Going out .....and coming back in again!

[Deep11]

Turning at short line is a different beast I feel than long line - at long line you can effectively carve a wide radius turn. At short line (32 and below) however this does not seem to be the way - every coach I've ever met says that your goal is to keep to going out and then get back in as fast as possible. Whilst no one is advocating a "slam" turn this seems to be all about maintaining a "tight line". (Smear / weight forward etc etc all still apply obviously).

 

My question is how do the "great and the good" do this. The only way Freddie and Whitney for example can stack those massive turns is maintaining speed and keeping their COM moving outbound. (keeping a tight line all the way out .)

Interestingly it looks like the dynamics of the ski in the water mean that as they force everything outbound the ski is actually on the turning edge and rotating towards their intended direction of travel. They just don't engage that direction until the apex. At which point the boat has moved far enough down the lake to maintain a tight line.

 

The one that seems to buck the idea of course is Nat - he regularly approaches the bouy with a loose line, suggesting he could get wider?

 

I know that some will be thinking it's the back arm connection off the second wake - which is clearly a factor (if that works for you - I'm more a trailing arm pressure guy - but really don't think anyone wants to get into that again!), it's when you release the outside arm I'm interested in.

 

Has anyone tried different things and achieved different results? Seems to me that if you keep everything going out until the last then a pretty good turn can be had whether you are perfectly balanced (for / aft) or not.

Conversely you can be well balanced on the ski carve a turn and run into slack / or simply fall over.

 

Of course the second part to this would be - once out, how do you initiate getting back in fast without just falling over or pulling on the line?

Is it fair to say that leaning into the turn (any turn) is bad thing ?

Apologies for the rambling nature of this, just trying to get it clear in my head. (And pass the time whilst my broken leg heals).

 

Kevin

[RazorRoss3]

You might not like to hear it but as someone who only started running -32 consistently a few years ago the single most important factor is your handle control/back arm pressure off the second wake. That is the only thing that will keep you on an outbound, early path. Until you have that working it is really difficult to say anything about the release because the line control and timing of the release are so directly linked to how well the handle control was executed off the second wake and out to the buoy line.

[Deep11]

Hi @Razorross3 Totally agree with the arm connection (whichever you prefer :)). My question is really after that. We've all had good connection off the wake and got out to width only to run into slack on the back of the turn. It really is "How do you keep going out to maintain a tight line?"

it's surprising how much this comes up when I'm in conversation with various coaches - could just be my skiing of course :)

[Wish]

Where and when you turn and get back to the handle is directly related to how much speed you took into the first wake. If slower then needed for width and space for ski to decelerate, slack happens. If you waited past the ball (as if it wasn't there, your slack would be no more. The ski would slow and the boat would be pulling away so you can turn into load sooner vs turning into slack with the boat next to you vs ahead of you sort of. But the ball is there and your ski is to fast do to long pulling/loading past second wake. If this happens (slack) at ball one, you can count on it happening all the way down the course. So it begs the question, what is your gate glide speed/width and ski speed into the wake off the glide? What happens there dictates how the pass will go; space and width which allows ski to slow to correct speed or narrow and late which forces longer pulls past the point of the ski slowing down enough and letting the boat pull away enough to turn into a load sooner rather then slack.

[RazorRoss3]

So slack can happen for a wide variety of reasons. A common reason is that the skier has allowed themselves to go to the buoy too soon so their down course speed exceeds the boats creating slack. In my experience this means the skier has given up the handle too early. Once you give up handle tension (this can happen either by releasing to soon or by giving up line tension with two hands still on) the boat is going to take you to the buoy and you will have slack line. Anecdotally, at -32 and -35 I still have two hands on the handle when I am at buoy width and don't release until I am about 15 fee away from the buoy if not less. In addition, I am not casually keeping two hands on the handle but actively squeezing the handle down to hold line tension. Because of this I feel that I am riding the end of the line the whole way out to the buoy and can turn without slack. If you give up the handle too early then the path of the ski shifts down course rather than out and that causes slack at the ball.

 

Specific to the reach:

First off I hate using the word "reach" because I think it is inaccurate and worse I think that it makes people "reach" in towards the boat which inherently creates slack line. If the rope was tight and I just reached in towards the boat, well, it is not longer tight. So don't think of "reach"-ing

 

In my skiing there is a disconnect between the visual from the boat and what I am trying to do/what I feel. I am going to go with what I'm trying to do/what I feel because we ski from a first person perspective. What I feel when I release is that the line tension that was previously held across two hands is now shifted directly into one hand, I do not feel a change in total line pressure, the only difference is that all of the pressure is now in the one hand still on the handle. By doing this I maintain my line tension and handle control after the release and on account of that the path my ski takes stays at the end of the line rather than going to the buoy.

