Ski or Form Help

[Ibskiing]

Hello,

I have reached a wall and need some suggestions for help. One observer told me I didn't look comfortable on my ski. So I am open to trying a new ski or changing my technic.

 

I currently ski on a HO Syndicate A2. My best on this ski is 1 ball 34 mph 28 off. However, I haven't run my 22 off in the past 2 years and have struggled with my 15 off 34 mph pass.

 

I have a tendency to ski too much on my tail, especially on my off side.

 

So I am looking for suggestions to fix my problem or I am open to a ski suggestion for someone that tends to get back on my ski.

 

Thanks

[liquid d]

Video your next set and put it up. You'll get plenty of good advice to help. It's really not possible to help without seeing it.

[Ibskiing]

[Ibskiing]

Liquid, this was one of my last sets in September on a D3 Arc, 32 mph @ 22 off

 

[gregy]

Get wider at the gates, your actually get fairly wide its just too early and drifting back in. Start behind the boat hips more forward and weight biased on the front foot. Try to keep the handle lower from start to finish of the pull out into the glide and keep your hips up with the front foot bias and come up into the glide stacked. Its hard to get stacked if you don't start out that way. Your a LFF like me, the turn into the gates is like an offside turn so you want to engage the front of the ski more. Check out some LFF skiers on youtube. Chris Parrish, Seth Stisher, Samantha Dumala come to mind. Nick Adams but he does kind of a hybrid one hand gate.

 

After that its like you say your back on the ski. It keep the ski from coming around so your getting long exaggerated turns. Try to get more balanced on the ski. Sometimes when I start getting on the tail into the turns its because the tip of the ski is getting too sensitive. In that case you need make some adjustments so the ski comes around like you want it too.

[mwetskier]

imo you need to completely change your form. currently you're hunched out over the front of the ski with your chest and balancing that by having your butt out behind you. you may actually be at your maximum ceiling right now at 22 off with that body position.

 

you need to completely switch the positions of your hips and your chest, pushing your hips out over your front foot and getting you chest up tall and back behind you hips. thats the only way you'll ever get off the tail of your ski and progress up the rope. instead of bending at the hips when you bend your front knee you need to *straighten* your hips and bend you front ankle instead.

 

so that amounts to driving your hips forward and not bending at the waist, along with bending your front knee and your front ankle. the more you bend your knee the more you should bend your ankle at the same time. this will move your hips forward over your front foot and your shoulders will naturally come upright and back a bit to balance yourself over the center of the ski. its actually about a 180 degree switch from what you've been doing.

 

don't shoot the messenger.

[skialex]

Have you asked anyone to look at your ski settings?

Ski performance and form are related. If you have doubts you have to check your ski so to minimize that factor And then focus on your technique

[skialex]

Ok, I just watched the video, I'm with @gregy and @mwetskier . Also if you liked that ARC, it looked good on you, so if money is not an issue, buy it and forget about the ski and focus on the above suggestions.

[liquid d]

@LBskiing greg hit on a couple things that jump right out.

Pull out wider on the gate, be more balanced (with more weight on the front foot than you do now). Keep the ski on outside edge until you're ready to turn for the gate. Keep line tight and waste high. Turn in smoothly with more weight on the left ball of your foot. The pendulum motion is easier to stay wide, if you start wide.

As you get better starts, with better balance, your hips will be more forward. This will stop the head and shoulders from compensating (that hunched over look). You'll be finishing the turn with more angle, at a slightly slower speed at the finish of the turn.

Good luck!

[Wish]

To get higher on the boat, try to emulate this video. Tall and having your weight on the ball of your front foot are key factors that you're missing. Unfortunately you're opposite of those keys. It should feel very diff and probably uncomfortable. It may also change where you pull out and where you turn in and that's ok. You can adjust for that as you get better at it. Spend some time just shooting gates (drills) and get good at it. This will make a world of difference in running the course.

 

[fu_man]

Arms straight. Don't pull with biceps.

[Ibskiing]

Thanks for all the tips. My struggle is I try to start with my weight on my front foot and my hips forward, but I can not seem to hold that through the course. Especially on my off side I really revert to the tail and then as everyone has noted, I cannot finish my turn fastest enough.

 

Do you guys have some good on and off the water drills to help me with my body position? The problem is I have been skiing like this my whole life, now I am 60 it is hard to get this old body to listen to what I am telling it.

 

[gregy]

It just takes commitment. You may have to backup some to go forward. Work on passes that you run easy and commit to proper form. I was in the same boat just a few years ago. I sought out coaching and watched a lot of videos.

 

I also use visualization, when I have extra time during the day I close my eyes and visualize running a slalom course with perfect body position etc. I've also set up a short rope and handle in the back yard and step through runs. I once was an aspiring Olympic Archer and was taught this by an Olympic coach. She would close us off in a dark room before matches and have us visualize the perfect shot over and over as well as doing dry shots where you hold the bow out and do dry shots by going through the motions without drawing the string. Basically you can do 100s of visualized runs without expending the strength and energy. There are people here who say this is useless but it helps me. I've had some top coach suggest free skiing or shadowing buoys so you can focus more on technique than just getting around buoys.

 

I tried the Gut gate but I can't get it to work for me exactly. Just my opinion, seems like the LFF dynamics are too different. I pull out and try to get in the best stacked hips forward position I can in the glide. I keep the handle low and while staying in that stacked position let the boat dictate the turn in on the gates so that I never loose connection with the boat. Adam Cord talked about this in another thread that tension in the rope helps keep you from falling back on you rear foot.

