Help with the offside turn at 35 & 38 and anything else

[MikeT]

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Sorry video is not uploading to play. Will look to correct

[Horton]

Youtube upload instructions are in the FAQ

[MikeT]

Yeah this video was edited in the Go Pro Studio. I took one pass out of a longer recording and then changed it to slow motion. That could be the problem. It does play on You Tube however. It accepted it as you said it would. Have you had any experience with uploading off the Go Pro Studio site.

[Chef23]

@MikeT put in a link to the Youtube video. It won't show but people should be able to get to it.

[Horton]

@Chef23 no. All you have to do is post the link and it will show here

[Than_Bogan]

I just confirmed with Mike that this is the one he was trying to post. A complete -35 in slow-mo:

 

 

In recent seasons, he's been having trouble with his upper body pitching forward at the end of 2/4/6. Last year, it actually improved a lot from ski settings and technique adjustments, but it still seems to be happening to some extent and none of us local club members are seeing anything that might help fix it.

 

So help him out!

[AdamCord]

Is there a normal speed version? My brain is not calibrated for slomo.

[dchristman]

@adamcord if you use html5 for playback in Youtube you can double the speed.

[texski]

Kind of hard to tell, but it looks like he is looking down the lake until he gets close to the ball and then he is turn his head and looking down at 2/4/6 ball. That would cause him to dip forward.

[Bruce_Butterfield]

Way too much weight on the back foot. Its really bad on the pullout and turn in for the gates, but throughout the course as well. The ski setup looks pretty far off, so I'm not sure how much that is causing the back foot pressure, but I'd say the majority is the skier. The water is never breaking in front of the front binding on either side.

 

Too much weight on the back leg is exaggerating the shoulders turning and dipping on both sides.

 

1. Put the ski back to stock settings and maybe post another video after a few sets.

 

2. Really concentrate on front foot pressure with a slight knee bend in the front leg. The few times you did get weight on the front foot, you front leg was pretty much locked.

[MikeT]

Bruce thanks for the feedback. The ski is set to stock settings. This is a video from last fall and we are just getting going here in Massachusetts. I believe I've always looked this way. I'll double check the bindings again but pretty sure it's correct. Keep the thoughts coming!

[MikeT]

What else appears to be wrong?

 

 

[mwetskier]

@MikeT -isnt what @Bruce_Butterfield said enough? more weight on your front foot will keep the tip down and if you arent feeling noticeable weight on your front foot then thats cuz there isnt enough there. got to a easier rope length and try to focus only on feeling constant pressure on the outside edge of your left foot during pull out and then shift that to your left big toe on your turn in. try to feel that big toe all the way thru both wakes. as you initiate your turn for 1 ball shift your focus to the outer edge of your left foot and keep it there thru the next set of wakes. and so on.

 

with your weight back so far the ski cant turn crisply like its supposed to and you fall back on the boat drastically while trying to make that ski turn in for the gate. after that your behind in the pass and you stay there for the next 6 turns.

[MikeT]

@Mwetskier--Ok It's now understanding how to change and translate it out on the water. I Understand more weight on front foot for sure, but I've been doing this for years. I'll focus on the front foot pressure by pushing little more forward with knees? What?

@rico are you talking about the pre turn area?

@Bruce_Butterfield - Should I consider moving binding an 1/8" forward

Keep it coming.

 

[mwetskier]

@MikeT -you dont like the ouside front foot pressure / inside front foot pressure approach? have you ever tried it? they used to teach this in snow skiing to help use the skis inside and outside edges and also shift the weight forward. You cant put pressure on your front toes if you dont have pressure on your front foot. to me it looks like you pull out for the gate and then intentionally rock backwards to kind of ' put the brakes on '. if you got comfortable using your front foot you could keep your tip down and turn in with speed instead of turning in on your tail and waiting for the boat to pick you up to finish the turn much later.

[Bruce_Butterfield]

@miket the first thing I would move is your rear binding forward. If your rear toes are touching your front binding, then the next adjustment is moving both forward. I would go a full hole or 1/4" if you have slots. What happens then will determine the next (if any) adjustment.

 

Then get wide on your gate and push your front knee, hips and ankle forward.

[ToddL]

@Bruce_Butterfield - move 1/4" forward of stock? He commented above that he was already at stock settings. Just checking...

