Teaching 15 off 30 mph

[Horton]

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_8uFLJhiZC/?igshid=y5gkdyeqc03

 

I have a few 15 off 30 mph (+/-) skiers skiing with me this summer. The actual fundamentals are the same but coaching it does not feel the same to me as working with someone at 32 or 35 off. After watching myself at this speed and line length I have come to the conclusion that stack is first as always and then making speed is second. It sounds like Capt. Obvious but when sitting in the boat with a skier who can not run this pass it is often hard to know where to start. I always hammer on stack but only recently have I worked with skiers at this level specifically about making speed from the ball to the second wake.

[Chef23]

I think making speed is very important. The problem is if the stack isn’t good the skier is afraid of the wake which makes making speed difficult.

 

Your 30 mph videos are misleading to people struggling to run 30 mph. You generate so much speed that you are almost changing edges before the first wake. Beginning skiers can’t do that if they could they would be running 35 off.

 

For people learning to run the course I have always reinforced the need to work from white water to white water. I know this doesn’t translate at 28 off and shorter but I believe without it beginning skiers will never run any buoys. Working through both wakes also improves the stack which will let skiers build speed earlier. The work zone is different for someone learning to run 30 mph than someone trying to run 35 off and if you try to coach them the same I don’t think it works because the 30mph skier doesn’t have the necessary fundamentals yet.

[Zman]

I like that approach. Doesn't good stack, building lean out of the turn into first white water, lead to good speed?

[The_MS]

Running 32 off is totally different then 15 off. Most 28 off and in skiers have no business trying to teach 15 off just due to not remembering how to do it.

[escmanaze]

I agree with @Chef23 that watching a skier of the skill level of horton run the pass is going to be misleading.

 

Below is an email I send to most skiers after about 3 times out trying the slalom course. Frankly, for at least the first 3 times, I think it is best to offer essentially no coaching. I basically just tell them, "go out there, and enjoy getting your butt kicked by the course and see what you can do." Even with no coaching, I think of lot of light bulbs come on in their heads and they make really significant improvement from pass 1 to pass 18.

 

But now, after about 20 passes, most of them have had at least some success at like 26 or 28 mph and long line or 15 off or something like that, and they are probably going to hit a bit of a plateau and they know it, and I know it and so they start kinda looking at me like "dude, are you going to start helping me now or what?"

 

That's when I send them my standard canned email for course newcomers.

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QuS3JTBfb1-EiCQ4mchHt3qehtBc8lZv29JjPHzw21g/edit?usp=sharing

 

It has contained in it a great article from @Than_Bogan in which he accuses them of "thinking slalom is all about the turns" and inevitably, they do. And that's the #1 thing they need to get over. They need to stop worrying about doing turns that look like the front of a magazine, and they need to start learning about stacked position.

 

That's literally it. I wouldn't coach a single other thing at this level of skiing other than stacked position, and let the turns take care of themselves. Just focus on stack stack stack. That's all we care about for this level of skier.

 

Once they start to realize that stacked wake crossings are 95% of what is required to run 30 mph -15 and the turns are only 5% of it, then they can start to have a chance at making this pass. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant at this phase of the game.

[Zman]

I ski with someone occassionally who struggled to keep arms and handle closer to his body as he crossed behind the boat, leading to getting turned inside far too early going out to the buoys.

One day, he simply leaned away much better approaching the 1st white water. Bam! Arms were close to his vest, handle close, and he didn't get turned to the inside so early. He ran his 15off, 30mph passes with ease. Big grins on his face!

His speed was better and his ski edged through the wakes much better.

 

 

[Ski_Dad]

I'm at this level. Tips to generate more speed ?

[A_B]

I think the big thing is learning to lean away from the boat through both wakes.

We use to have newbies go from just outside the wake and try to pass the boat up by keeping handle at waist, getting their hips and chest up.

It is amazing how long you can hold this position just matching the boat speed out on the wing. That is the first step getting equal on both sides.

Then we would have them run mid buoys and then alternate mid to full. They seem to lose focus on the wakes when they are focused on getting to the next buoy.

 

You can be really stacked great but if you aren't leaning against the handle, you will not get speed or width.

[escmanaze]

@A_B That's interesting. I was just about to make the comment that it seems unnecessary to focus on speed, as I'm thinking in my mind that speed is an output, not an input. The input is stacked position, and the output is speed.

