New water skier with weird, frustrating problem

[Guest]

This summer I attempted water skiing the first time. I gave it about 12 attempts or so on two skies, and failed. I'm trying to figure out what I need to do so I succeed next year. There were a number of problems, but I will start with the weirdest. After a number of attempts, most of which ended up with my legs driven apart or losing my grip on the handle (seriously, it felt like the water turned to concrete around me!), I was able to get the skis to plane up -- but I couldn't stand up! I was wrapped tightly into a cannonball, as they tell you to do, and I put my skis at a forward angle rather than straight up and down, and the skis planed, but my butt was still dragging in the water. I could not stand up. I just had no leverage or mechanical advantage. I spent all of my remaining tries experimenting trying to fix this, but I was totally at a loss.

I have found exactly one reference to this problem. In a 220 page guide to instructors prepared by the water skiing trade association, they identify a problem that they term "riding on back of skis," which sounds like a description of what I experienced. This publication states that the error is: "Did not use legs to stand up as boat accelerated." The suggested correction is: "Stand up sooner when boat accelerates at start."

This is totally counter to everything I've found though, which suggests you are supposed to let the boat pull you up, and that in the beginning you should wait until you are on a plane and stable before standing. Anyway, this was pretty frustrating, so I would like to know if anyone else has experienced this, and what to do about it.

[Clydesdale]

@NewStarts sounds like maybe you’re pushing your skis too far in front of you. Keep your legs in a squat position with your tips in front and your feet under your butt. As the boat goes stay in that position, with arms straight, and say to yourself “my favorite food is pizza” before standing up. Don’t get discouraged. You’ll get it!

[BKistler]

Don’t stand up too soon. I agree with @Clydesdale. Stay in a squat then rock forward onto the balls of your feet. If you have enough strength to rise from a squat on land, should be able to do it on the water.

[NewStarts]

Thanks for responding! A squat position? I thought you were supposed to draw your knees in as tightly as possible. Actually, that was likely to be my next question, because I've viewed a number of YouTube videos of people getting up to try to pinpoint what I was doing wrong, and it doesn't look like they are adopting a cannonball position at all. It is often hard to see through the water in these videos, but it looks like they are adopting a "sitting in a chair" position, where their waist and knees are each bent at 90 degrees, and they just sort of pivot upward as soon as power is applied.

I'm not sure I could do that, because I think that the drag would force my legs apart before I ever got there. Actually, I should explain something that might help. I'm a 43 year old male, and I'm short and fat, with very short arms and legs. I'm a hair under 5'6", and I weigh 220 points. They tell you that when you get into a cannon position, you are supposed to wrap your arms around the outside of your knees, but because of my stomach and shot legs, I actually can't bring my knees up high enough to get my arms around them. If there is a way to post a picture, I can show you what I look like in the position. Maybe that's part of the problem. But I also know people who are bigger and fatter than me who can do this, so I doubt it is the whole problem.

[NewStarts]

Short legs, not shot legs! Ha! I wonder if there is an edit function here

[BKistler]

You can post a picture. Check out the picture icon above the comment box.

[BKistler]

You said you were able to “plane up.” What is your bony position once you get on plane?

[BKistler]

Body

[NewStarts]

OK, looks like I need some sort of a host for the picture. I'll find one and get that thing posted.

[NewStarts]

OK, lets see if this works . . .

[NewStarts]

OK, take two . . .

[NewStarts]

https://imgur.com/a/m2buBm4

[BKistler]

Might be the format. JPEG should work.

[NewStarts]

That's the best I can do, but you should be able to see it. In the water, I could no doubt draw my feet in further, but my knees are as high as I can get them before my stomach is in the way (and in a life jacket, they will be even lower). As you can see, my knees are slightly below my arms, so I can't use them to stabilize my legs when trying to get up.