[liquid d]

Start that move to the gate by pressing the right knee and shin into to turn (slightly bent forward). That's the feel you want.

[Wish]

@gregy Adam Cord is a righty and Adam Caldwell is a lefty. GUT works either way. Your last paragraph is mostly all GUT in it's description and good advice. My daughter is an Olympic Archer and does the same visualization. I have tried that for skiing. I think my A.D.D tendencies get in the way of visualizing anything in it's entirety. ...haha.

[SheSkisStrong]

I retired this season for the same thing you are going through. Well, I didn't actually retire but I finally was willing to listen to someone else and we worked a lot on my gates. I do the same thing, I get high on the gates early and drift in. I also have a horrible habit of being on my back foot. Generally, if I don't work on anything else in the course, if I'm high on the gate and don't drift in and keep the rope tight as I drop in, and I remember to pick my heel up on my back foot before I turn in for the gate, my passes generally go a lot better. That gets me through a lot more passes, not to say some of them aren't ugly as sin because I have a lot of things to work on, but I get through them more frequently with just those two things in mind. I am on the A2 as well.

[Wish]

@Ibskiing (drills) consider free skiing . On that lake, just run the course opposite the buoys. In the pics below you can see you are nice and tall off second wake when the buoy was no longer in play. Shorten to 28 off and just move side to side as tall as you can get.

 

Also consider shooting gates only. Practice gate out move, in move and through the gates and out to 1 ball. Then as you ride down the lake, think about what went well and what you will change for the better mear seconds after it just happens...repeat.

 

 

 

 

[gregy]

@wish I looked at some of Caldwell's videos, yes that look more like what I've been working on. It's the extending my arms out like Cord does - I have a really hard time getting the ski to come around underneath me. I usually end up with about 3/4 of a turn and no angle doing that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ5JqU0AqI4

 

[ScottScott]

Looks to me like you went through the gates, but were late to 1 ball.....not enough angle. It almost looked like you started to turn in for gates once, then realized you were early and then held off, then went but were still early so you took too straight of a line to the 1 ball. Maybe needed to wait and pull out a little later (maybe you had a head wind?) If you're late to the 1st ball, your pretty much screwed for the rest of that pass.

[mwetskier]

@Ibskiing -your hardest challenge will be to stop skiing passes. in fact i bet you won't be able to do it because i ski with some very good skiers who can't stop skiing passes either. but if you *really* put your mind to it maybe you'll be the rare exception.

 

when you get up out of your deep water start if your not immediately skiing with virtually zero weight on your back foot then you already started to fail. @horton once said that you need to focus on skiing in the proper body position 100% of the time. meaning when your behind the boat on your way to the course and in the turn around circle and when you glide to a stop to rest or shorten the rope. if you can't muster the focus to ski in perfect position at these no pressure times when you have no buoys to worry about then you've got no chance of doing it in the course. so your new habit building exercises have to begin outside the course.

 

then you need to focus on pulling out for your glide to the gates in perfect body position. and heres where it gets hard -you don't get to turn in for the gate. you simply glide in perfect position for as long as possible and then let yourself swing back over next to the wake and repeat the same perfect pull out again. you can get three pull outs in the length of the course and then turn around and do it again and again until its hard to remember how you used to do it so badly. And the whole set you never got to ski around a single buoy. Which i bet you can't find the discipline to do.

 

the same method can be used for every individual step of the course. you could easily spend many set just pulling out and gliding. or pulling out, gliding, and turning in for the gate. or even adding a 1 ball to the drill. but you cannot learn the proper body position and try to run passes at the same time. and thats what make it near impossible to change your habits, because not skiing around buoys just isn't all that much fun.

 

again, don't shoot the messenger.

[Deep11]

Listen to @mwetskier that is the best advice you will hear - leave the ski and the course alone - work on you. Learnt to Enjoy the small progressions rather than going round bouys - video yourself more so your can see the changes you are making - post them here too

[AdamCord]

@Ibskiing what kind of boots are you using?

[VONMAN]

Your skiing at the 1 ball, you need to be wide and early so your apex of your turn is before the ball, so you can backside it and set you up early to 2 ball. Instead of skiing at the ball pick a point 15 feet before the ball. Try it you'll like it.

[jerrym]

One drill I can suggest is to get into the perfect body position that @mwetskier is suggesting when you pull out at the end of the lake. At this point in the pass, you can focus solely on body position and the feel of the ski, with no distraction from buoys. Look down to see where the water breaks on the ski, and glide on your front foot until you sink. NO BACK FOOT AT ALL! Get some video of yourself doing this as well as feedback from the boat. Make this a habit every time you drop. It will help build a foundation for this body position when you pull out for the gates. @Ibskiing and @SheSkisStrong - do not give up, this is a problem for most skiers and once you break through, you will find the pure joy of carving a clean, fast turn.

[Ibskiing]

Adam Cord, I just purchased a Radar Profile front boot and their hybrid rear. I was on some older HO boots, but they were wearing out.

 

[ski6jones]

Do the suggested on your gates. Wide, turn in with front foot pressure. Keep at it there and it will continue into the coarse as you get more poficient at it. If you don't start wide with good cross coarse direction you won't get more as you go down coarse. Gates are key.

[AdamCord]

@Ibskiing Did your skiing improve or get worse when you switched bindings?