 

Maybe what you are saying is that stacked position, plus leaning away from the boat equals speed. I guess I have always assumed leaning away from the boat to be integral to the concept of "stacked position" but you seem to be suggesting otherwise.

 

[UWSkier]

Letting the handle get away from the body, and reaching too early are the two biggest issues we'd always have to correct on ski team when we'd be teaching newbies. The first is definitely related to stack.

[Than_Bogan]

@escmanaze Actually, I accidentally managed to find a way to achieve decent body alignment and a low handle without actually generating much leverage. I skied this way for a few years after my first visit to a ski school. It was an improvement, but it wasn't until I started skiing with @MikeT (20 years ago...) that I began to learn how to DO something with stack and turn it into leverage. I think that's why I personally talk about leverage position a bit more than stack position.

 

Btw, this is still the weakest point of my skiing: offside pull leverage.

[Jetsetr]

deleted

[bsmith]

@Than_Bogan I am not understanding your point on stack and leverage. I am thinking that whenever we speak of stack or leverage that we are talking about achieving our strongest braced position against load. And the goal of this strongest position is to be able to create as much cross course angle as possible during the loading phase.

 

If you were stacked in your early skiing days, but not "leveraged", I would just say that you were not correctly stacked. For example, now that you can achieve leverage, aren't you also still stacked? I would say that any body position that does not provide optimal leverage or bracing against load, is not correctly stacked.

[Than_Bogan]

Stacking, to me, is about body alignment relative to the rest of the body. This stacked alignment can be achieved while standing upright on the ground -- and thus producing no leverage.

 

Stacked alignment is required to achieve optimal leverage. But, at least based on what the terms mean to me, it is possible to be stacked with little or no leverage.

[bsmith]

Stacking is such a ski related only term to me, that I have always taken it to mean the strongest position you can be in while under load. And of course you could take no real load in a vertical standing stacked position. I see your point, but I think most of us evaluate a skier's stack while they are leaned away under load.

[Horton]

I think all ideas about handle on hips and staying down through the wakes has to come first. It all comes down to structural alignment aka stack. Nothing is more important. That is always job one. For skiers this level this is all one topic in my mind. As a coach I may talk about in a number of ways but in the end it is all under one umbrella.

 

Beyond that a skier can have pretty good alignment and not understand the urgency to to make speed. I really do not ascribe to the idea of white water to white water. Skiers need to make speed early and then maintain position past the second wake.

[Dockoelboto]

@Horton thanks for posting videos about long-liners like me. I just wish I looked half as good as you look doing the same thing. As someone with no prior coaching, trying to figure this out I'll take any tips I can get. I think constantly about stack but the hard part for me at least is in part the transition from stack on dry land to stack leaning on the rope and then adding in wake crossing. Offside pull feels terrible so hard to "commit" to it. I really struggle to generate speed to the first wake, I realize a lot of that is mental so especially on my offside pull I end up double pulling for speed. I watch videos and recently have been filming myself. Boy, do I look terrible. I'd love to see a series of videos or discussion topics focused on initial dry land stance/setup up to 15off or so level skiers. The flowpoint method from @MarcusBrown looks amazing, just too steep to spend that much a month right now on water skiing. That is above all the other money I spend water skiing.

[Horton]

@Dockoelboto first of all I think dry land practice has very limited value

[Fam-man]

@Horton I'd caution about encouraging urgency to make speed. This could be misinterpreted as closing off the turn by reaching back to the handle before the ski has come around to angle.

I think stack or leaverage comes first

Second is completely finishing turns or skiing back to handle

Third is making speed using those first two elements

 

Just a couple seasons ago I was 15 off at 30 and 32mph skier. My weakness is trying to rush and get back to the handle too soon. I do better when I'm patient at the finish of the turn and let the ski come around.

[JAS]

As crazy as it may sound I think every ski school would benefit from having a big swing. As kids we jumped on and figured out efficiencies to go higher. Learning to straighten arms and kick legs was part of it, but more important were timing and fluidity. Jacking too hard or too soon to that perfect position just bent the chain and limited progress.

 

Water skiing is a bit the same. Sometimes you see a good static body position, but because of over leaning or over turning, acceleration is like a Semi Truck. After finding solid body positions skiers need to develop efficiencies for speed and "on time" turns. These efficiencies are hard to teach, especially since "less is often more". Free skiing with primary focus on speed sure helped me.

