys in our test group that are running 15 off are skiing faster then the guys running 32 off. Our conclusion was in line with the DN study. Time over distance equals speed. Top speeds for 15 offer's averaged 42mph. The rest of use hacks only were reaching average 40mph.

 

We since have moved on to considering that speed at the ball is good! How fast can you be in the turn.......we feel that we are just slowing down too much.

 

[doonez]

@will how accurate is this radar gun of yours? A few weeks ago a cyclist friend of mine put his Garmin GPS down the back of my wetsuit and set it to record the top speed reached. It was cold and getting dark and so I pulled the pin after a pass at 16m 58k and when I got back in the boat it was reading 82.6kmph (51mph). This is significantly more than the 42mph you are talking but of course does not contribute to your theory of 15off being faster because that speed of mine may have been recorded at 15off or 22off. Hindsight tells me that I'm an idiot and should have checked after each pass! In the near future I hope to use it again and record the different speeds

[SkiJay]

I skied with GPS for awhile and regularly saw ~50 mph max speeds at -32@34. I don't put much stock in it though because the sample rate is just too slow.

[liquid d]

your radar gun or pilot shooting the radar gun are in error. He's an article from Waterskimag from a while back...Todd shot Wade and a bunch of other guys:

 

This is Wade's comment:

What I find most interesting after looking at my recorded gate

speeds into one ball is that between 15 off and 35 off I was

traveling at almost exactly the same speed. However, as soon as we

shortened the line from 35 off to 38 off, my gate speed increased

nearly 4 mph (from 49.7 mph to 55.2 mph respectively). This big

jump made in speed made me wonder if that’s why so many

amateur skiers run 35, but rarely learn to master 38 off.

 

In a perfect slalom world, the skier would want to achieve a

180-degree arc on the boat from one buoy to another. The key to

reaching this 180-degree arc on the boat is obviously speed. The

only real way to keep up with the slalom rope shortenings is to

travel faster.

[liquid d]

Wade's Speeds

15 off – 49.8 mph

28 off – 49.3 mph

35 off – 49.7 mph

38 off – 53.5 mph

39½ off – 54.6 mph

41 off – 55.2 mph

[ral]

@Scotchipman, yes he did.

[webbdawg99]

I remember that Wade Cox article. This discussion came up some time last year. I actually emailed Todd Risto. at Waterski Mag and suggested that it would be neat to see that article about Wade revisited with some of the current skiers like Nate, Tgas, Cp, Asher, etc. Unfortunately, he never replied.

 

I agree that the peak speed is higher at the shorter line lengths, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the average speeds are higher.

[will]

We were using a MLB pitching speed gun. Now admittedly, as stated....we are far from scientific. It was just the consistency of the speeds that was so striking. The methodological was to stand at an angle so as the skier was traveling directly at the gun while the "shooter" was standing in the water, in the same location for all skiers and shooting at the time (as best as possible). We were capturing the top speed as the skier was entering the whitewater. You would be able to pickup a couple speeds during each pass. Wake crossings in and around 40mph and in the turn/ball in and around 25mph. When we took the gun to a pro stop. It was very interesting that a 34mph skier did register the highest speed of the day. Not sure what that means other then the formula for speed comes to mind again. Time over distance equals speed..

We sure did have a great time doing it and we all learned something about our own skiing ...double win.

 

[Dusty]

I can no way recall the necessary math, but as mentioned, I am not sure the skier path is a lot different unless deliberately skiing very wide at longer lines. What I can say for sure from watching a bunch of really good short line skiers from the boat and from towers- the work they do at -38 and shorter occurs in a much more compressed area, and the accelleration required in the restricted distance accounts for the increase in speed and effort expended. In physics, max tension equals max accelleration to a given constant mass. One skier described it as requiring more patience at 38 than 35- he says "there is no boat there for you" right off the ball. When driving them, I can feel where they are, but coming off the ball, there is not much tension in the line. The load builds progressively to max around the first wake...

[mwetskier]

its not possible for the skier to travel directly at a radar gun because the skiers path is never a straight line so its not accurate. any traffic cop can tell you about the restrictions on using radar to legally map a drivers speed and one of the big ones is you cant use radar on a curving stretch of road because its not accurate and the ticket can be beat in court. the best way to solve the speed question and the short line path question is old fashion aireal mapping and graphing with direct overhead video shot from a helicopter going the same speed as the boat. maybe the guy who posts those overhead videos here could help do that.

[Gloersen]

Slalom Math

 

Here we go again. For a given amplitude some aspects are set in stone.

 

IMHO the difference lies in the fact of the endeavoring shorter line skier coughing up the handle too soon. As the line lessens the response to the additional speed is to serve up the handle too soon. One can run passes at 15, 22, 28, & 32 off by doing so, but 35 off & less requires a leap of faith, confidence in the face of the additional speed to keep the handle at the core (connected) further out on the width of the course; in fact to ski wider than the buoy line.

[Bruce_Butterfield]

Scot,

 

Its been a while since I looked at these, but David Nelson's graphs and math very clearly show that the skier's path gets longer as the rope gets shorter and both the skier's average and peak speed increase as the rope gets shorter. His plots seem consistent and make sense.

 

I do like his theory on the efficient path. If I can summarize it in my words, its maintain as much of your speed as you can through the turn and don't slow down.

[Dusty]

The speed read by a radar gun is always lower than or equal to the actual speed- due the angles involved. Target 'noise' also influences the reading. It's best to ensure that whatever you are reading has the striongest signal as well. The units read "closest, biggest, fastest" in priority to 'other' reflections- like spray, background etc.

[ral]

@Scotchipman, I need to thank @Gloersen, as he saved me some work on a busy week... His document is exactly what I was planning to do, "assuming that at any length the longitudinal path component (downcourse) is equal and then using simple trigonometry."