The second thing I think about in the release is fairly basic but it makes a huge difference to me. I see a lot of skiers, when they release, the handle is largely beside them. The problem is that when you do this you have to fall away from the boat in order to get the handle back in front of you/between you and the boat before you can start pulling. What I try to do is place the handle about 6 inches in front of me so when I turn, my hips have room to come through behind the handle and I can immediately take off the other direction with no stall.

[Bruce_Butterfield]

Try this:

 

http://goo.gl/AP7zqD

[Wish]

This may be helpful as well in understanding handle path and why slack occurs without managing the path.

 

https://tinyurl.com/lmluosd

[Deep11]

Thanks guys, "Handle control " article is always a good read - in this case particularly points 3&4 on body position. @wish The GUT approach of "space and width" is where I am working. How to achieve Your point of "letting the ski slow" to the correct speed for the turn is what im getting at. "Pushing the inside hip forward or the sideways crunch " I have tried and had some success with. What do you feel about staying tall before the turn, keeping the upper body as upright as possible and the shoulders level whilst if possible,forcing the the direction towards shore with knees and hips?

In effect trying to leave the ski behind as far as possible during the arm extension, but not letting the COM fall in to the bouy. What I imagine in my minds eye is that the inside hip follows the handle down the bouy line during the extension while the ski continues its outbound path, but only in so much as I can keep shoulders level.

I reckon this could also be seen as countering but with a much stronger core and more specific aim in mind than just throwing your outside shoulder back ?

 

What I see a lot of in skiers just starting out in the course is a tendency to turn the bouy by leaning over into it as soon as they edge change, gets them through long line but I can't help but think it develops a habit that's really hard to break as they progress and want to shorten (once they get the stack sorted ).

 

Should we be coaching beginners to initiate the turn with the lower half of the body and front of the ski as soon as possible before bad habits develop?

[Wish]

@Deep11 try free skiing and you will see what I mean. You will pay more attention to where you are in relationship to the boat then where you are at with a fixed point in the water. And you'll feel when it is time to turn and connect with the boat without slack because you will wait for the ski to hit that perfect turning speed and the boat to be that appropriate distance away. You simply won't attempt to turn into slack line cause every fiber in your being will know you have to wait for the right time. You can't alter physics with hip movements or COM moves or handle control if your timing with the boat is off aka..slack. All those things do help but cannot be used to compensate for the former. You just have to find that timing with the buoy locations and if it does not start well with the gates (ski speed and timing with the boat), there really won't be much you can do to change what you have started. I spent an entire weekend at the Denali Summett and not once do they try to alter anything in my turn. And for the most part non of the other students were directed to do this or that in and through the turn. Once a lot of the GUT items fall into place, the turn is truly the least thing you will think about. Skiers that had terrible looking turns started skiing 100x better in and out of the turn and not one word of instruction was given about their turns.

[AdamCord]

@Wish explained this well. I can't stress enough the education you can get from good free skiing. Especially if you have access to a bigger lake where you can make a lot of turns in a row. This is what I generally suggest people do:

 

Ski at your max speed. Shorten the rope to your HARDEST pass. Now go out and start making turns, skiing aggressively as you can while still keeping the line tight. Initially this is probably going to be pretty low on the aggressiveness scale, but as you start to get a feel for where you are relative to the boat, you'll be able to increase.

 

Keep at it until you're able to ski at max intensity with a tight line. Once you can do that consistently, shorten the rope and start the process again. Some people are able to get this in one set, others need a lot more time. In any case, I can promise that going through this process is as good as any coaching you might pay for. This is the best/fastest way to learn where you are relative to the boat, and how to swing up and back on the boat.

 

Once you can do this consistently, get back into the course and keep your focus on where you are relative to the boat, not the buoys! You'll find that you're going around buoys whether you pay close attention to them or not.

[Deep11]

Thanks @adamcord I really like free skiing but haven't heard of that approach with the hardest line and then shortening - looking forward to giving it a try.

[wolfgang]

Question for @RazorRoss3 , you mentioned rear arm pressured but not what you are trying to do- are you for it or against it? Are you trying to balance the pull on both arms? Does this draw your shoulders more towards the back of the boat?

[RazorRoss3]

Back arm = right arm when going right (edit: from 2/4 to 1,3,5), left arm when going left (edit: from 1,3,5 to 2,4)

That arm has notably more pressure from the moment I get the handle at the turn until I transfer the load into the other hand during the release. In order to do this I try to keep the elbow of the respective arm locked to my side using shoulder and lat muscles. As I come through the wakes I tighten that flex even harder and the effect is that as the ski continues on it's path but the handle tries to follow an arch up the boat I am pulled up tall creating a natural edge change where my ski is outbound, my line is tight, my handle is under my control, and my overall path sets up on a wide and early arc to the buoy. As I'm getting up to the buoy, I begin a controlled release being sure to maintain the line pressure (don't give rope back to the boat quicker than it is trying to take it) and keep the handle slightly ahead of me. At this point I'm tall and my weight is balanced on my ski and because of that I can pick my turn point and come off the back of the ball. Rinse wash repeat 5 more times and presto.