 

@MikeT - you asked "how?" I recently improved my front foot pressure and stack. This is what I did:

Once up, I try to stand as tall as possible and move my hips and core weight over my front toes.

To do this, I straighten my back leg a lot and think about using it to "push" my hips forward toward the tip of the ski.

When it is time to make a move out to get ready for the gates, the only motion I do is to think about twisting my hips from 12-o'clock to 10-o'clock, without making any other change. I don't lean back, etc. Just twist the hips only. When I do this, I shoot outbound because I have so much ski down in the water due to the tall, hips forward stack.

During the glide, I think about keeping the hips slightly rotated to maintain width.

To turn towards the gate, I have to think about the hips again, twisting them toward 2-o-clock.

I really concentrate on staying up and tall, during the turn in.

 

I hope this helps.

 

[MikeT]

Thank you for tips and any ideas to improve my offside turn as well

@mwetskier I'm not saying I don't like the front foot pressure technique. Just trying to think how exactly to do it and make it work. I'm a snow skier so I have an idea what you mean

@Bruce_Butterfield I'll move the binding ahead 1/4"

My original focus was looking for ways to improve my offside turn because I thought that was my biggest weakness. I now see there is a bigger problem with my weight distribution. So I'll see where that takes me and while doing that I need to work on better counter rotation I believe on the offside turn. Incorporating a different gate approach doesn't seem to hard to try as well

[Texas6]

Riding the tail is likely the main reason you are having trouble turning the ski on your offside. You also appear to be looking down at the buoy which always causes me to fall into my turns a bit.

[skidawg]

Bruce hit the nail on the head, everything starts from the gate, typical lefty issue is lack of width and starting the gate on the inside edge of ski and back foot!

[ski6jones]

"Then get wide on your gate and push your front knee, hips and ankle forward." - Start thinking about the front foot pressure at the gate. If you can get it done there you can start working it down course to 2-4-6.

[Than_Bogan]

@Bruce_Butterfield VERY interesting. That may be exactly what none of us saw. I have some follow-up questions to see if I can help out, and also for my own edification.

 

What does the proper weight distribution look like? To be honest, I can't really see the weight back that you're talking about (well maybe at the gate I can), so I'm looking to understand how I'll be able to tell when it gets better. Will I see the water breaking at a different spot? Knee/body visually different? Much more ski in the water?

 

Is the weight distribution in the pre-turn the direct cause of the dip that happens a bit later? I.e. would you expect that fixing that would making the dip vanish? Or is that dip a secondary problem to address later?

 

How will moving the binding forward help? I can see how that may force the tip down, but I guess I'd worry it would make any underlying weight distribution even worse? Would it be insane to think of moving it back such that he'd be more comfortable to really get on the front while still having his c.o.m. about where it is now?

 

Do you suggest making the binding move and then working on technique, or trying to adjust technique at this position first?

[jlittle]

I'm a lefty and I struggle with many of the things you are. My main focus this year is to stand tall, front foot pressure and try to stay in alignment. Coming into my off side turn I tend to reach forward and bend at the waist. For me it's what I call a safety move. My eyes (and upper body) tell me I need o stay with the ski through the turn, I'm anticipating the finish of the turn, the load of the boat coming and I do some not so fundamental things coming into the turn to make the finish manageable. Some of it has to do with not being in skiing shape. But the result is a stall, a loss of angle, slow acceleration off the buoy, all of the above, flowed by a panic move to get into my stack. Or the best stack I can muster up.

 

The turn for the gates has to be on the front foot, with some speed, a carve and a lean away. It is not a slow roll, falling back on the boat and on the back foot. A windshield wiper turn if you will. You offside turn should be very similar.

 

This video below is of a lefty. It may look like some scrappy skiing at the end of his turns sometimes but the line lengths are pretty difficult at that time. The one thing about this guy is, he never looses his hips.

 

[Chef23]

I always thought Rossi had a lot of weight on his back foot particularly at the gate.

 

[Bruce_Butterfield]

@ToddL, stock settings are a starting point only. Stock settings will never be optimum for all skiers.

 

@Than, there are several keys to picking out weight distribution problems:

 

1. Where the hips are relative to the front ankle. His hips are behind pretty much all the time

2. Where the water is breaking on the ski at various points in the course – its never ahead of the front binding like it should be

3. Front leg locking out (look at rounding 1/3). Locking out of the front leg is almost exclusively a lefty problem. I have no idea why.

