So_I_Ski

I spend an inordinate amount of time watching video clips of the pros and something I started noticing years ago was that virtually every pro skier keeps his head either perfectly level or very close to it from the edge change right thru the turn phase regardless of whether their shoulders are level such as when they are on very short line and getting closer to the water at the completion of the turn, particularly on their off side. So I have a couple of questions. Do you focus on keeping your head level when you ski and if so what do you think are the benefits and what are the consequences when you don't? And if you have never tried levelling your head is it because nobody ever mentioned it or you don't think there would be any benefit from it? Comments please.

I was just exchanging emails with him two months ago at mike@accufloat.com

I've been skiing for years but came late to the course at 52. I'm now 63 and working on my 32 off, still at 34 mph. I ran a few at 55 but backed off in order to attempt to clean up my skiing before progressing further. Then I got stuck in the cleanup and rarely felt like even going past 28. WEIRD! Anyway, I got really interested in the technical side years ago and started watching lots (and I mean LOTS) of video of the pros in slow motion and frame by frame. I wanted to see exactly what they were doing that was different from what I saw when I watched my friends ski and when I was brave enough to watch my own videos. I highly recommend drugs or booze prior to and during the masochistic exercise of watching one's own debacle. How DEPRESSING! Three of my best ski buds run 32's and one runs 35's about 25% of the time and he's been around ball 4 at 38 and they're 5 to 10 years younger than I am. I have also had coaching from some of the best known skiers in the sport including Andy (RIP) and Mike Suyderhoud. So in short, although I am not an accomplished skier, I've had plenty of time to analyse the sport. I have heard on occasion that provided the skier gets in a good stacked position behind the boat, the ski will turn itself. Now, I am not in any way suggesting that the stacked position is not paramount to great skiing but I take exception to the theory that the ski will "turn itself" and here is why. Among the group of skiers that I watch regularly, all four of them have what I consider to be solid positions behind the boat. They aren't getting pulled up as they cross the wakes and they are in a good position to execute a nice turn. But when it comes to both their on side and off side turns, none of them look remotely similar. They each have their own distinctive style which I would identify as different elements of the turn that they either accomplish or fail to accomplish and hence their turn lets them down when it counts. While the ideal body position behind the boat is the most important element of great skiing, in most respects it is also one of the easier things for most skiers to lock in because there are very few elements to it. However, there are a lot of intricacies to a great turn that the pros and better skiers take for granted because they have been doing them all their lives. I have identified 14 elements to a great turn and among our group either on the off side or the on side, none of the guys I ski with has locked in more than 7 of those elements and it could be any of the 14 that they do well because while they are linked, one good element does not necessarily produce the next small movement. Practice, practice and only repetitive practice eventually locks in that element to muscle memory. From watching videos of the pros, here is what I believe they all do on almost every pass. I may not have them in the exact order but close enough and I have probably missed one or two. I am defining the turn as beginning with the release of the outside hand although some may consider that you are still in the pre turn phase. Elements of a great turn. 1. Stay tall at the start. Delay the urge to start leaning. 2. Start moving weight forward bringing inside hip up. 3. Open the chest and hips a couple of degrees to counter by bringing the outside arm back. 4. Begin reach more downcourse, not directly at the pylon. 5. Feed the rope out slowly. Control the timing of the reach. 6. Pinch outside shoulder down to help level shoulders. 7. Keep leveling your head as your upper body drops. 8. Start bringing arm up a least level with the water. 9. Turn more with the lower body, feet, ankles, knees, hips. 10. Maintain vision downcourse as the ski turns. 11. Reach all the way out to a straight arm. 12. Chest up and open as the ski completes the turn. 13. Be patient bringing the handle back in. Don’t snatch. 14. Ski the outside hip to the handle low. Now, how many of these elements would you confidently say that you have locked in to muscle memory and or how many do you think your ski buds struggle with? For example, none of our guys gets their head plumb bob level thru the entire turn like Seth Stisher does and yet it is very important for your equilibrium. If you don't do it, try it and you'll be surprised at how much better you turn the ski.