[NewStarts]

@BKistler My body postion when I plane up more or less what you are seeing in the photograph when I plane up -- it is like I'm sitting on my skis. The boat will pull me onto a plane, but doesn't pull me up at all.

[Ski_Dad]

I've never experienced this but have taught plenty of people to ski on 2 - I always tell them to set your arms around your knees at the elbow. Never pull your arms in and you can stay in the squat position as long as you want! Once new skiers see that they are going straight down the lake they can just stand straight up. In your picture you are starting with too much weight back - if you get your arms like I mentioned you will come right up.

Oh and you look like a bigger fella like me so make sure you are on at least a 67" set of combo skis - you did not mention the skis. Silly point but we keep 63" and 67" sets in the boat when I bring new people.

[NewStarts]

@Ski_Dad Thanks! How do I get my weight farther forward? I've guessed it was an issue, but anatomically, I can't figure out how to do that. I can't draw my knees in any more than you see in that photograph. My legs are actually pressed up against my stomach in the photo, so I can't pull them in any more. Also, as I think I mentioned above, I actually can't get my arms around my knees because my knees are too low. If you look at the photo (it might be a little hard to see), my knees are actually below my arms, and like I said, I can't bring them up any higher. If you are built like me, I would love to know how you get your weight further forward on the ski! That would be fantastic! And you somehow end up in a squatting position, from which you can get up?

[NewStarts]

I do wonder if maybe I'm just too fat at the moment, though, like I said above, I know people larger and fatter than I am who can do this.

[NewStarts]

@Ski_Dad I just reread what you wrote. For some reason, I didn't register what you wrote about the arms the first time. But unless I'm misunderstanding something, I can't get my knees high enough to get my arms around them and still have them going out straight. I'm not sure what to do about that.

[Than_Bogan]

At the risk of reading too much into just one still shot, the problem appears to be at your ankles. See how your feet are flat on the floor? If your toes are pointed like that while trying to get up, then you are actively pushing yourself toward a backward rotation. If instead you pull your toes up (dorsifexion) from the start , then you'll be close to neutral over the skis the whole way and then can transfer your weight to the balls of your feet and stand right up.

Once you create a large angle between you and the skis (as you likely are doing now), only a very experienced expert could overcome that and stand up. (And they would have to do it by first flexing at the ankles.) If instead you are close to 90 degrees to the skis all the time, then standing up should be FAR easier.

Another way to think about the same thing is: Start in that cannonball but not with the backs of the skis near your butt -- instead they should be tilted just a little forward of vertical. Then allow the skis to roll to horizontal as the boat brings you up -- and maintain your position relative to the skis. This will bring you forward as well, and with the skis directly underneath you, standing up will be just like standing up on the ground.

GOOD LUCK!

[NewStarts]

@Than_Bogan Oh wow! Since I was sitting on the floor in the photo, I had to keep my feet flat -- they weren't in the water, but you know what? In the water was pointing my feet down!!! I was lying on my back in the cannonball position, and I knew you were supposed to have the back ends of the skis close to your butt, so in order to do that and to try to get an angle on the skis so they could ride up, I pointed my feet down!!! That has GOT to be it!!!! Thank you so much!

[dchristman]

You need to think about the physics of this. It seems you are operating under the premise that the boat will pull you up, and that is not the case. The boat is pulling you and the skis down the lake together. It will pull the skis onto plane with you as the connection between them and the handle. You need to stand up perpendicular to the skis and you can't pull on the handle to accomplish that, you would just push the skis in front of you and fall back. There is no way you will be able to stand up from the position in your picture. You need to attain a balanced position perpendicular to the skis that you can stand up from, the same as standing up from a squat position on the floor without pulling on something.

[NewStarts]

@Than_Bogan That then brings me another question though. From your description, I'm having a little trouble picturing how I can angle my skis slightly forward, as you recommend, without flexing my ankles the wrong way, and still remain in the proper position? I'm not sure how I can tilt them forward at all without pointing my feet. And I know that I can't get up with the skis straight up and down -- I actually did try that, and the water pressure forced my knees apart or yanked the handle out of my hands. The skis basically turned into plows.