 

 

 

[bsmith]

@Horton posted this https://www.ballofspray.com/forum#/discussion/22751/free-skiing-is-good-for-stack awhile back and I have seen evidence of this phenomena many times now. Learning to stack correctly is very hard. Athletic new skiers can often run the course in short time but with very bad form. You can show them on video how bad their stack is (usually they are jackknifed hugely on their offside turn) and they quickly agree that needs to improve.

 

And yet when they try hard to ski stacked, they can't run the course at all. That's why @Horton advocated free skiing so such skiers wouldn't be disturbed by missing buoys as they try to ski stacked.

 

I personally am still in that phase of development myself. I can run a whole pass more (30 mph vs 28 mph) if I throw stacking out the window and just grunt out the strongest offside position I can which will have a pretty big jackknife (bending at the waist) in it.

 

I imagined that I could keep going up the ladder and chase buoys and slowly improve my stack at the same time. But a post by @lkb here https://www.ballofspray.com/forum#/discussion/21827/for-those-working-perfecting-stack-position/p1 made me rethink that strategy. @lkb pointed out that he had once skied into 35 off and thought that his stack would improve enough along the way. But after many years, @lkb said he still had too much of a jackknife in his stack and that he was at a dead end on improvement. He advocated that all aspiring short line skiers go back to basics and make sure that they can stack correctly.

 

I was amazed that someone could go so far without having a really good stack. And then I read here https://www.ballofspray.com/forum#/discussion/23082/what-separates-the-men-from-the-boys where @Horton says, "9 times out of 10, skiers who can run 32 but not 35 need to work on stack more than anything else."

 

After all that, I became a believer that improving stack comes before chasing buoys. But it's hard to hold yourself back when you are already at a low buoy count and know you could get more. Its also hard to know when you have improved your stack enough to go up to the next pass. My god, if a lot of 32 off skiers don't have a good enough stack, then how good of a stack does a novice need before going up to the next pass? For us novices, I guess we have to muddle along on this and make some compromises on when to go up, but always with an eye on trying to maintain a good stack.

[HMan66]

This conversation is perfect timing. I just joined a club and finally have unlimited course access. What's going through my head right now is how to make speed from the end of the turn to the first wake. If you're hard on the tail through the turn, you lose speed. If you start to lean away from the boat too soon after the buoy, you actually lose speed and the boat will "drag" you downcourse as you're now trying to out-muscle the boat to hold your edge. At least that's what it feels like to me. I need a way to find that "swing" of acceleration that all the good skiers have. This Seth Stisher video is a perfect example. He lets the ski finish the turn, and with what appears to be ZERO effort, gets that perfect leverage swing right through the wakes and into the glide.

 

[Than_Bogan]

Of course, any word means whatever people use it to mean. But I'd place a large wager that if you asked American men what "stacked" means, the top two answers, in order, would be:

1) A letter between D and H, depending on their taste.

2) Things piled vertically, like plates or bricks.

 

Getting your muscles and skeleton aligned vertically -- stacked -- absolutely is key to skiing. But using that to produce leverage is where it turns into a real win. If the person you're coaching just naturally gets stacked to mean the right thing, then great! But if not, you may need to think about what is confusing them and find different ways to say what you mean.

 

And I think this very directly connects to Horton's reason for starting this thread, because if you are leveraged in proper relation to your ski and the boat, it is almost impossible to NOT build speed. If you are ONLY stacked, or stacked at an inefficient alignment relative to your ski, you may not build speed quickly at all.

[UWSkier]

Free ski a lot, with video. Drill drill drill on that. Then head to the course. I have a ski buddy who skis with the best stack of anyone I've ever skied with. He spends literally every evening on our public lake back in WI swinging back and forth non stop for 10 mins at a time, skiing about a mile, spinning, and going back. Crazy endurance.

 

He ran green his second day course skiing. Muscle memory and good habits are an insane leg up.

[chris55]

I would add to @Than_Bogan comment that you can be stacked and be flat on the ski, the result is no speed building and even at 15off , it will be hard to run the slalom above 32mph. So stacked is great and adding some leverage and building speed is the beginning of the key, plus building speed at the right spot is best, not after the second wake but to the CL is the best.

And as a beginner, crossing the wake with angle on the ski is so much safer than ski flat.....that is a mental game.

I am a 32-34mph skier 15off on public lake and we have extremely rarely glass water so we have to overcome the reflex to stand in a denfensive way....which is hips back, like Marcus Brown shows it on his video "Athletic stance" . And we have to get ride of that muscle memories and it is time consuming, I know by experience.