Re Gekko boats, they never did have their own manufacturing. It was always outsourced and for a long time it was made at the Fineline Industries plant in CA which was the Centurion boat builder. Then the molds were purchased from the original owner and developer, Mark Overbye back in 2006 by IMAR group, a pleasure craft manufacturer out of North Dakota. They didn't know what the f... they were doing and I have one of their boats to prove it. Really shitty quality interior and instrumentation and downright stupid engineering like when my rudder came all the way around and pranged the prop as I backed away from a dock about a week after I got the boat. Thankfully they went tits up when the crash came and Mark got the molds back a couple of years ago. I believe that the boats are now being manufactured at the Larson plant in Minnesota. I understand the quality of the interior and gauges has improved greatly. Anyway, great hull, great looking, great ski boat, PCM motor so no complaints there. All my friends love to ski behind it but would never buy one because of the shoddy interior workmanship and cheap instrumentation in my boat. And oh yeah, mine has wood stringers and wood flooring but the new ones are finally all fiberglass.

To Mega Baller, I really don't know how you could say that any other boat has even a comparably flat wake from 32 and up. Mine is truly flat with no dip in all the short line lengths. I would be really curious to know which boat has even a similar wake never mind a better one. Maybe I have never skied behind it like the new MC or the Carbon Pro. And for Crazy Baller, the Gekko I am referring to is the full size ski hull which is the GTR 22 not the little Gekko.

Re the Gekko, the 15 to 28 off wake on my boat is much smaller and not "hard" at all in comparison to all the other boats so prop may have been an issue on the boat you skied behind. And I have been told by a friend that distributed them for years that the right four blade prop really resolves the issue with any hardness at long line. From 32 off and shorter, nothing even comes close to the flat wake behind a Gekko. And you're absolutely right about the tracking cause it's fantastic.

Now I realize that the question was which slalom boat was the most decorated and the answer to that is clearly either Nautique or Mastercraft as they have been around the longest and as a result have become the defacto standard for pulling tournaments. However, some of the comments have been about which was the best tournament boat to ski behind and truth be told, and I am telling the truth here, GEKKO has had the best wake and tracking to go with it since the boat was first introduced more than twenty years ago. I happen to have one and among my close ski buddies, there are two MC's, one Nautique 200 and four Malibu's of varying vintages up to 2008. None of us have been behind either a new MC or a new Centurion so no comment there. But not only are all the other boat owners willing to admit that the Gekko has the best wake on all the line lengths but it tracks like an arrow in the course. And unlike the other tournament boats I have mentioned, when you get to 38 off and beyond it is the only one with a dead flat wake without a trough which has long been a common failing in other tournament boats. Now in fairness I do not ski a course in very short line but I do ski 38 to 41 for fun and I have pulled 38 off for one of the guys. Apparently the 200 was designed to improve on the big dip problem and I haven't tried it at 38 or better but the long line is not as good as the old Nautiques and no match for the Gekko whatsoever. Overall the Gekko hull is flat out fantastic even in rough water and that is about it. The interior of the boat comes nowhere near the quality of the other boats and I have no issue stating that although I believe the new ones have addressed that problem to a degree. Regardless, they will probably always be an entry level boat so you save a ton of money when you buy one. But if you have never skied behind one you don't know what you are missing and I have little doubt that once you do you will wish the other guys could design a hull that nice to ski behind. Of course if you are a tournament skier you have no choice but to buy a boat that is commonly used in tournaments. And Gekko will never have the money to invest in promoting their boat for tournaments other than barefooting where I believe they are the clear choice and for a very good reason - small wake.

I gotta tell ya, I haven't laughed so hard and so long as when I read liquidD's comment of .... it's not 12 feet .... it's 12 inches" in response to Wayne suggesting that it would certainly make it hard for people to tow a skier/border/tuber .... Thanks for the laughs liquidD, you made my day. I had been thinking that if you really wanted to make the flag visible or to attract attention, the law should require the skier to carry it in the crack of his ass. That way it would have the added benefit of keeping their hips up as they clenched their butt cheeks to keep the flag from falling out. In Canada I don't believe we have any law requiring a visible flag in any jurisdiction in the country to indicate that we might be towing something. For that matter, although we are supposed to have a spotter there are times we simply have to ignore that rule or we wouldn't get to go skiing. But the first time I took my boat to a very remote little lake just south of us in WA, I was dumbstruck to see all the rules being observed when there wasn't even a second boat on the lake. Every occupant wearing a life jacket, the little orange flag popping up and down and then there was a couple with a tournament boat that had travelled all the way from Seattle to camp and ski who would simply never have considered skiing without a spotter. And these people were very good course skiers and boat handlers. Had I not volunteered I doubt they would have skiied all weekend because there were no other boaters in the little campground. Admirable law abiders but just a bit over the top in my opinion. But what really blew me away was the young family that came up to fish all the way from Texas with their really nice bass boat. The man proceeded to slap on his sidearm before getting into the boat with his wife and six year old and later at the campfire he proceeded to tell me that he would never go anywhere on a camping trip without wearing it to protect his family. Maybe in Houston he might need it, but in northern WA where the nearest town was 25 miles away and contained 100 people he was far more likely to get hit by a freakin meteor than require a gun in the middle of a lake. In conclusion, I think flags are the least of your worries. I would be far more concerned with getting shot, accidentally or otherwise. Use great ... not good judgement, make protecting your skier your ONLY focus, assume all other boaters are not paying attention and stay to hell away from them. If you can't, then ski another day because the water would be wrecked for any decent skiing anyways.