[Than_Bogan]

@NewStarts Hope it helps. What gave it away is that if I sit into the "demo position" on the floor, my toes will be nowhere near the ground.

(Also, I am hypersensitive to toe pointing, because I coach a lot of current/former gymnasts in track. Gymnasts learn all sorts of great things, but they also learn a handful of pretty-but-extremely-inefficient body mechanics, including toe pointing when running!)

[NewStarts]

@Than_Bogan OK, I tried getting into the postiion with my feet angled back as you suggested, and they do still angle forward, so I guess that probably solves it.

[NewStarts]

@dchristman Thanks! Yeah, I was simply trying to what everything on the net seemed to suggest, but I clearly misunderstood. I haven't actually found any part of this process to be particularly intuitive. But now I actually think I have a better idea, thanks to all these replies. Hopefully next year I'll be able to get up fast now that I think I understand. Many thanks to everyone who has replied!

[Ski_Dad]

@NewStarts - I'm 6' 225 currently. For the sake of 'being real' - I've been anywhere from 200-240 over the last 3 years. You are definitely not too big. I got my neighbor who was around 280 at the time up on 2 skis.

Don't feel bad, we all have had some struggles - I nailed over 300 deep water starts this year on 1 ski but in past years that was NOT the case. It just comes down to technique. If you can't get your knees to your chest then let the skis come into the body as the boat takes off. You are going to feel like you are being pulled up over the skis a bit, you actually want that feeling as opposed to the skis pushing away from you. And ask your driver for a really gentle pull.

There is a really good video that April Coble put out that explains things to beginners

rooting for you!

[bko]

In case you are ready for a lengthy explanation of what Ski_Dad and Clydesdale already have pointed out in short:

You are encountering the most common problem of beginners - the feet are too far from the butt, thus your center of mass is too far back (not above, but behind your feet) from the very beginning.

In order to stand up the easy way, we need to extend our legs “downwards” - in a 90 degrees angle to the planing skis.If our mass is behind the feet, we can only extend our legs forwards (not downwards) which does not do anything to help us rise from the planing skis- it only leads to the skis slipping out in front of us while our butt is dragging in the water.

In other words:in order to extend our legs, we have to push the feet away from the body.If the feet are in front of the body, we can only push forwards.We need to have our body directly above the feet to push the feet downwards – this enables us to stand up the easiest way.

Standing up sooner, as recommended in the guide, (before the skis are in a vertical plane) - is the method used by more proficient skiers: it requires (and allows) pushing the feet forward (in a 90 degrees angle to the rather upright, not yet planing skis).This approach requires higher amounts of strength and body tension (because you are creating more pressure pushing your legs against the boat's pull) and balance (because your center of mass will already be elevated while getting onto plane).

In preparation for the start procedure on dry land you shall practice to SQUAT - not to sit!Be aware: the squatting position is quite a challenge for most grown-ups - but obviously you got some months to practice till your next attempts...

In the water you must focus to have your ankles bent (while having the ski tips out of the water), your heels against your butt, your knees against your chest - as in a squat! - and your arms around your knees.

Be patient: let the boat do the work, have the skis get on plane and ski with your center of mass directly above your feet - as in a squat - for several seconds before slowly extending your legs.

[Clydesdale]

@NewStarts where are you located? Someone here may be close and able to instruct in-person.

[BKistler]

I was finally able to look at your picture. Your position is fine, it just needs to pivot forward at the ankles so that you are squatting directly on top of your binders. All those who have chimed in are basically saving the same thing.