[Greg Banish]

It doesn't seem like that long ago that I was there too. A lot of the people in my boat still ski -15/-22 @ 30mph.

 

Stack is absolutely correct. BUT they have to understand WHEN it's important, which is white water to white water as said above. I see a LOT of them give up on the pull/stack as they approach the first wake with fear or immediately as they pass centerline because that's what the pros look like they're doing to them. Getting them to hold the leverage into, through, and a little after the wakes lets them hold the proper speed to make it to the ball with time to turn.

 

It's not until you get past -22 that that you don't have to feel like you're still doing a lot of pulling past centerline to get all the way across as a newbie who doesn't make tons of speed coming out of the ball like @Horton can in the video above.

[Horton]

A few clarifications.

 

It is unlikely to be staked at the wakes of you are not stacked at apex and as the ski passes under the rope.

 

With out stack nothing else is going to work right.

 

The easiest way to think about being stacked is to think about being tall. The farther your chin is from your feet the more stacked you are. I preach straight legs but if those words offend you think about it another way. I often talk to skiers about rising to the top of a squat or dead lift.

 

Urgency to make speed does not mean rushing the turn. At this level of skiing it is easy to be tall and ski straight ball to ball. I am advocating leaning on the rope a bit more but not so much as to sacrifice stack.

 

There is nothing wrong with closing your hips to the boat although I strongly encourage level shoulders at all times and naturally open shoulders.

 

[RichardDoane]

@Horton dry land practice is beneficial when teaching newbies how to deep water start, and how to also lean away from the pylon

[KRoundy]

I ran the course for the first time in 2019, 30 MPH @ 15 off. I’m old (52) and heavy (235). Working on the second thing, not much I can do about the first one.

 

When I watch videos of me running the course vs not, it is a lot of just patience. When a newbie enters the course everything feels very rushed, and that translates into rushing the turns, grabbing the handle too soon, and then not having the right position (stack) to generate speed. For me, this is particularly true on my offside (2-4-6, LFF). It is very vital to wait for the ski to finish the turn, no matter how late it feels. I loved the recent Spraymakers where they talked about fundamentals. The most important idea for guys like me is not pulling until the ski goes under the rope. When I concentrate on waiting to see the ski in front of me before I pull it makes a world of difference. I still am learning this. I watched videos of my skiing this morning and I continue to grab too early, particularly on my toe side turns.

 

The longer you wait, the earlier you are.

[elr]

Speed = Angle So how do you coach a newer skier to get and keep angle into the 1st wake? I think gate shots from both sides following what the Adams teach could be useful. Also two handing could help with the instinct to get back on the handle for support.

[Cnewbert]

The Rossi + Trent outstanding podcast series “Spraymakers” has two episodes in particular that are full of useful information directly applicable to this discussion: Gates and Core Fundamentals. I highly recommend giving these both a listen.

[Dano]

For skiers of that level if they can finish the turn, get stacked and just “Hold” that position and direction they will get around all 6. I try not to use the term “pull” or “lean”. doing so usually results in them pulling or leaning back to the rear of the ski, working hard and not moving across course in a meaningful manner. Once they have stack and direction, then they can work on speed.

[KRoundy]

@escmanaze That document is very, very good! Thanks for sharing that.

[Horton]

@Dano yes skiers at that level can run 30 without putting in any extra but I would much rather have them do extra and run the pass easier to get them ready for 32 and 34.

[Hallpass]

FWIW. My daughter was at a youth camp last summer and @twhisper filmed himself running 15 off from 21mph through 34 mph. He posted on his you tube channel. I just checked, it's still there. I've watched it many times. I think he tried as best he could to simulate what it might look like for a skier progressing through those speeds. He used two hand turns through 30 mph, At the slower speeds, he didn't crank off turns, generate speed, and wait around at the turn. Just skied it smoothly with right amount of leverage to make the pass. You can really see the difference as he progresses through the various speeds.

 

[Terry Winter]

[The_MS]

We need videos of 38/39 skiers trying to run 15 off at 36 MPH. I bet most can’t do it on the first attempt.

[escmanaze]

@twhisper Are you on the same ski throughout the progression of those videos?

 

Also, thanks for doing this. I can easily see this being quite helpful for a lot of folks.

 

[Terry Winter]

Same ski I ride at 36 mph, no adjustments. Didn’t even drop that set