DD, yes tilting the upper body away from the desired direction of travel is precisely, exacta mondo what I mean. And it works better than you might think on a gate. But I am an LFF as I stated at the beginning. I don't see why it would not work even better for RFF because on my pullout I drop my right shoulder and get terrific acceleration as it exaggerates the hip drop or the COM moving to my left. Anyway, my post was initially not intended to be about the gate as I was curious to know if anyone else would describe dropping the away shoulder as a component of their turns. To me, there is evidence of this when you watch some of the pros and in particular on their onside as they appear to have a pronounced "C" in their turn with the upper body much more upright and their butts almost on the water. In particular, Marcus Browne, JB Faisy and Sasha Descunes (spelling?) are three that I can think of. And on really short line, Nate Smith as well.

DD, if as you say in accordance with Newton's law that by rotating the upper body inwards, it "causes a momentary change in the orientation of the ski to point oubound", does it not follow that by dropping the outside shoulder it will further promote the skier's COM in the opposite and desirable position which is inbound or cross course?

Wish, I think I have an answer for why you can't just focus on keeping the eyes and shoulders level. The fact is that once we start into the course, we all tip our shoulders either in the pre turn or at the beginning of the turn and then most of us continue to drop the shoulders more into the apex. Your shoulders are actually off level most of the time and so thinking about keeping them there doesn't solve the problem. Whereas, if you focus on dropping the away shoulder by kinking at the waist in the pre turn and into the apex, the result is that you will actually be tilting the shoulders back into a true level position.

NOPE! I'm not saying keep the eyes and shoulders level. I'm saying specifically that the easy and effective way to move your COM is to start with thinking about and specifically dropping your away shoulder. If you want to kink your body or stick your hip out, you don't just move the hip, you also move the upper body in the opposite direction. That move makes driving your COM easy and instant. Try it on the water and see what happens.

Thanks for all the comments started by my initial post so I guess it's time for me to weigh back in. If you look again at my last line you'll see that I mentioned that after thinking about it the following day I realized that I was missing a critical component to initiating the turn. And not just the gate but both sides all the way thru the course. We talk about COM but I don't recall ever reading an article that suggests exactly how to get our COM moving in the direction of travel although I have no doubt that a lot of the best skiers do it. They just do it so automatically that they don't describe it. In a nutshell what I found was that if I want to move my COM to the right, the starter is to drop my shoulder to the left and vice versa to move my COM to the left. As soon as you drop the away shoulder while thinking of moving the hips in the opposite direction, you exaggerate the movement of your COM and voila, instant acceleration. So with regard to all the gate comments, while I agree with the hip positioning from 11 to 1 o'clock what should be added is as you turn the hips to 1 o'clock, drop your left shoulder to cause your COM or the right hip to drive in the direction of travel. Now try it while you ski on both sides of the course. I was amazed at how easy it was to do and how the ski turned underneath me. And as my ass dropped to the water my torso stayed more upright which prevented me from falling. So to summarize what I am saying is that the starter move for you COM is NOT the COM itself but rather the upper body moving in the opposite direction. PUT A KINK IN YOUR SIDE BY DROPPING YOUR SHOULDER.

A group of us in western Canada are on the water nice and early this year. We free ski for the first month before installing courses. One of our guys who is working on his 35 off is trying to change his gate. He is very tall, left foot forward who would bend his knees a lot and tip backwards to start his turn in. When we got him standing tall in his glide with lots of weight on his front foot he quite literally had no idea how to start the turn in without tipping back. When he got in the boat we suggested turning his left knee in and moving his COM in the direction of travel but it still did not help much. It wasn't until I thought about it the following day that I realized we were missing something critical that I didn't actually think about myself which explained problems that I would have from time to time with my turns and particularly on my off side. So I have a question for you guys. Can you explain in specific detail the moves that you make to turn the ski, not just on the gate but during the pass and if it differs from side to side please elaborate. Like myself I won't be surprised if you do it so automatically that you can't describe it to someone else. Thanks.