[NewStarts]

@bko thank you for taking the time to write all that out! What you say makes sense. I guess I was trying to mimic what I see these people doing on land, but that’s not actually what they are doing in the water. I’ve actually seen that video so kindly provided by @Ski_Dad before, and what that kid was doing in the video looked pretty much like what I thought I was doing. It looked like he was basically sitting on his skis and then the boat was pulling him up right. This is very clearly not what is happening in water, however! I guess it really isn’t possible to completely demonstrate it on land.

@Clydesdale I am located in Washington DC. My relatives have a Lakehouse on lake Cabbosseecontee up in Maine, near Augusta, and that’s where I was trying to learn. I’m probably going to be visiting them every summer, so my next opportunity will probably be at their point. All the equipment belongs to them. They have an 18 foot boat (I forget what kind) with a 90 hp mercury outboard. I can’t remember what kind of skis they have; they are wooden and have clearly been in use for many decades. everybody seems to be able to use them.

At the moment it’s not really within my budget to pay somebody, or I would totally seek out lessons. I’m not sure that there are any that would be closer than three hours away though. If anybody actually does happen to be close to me, I would definitely be interested, however. Hopefully I won’t be as constricted spending wise in the future as I am at the moment.

[NewStarts]

The place is new to me, because it’s in the family of an aunt by marriage. Hadn’t been able to get up there until this year, and they offered to teach me to waterski.

[Jordan]

Question: what are you skiing on? What skis and what size?

The basics are knees bent, arms straight and chin up. As others have mentioned, keep your arms straight means dont pull in on the rope.

Don't focus so much on being in a tight ball, it isn't necessarry. Just being in a position like sitting in a chair, with your ski tips above the water, on each side of the rope.

The toe pointing thing is likely the source of all kinds of problems. Your ankles need to be bent enough so that your skis are more vertical.

On two skis, you will start to rise up almost immediately...again keep those arms straight.

Final thought, your driver needs to be fairly gentle on the throttle. A soft start, with a nice progressive use throttle.

I saw that you don't want to pay for a lesson, but if you could get up a few times on a boom, you would have the feeling, and moving to a rope behind the boat will be easy.

[NewStarts]

@Jordan thanks! It’s not that I don’t want to pay for a lesson. It’s that right now I don’t have (what, $100?) to spend on something like that. I expect that at some point in the future I will, but things are pretty tight with me right now.

I can tell that learning on a boom is the easy way to go about it. There is a stubborn part of me that feels like that’s cheating, and wants to do it the old-fashioned way (Grin). But if I could afford a lesson, I probably would let them do that, so long as I got the chance after going up with the boom a time or two, to try out the traditional way afterward, once I had the motions down. You are certainly right that it would probably be more efficient.

[NewStarts]

Oh, and my driver was my aunt, who has been doing this for her entire life more or less. We were already going far slower than she would normally go to get somebody up, but we had to in order to keep the water pressure manageable so that my legs wouldn’t be driven apart or the handle wouldn’t be yanked from my grasp.

You asked about what kind of skis? I don’t know how long they are. I can’t remember the brand. I do know that they are wooden skis and they are many decades old (although in quite good condition) and that everybody else, including another relative who is both taller and fatter than I am (though he has been doing it since he was a kid) seem to have no problem using.

[Rob]

I haven't read everything in this thread (lots of content here) but I often solve the problem you're describing with new skiers I teach by telling them to put more weight on the balls of their feet and less on their heels, especially as they attempt to stand up. Good luck!

[Vernon Reeve]

I usually have a new skier sit on the ground, then I extend an arm and help them up from the ground. I have them notice how they are not pulling against me, and are instead letting me pull their weight forward until they can stand up. And they are not extending their legs too soon, which would pull me on top of them.Usually gives them the feeling of getting up on two skis.Then a soft pull to pull them up. Extra soft for kids.If they fall over backwards, it means they pulled their arms in.If their legs spread apart, it means they extended their legs too soon.

[NewStarts]

@rob Thanks! Yeah at this point I entirely understand if you don’t want to go through the wall of text that has developed here.