 

Compare position of hips and where the water is breaking to someone like Terry Winter and you should see the obvious differences. Also look at the Jeff Rodgers video – his hips are nearly always over his front ankle. One of the things I sometimes focus on is lifting my rear foot on the gate turn in so that 100% of my weight is on my front foot. No, the rear foot doesn’t actually lift, but it’s the sensation or visualization that matters.

 

From what I saw in Mike’s video, the problem is a combination of ski setup and skier. This can very much be a chicken and egg phenomenon. The first step is to get the bindings in the right spot so the skier is able to balance properly. The majority of the times I see this, the best correction is to move the feet closer together (rear toes touching the front binding). This lets the skier balance better on a single spot vs shifting weight between back and front foot. Once the binding separation is better, the next step is moving forward. Sometimes this is the right adjustment and sometimes its not – but its easy to try and whether its an improvement or not should be obvious very quickly. Some may think ¼” is a huge movement, but the thing I’m looking for is a gross change that will be easy to tell if its an improvement or degradation. If its an improvement, I wouldn’t rule out going forward more, but I would like to see half a dozen sets where is focusing on hips/ankles/knees forward all the time.

 

The shoulder dipping should improve substantially, but maybe not eliminated, with better weight distribution and ski setup.

 

@Chef23, interesting comment on Rossi. He does have a lot of weight on his back foot on the glide, but shifts to almost all weight on the front foot as he turns in. What do you think is causing the tip to rise up so dramatically out of each turn? The only thing that saves him is getting it back down quickly.

 

[Than_Bogan]

AWESOME! Thanks.

[ozski]

As a lefty when I need to remind myself how it should be done, (which is quite often) I watch Seth - I could list all of the things that he does well but just watch and watch again.

 

 

 

[Texas6]

Yeah, Stisher is really smoothe. Those 2 back to back passes at the end were excellent. His pullout at 32 is much more narrow than mine needs to be to get a good gate and one ball, but I suppose that's why he was a pro and I am not. He gets much higher up on the boat at 35/38. He raises up on the front foot in the glide well, and then he has a unique handle raise he uses as a means to get his hips under the handle as he turns in. Seems to work pretty darned well for him

[ozski]

I really like his move over his front foot into the 2/4 side, plenty of ski engaged and very consistent. If your ever wondering how a slalom ski is meant work this is how things should look.

[MikeT]

Thanks for all the feedback. I need to get a practice plan set up and it would be great to get some detailed ski thoughts regarding how I should transform my technique when I'm on the water.

I get the gate technique so need take any time on that.

I'm going to move the bindings forward 1/4" and see what that does.

I have questions about just where it is important to get hips/ankles/knees forward and Bruce suggested I try to do this all the time. I pull a certain way now and do I continue to pull the same way and look to compress from the wake on or if I'm to push my lower body forward I'm going to have to learn how to pull with a slightly compressed stance if I interpret what your saying. Explain as best you can what I need to change in my pull and pre-turn area. Your thoughts

[JohnN]

You've got a ton of great advice here. One thing that jumps out to me comparing your video to Stisher (1:28) and Rossi (0:18) is that their inside shoulder is leading the way all the way through the finish of the turn where yours is rotating in early taking the pressure off the inside edge of your ski. Think of it in snow skiing terms - if you're carving a turn and, after you cross the fall line you rotate your hips and shoulders into the hill the the turn either washes out or the radius increases due to less inside edge pressure. I think if you can convince yourself to keep the inside shoulder up and leading, the radius and finish of your offside turn will stay more constant and smooth out. In addition to what everyone said about the hips forward, weight distribution in case you don't have enough to think about.

[DmaxJC_ski]

in the video of Jeff Rodgers he does a little extra swerve in his pullout, is that his way of checking his speed?

[mwetskier]

@DmaxJC_ski -i think he was dodging turtles.

[Killer]

@DmaxJC_ski yes it helps maintain a tight line and time/initiate the gate turn in as well. I've been doing it since too long.. Not something most would coach these days, but was a popular way of maintaining width, especially for those of us who didn't learn to ski with 55s. :)

[MikeT]

@JohnN I agree with the shoulder positioning. my entry into the turn is terrible especially on the offside. I began this year in my open water practice focusing on counter rotating so I'm off to a start with that. We just got the course in this week. I'll get a few sets under my belt and begin to implement the above changes. Thanks for everyone's help and input. I hope to post a improved video soon.