I do think that @Than_Bogan probably nailed what I was doing wrong precisely. In retrospect, I feel a bit dumb for not realizing this, but I was flexing my angles in the wrong direction. I was in the cannonball position, we’re short of had me inclining Backwards, and I knew I was supposed to have the rear of my skis close to my butt, but I also needed to have my skis inclined forward, so they would ride up on a plane rather than plow. So in order to achieve that, I actually pointed my feet down. This created an enormous angle between my feet/skis and my body, and it was anatomically impossible for me to come up squatting on my skis that way – there was no way for me to stand up once the skis were planning. I should have had my ankles bent upward; the ski tips would still be pointing forward, and I would end up rotating up on top of them in a squatting position. It is now blindingly obvious, and I can’t figure out how I didn’t see what I was doing at the time.

[NewStarts]

@Vernon Reeve Thanks! Yeah, I practiced on the dock both in the cannon ball position and in the standing position, but no one bothered to pull me up, probably because no one wanted to pull up a guy who is 220 pounds, lol! I really think that could have been a useful exercise if they did that for me.

I do think, however, that both practicing The cannon ball position on the dock, and watching some otherwise excellent YouTube videos to try to figure out how I was supposed to do it, unwittingly let me into the error that I think was what caused what happened. When you were sitting on the ground, your feet are flat on the floor. Especially when you are in the cannonball position while wearing your skis. Actually, in some of these videos, after @Than_Bogan pointed it out, I realized people who were not wearing skis at the time were flexing their ankles so that their feet pointed upward. This is a subtle detail that I totally missed when watching those videos, and which no one seems to talk about. When I was in the water, I actually did the exact opposite of what I should’ve done – I pointed my feet down in order to get the rear of the ski is close to my butt (which is what I thought I was supposed to do) and to get the skis to angle forward so that I would get them to play in the more easily rather than plow. it is now blindingly obvious how wrong this is, because when the skis plane up you won’t be able to stand up – it is literally impossible to do it from that position because you are not able to rotate on top of the skis. I can’t wait to try again next year with my ankles flexed in the proper direction, because I think that may have been the entire problem. Or most of it, anyway

[BraceMaker]

This is going to sound weird. But your skis have enough surface to lift you essentially from 0mph. If you put on the ski and float and then someone pulls the rope tight by hand you can basically stand up.

We always think of it as the boat pulling us up but the reality is the boat takes the rope tight and then we stand up on the ski.

So you want to act like you are sitting there and then the rope goes tight and then you stand up on your skis as if they are the ground. If you just sit there being dragged you'll get dragged out the front you become an active participant once the rope goes tight.

Works on all sorts of skis. Ball up feel the pull, stand up.

[NewStarts]

Thanks @BraceMaker! That’s a good way to picture it. The problem was that I couldn’t figure out how to actually stand up on them as if they were on the ground. I was, indeed, also a bit confused about how much the boat pulled you up as opposed to how much effort you had to put in yo stand. I think the folks up-thread identified what I was doing wrong pretty precisely, thankfully. I was flexing my ankles the opposite way from The way I was supposed to flex them. It was such a subtle thing I never picked up on it. Now that I realize that, I also recognize that there was no way I was ever going to be able to get up until I fixed that. Next year, when I get to try again, I’m going to flex my ankles the right way, and I suspect it was the only thing stopping me from getting up.

Other problems might quickly arise – I will still have to get a feel for smoothly standing up in the right posture once and standing up, so I wouldn’t be shocked if I get up and immediately face plant a couple times before figuring it out, but I suspect I will at least be able to stand up.

[Vernon Reeve]

As said before, be sure to have someone actually help you up off the floor since that's how it feels to let the boat pull you up over your feet. Makes sense when you think about it. If your legs are straighter it's harder for them to pivot you up over your feet. But if you keep your butt down, it's easy for them to pivot you up over your feet so you can stand up.