Obrienslalom

My problem is my upper back. These are my current go-tos:

Curious if anybody has other tips, I certainly get desperate through the summer!

I get your point. You can see the setup pretty clearly every 6 ball. Here's Nate's right before the 43' off (and one other as I scrubbed through). It seems inside the buoy line. I'm sure there's good drone shots too.

You can also see it from the s-turn itself. Personally I feel like it got in his way. But who knows what Freddie would have done in response.

Interesting. I was thinking from a coaching perspective after watching some of the online coaches drawing lines on videos. There is so much to learn from all of it in sure.

If anyone is interested to work in some tech collectively, I'd be interested. I'm a software guy, and would be interested in putting some money in a pool. 🤷‍♂️

I spent some time looking at wearable sensors. Both suits and small sensors. There are some waterproof sensors on the market for about $150 a sensor. I think you could get very meaningful data from 5+ sensors. Suits were nearly $10k, but I'd be interested to see the pro data!

I ended up being too cheap and played with pose estimation from videos. While it was more possible than I expected, it'd be WAY quicker to get some data from sensors.

Being able to draw patterns from ankle, hip, shoulder, wrist position/angles along with GPS speed and position data would be interesting to churn through.

Anybody have a nice pump/hose setup for their dock they would recommend. I have electricity at the dock and would like to spray down the boat and cover occasionally. Looking to pull the water from the lake.

@GK thank you for the info!

Bump.

I'm considering moving in this direction in a couple of years. Are there any lakes near Cincinnati to own property on that allow skiing? I don't necessarily need a course. Haven't found anything super close yet

Love the podcast, thanks for all the hard work on it.

Been hearing about shoulders being square to the handle. Can you elaborate on this concept more? Is it just avoid trying to "ski to the shore" and ride the handle up. Also, simpler semi-related question, why is dipping you shoulder so bad?

I always add the caveat that I'm not very good.

@vtmecheng I was given the same advise. Shoulders back vs hips up just made so much more sense to me. If you put your shoulders back, you're hips come up. There were some other cues Corey offered that made it less chaotic, but for those that haven't, go pay him a visit!

Another thing that seems to help not concentrate on the wake is simply look at the next buoy at the exit of the turn. Otherwise, I feel like I look at the current buoy, then the wake, then the following buoy. Much smoother with one focus point earlier. I have bad habits from skiing behind big boats as a kid, and this helps.

This is how I imagine things are going to go when I'm at the end of the lake listening to the coach.

Then I get in there, everything goes by in 4x real speed and I apologize realizing I did none of the things I was asked to do.

Sorry, I was using "open" the opposite way I think. The way it was explained to me is having my shoulders square to the handle. Same thing but easier to see and adjust.

I feel like if I don't begin to rotate my shoulders as I come off center line, all that happens is my upper body gets pulled up towards the boat as I begin to approach the buoy. It's almost just a way to visualize not pulling too long or trying to ski an impossible line. It's not all that dramatic straight off the second wake, so you'll be through your edge change by the time it's noticeable.

You can pause this video of Regina at any point:

Struggling to find a drone video where this might be shown better, but I found a POV video from Freddie that might help see/feel the concept better:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cb2j05kF4ry/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

My coach had me focusing on the same thing last time I was out there. I need to get the on-dock explanation still.

I'm not a good source of information on the topic, but my current understanding is that you ultimately have to ride the handle/rope path. Being more "open" to the boat than the handle is fighting the rope path (trying to ski more to the shore). Sort of easier to understand if you think of what being 90° to the boat means and if there's any point to being more open at that point.

Looking forward to more expert explanation on this as well. Seemed to work when I did it correctly, and the pros seems to follow this rule.

Additionally, you can go to TWBC's YouTube channel, and hit the bell to get notifications when one of their streams goes live:

https://youtube.com/c/waterskibroadcasting

If you want to make sure nobody runs 43' off, add another loop. Think how many fewer looks there will be at 43.

I get your point about adding another loop after 39.5 to avoid the ties at 41, but it's a tough sell since I enjoy watching them get a crack at 41. I believe adding another pass will decrease the parity, and a smaller set of people will be consistent enough to run 10.75, 10.5 before competing for the podium at 10.25.

If you want to convince more people to watch pay attention, tell them they need to put a TWBC audience prize entry in for you. That has gotten a few non-skiier family members watching and interested (and we've won 0 times).

Apparently I needed to try starbrite. I tried Marine 31 mildew remover without much luck.

I did have some good success with babes mildew master with their upholstery brush. Unfortunately, I don't see the brush I got listed on their site anymore. It had fair thick plastic bristles that were sort of rounded at the tip.

Corey Vaughn had a few posts over the winter about it. I did a little bit with it at one point but nothing serious like that. If nothing else it's a nice way to learn about how your body reacts to certain stress signals and learn how you can calm yourself (much like breathing exercises in yoga).

One of Corey's posts talking about it:

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CKUsQu4BHcL/?utm_medium=copy_link

The reality is 95% of us are in the sport because our parents were (or otherwise exposed to it regularly).

Agree that it is not equally appealing to all people. Unfortunately, it is not all that appealing to people that aren't into #lakelife already. You can take them out for a weekend and get them to combo ski, but it takes an interest and dedication to slalom. I converted my wife, but don't have high hopes for any of my friends.

They were under the USAWaterSki youtube channel. You can click around to find which day.

https://www.youtube.com/user/USAWaterSki

This is great. Thanks for posting both the results and the modelling.

I started something like this in SVG/javascript with the idea of playing around with the same concepts. I didn't get very far with it. I remember working with a 2 force vectors: the rope & the force the ski/skiier was creating (very contrived respresentation). The results looked ok on a graph, but I wasn't completely confident with my math and got lazy. I'll see if I can find where I put the code.

I encourage you to keep going. I think it's fun to play with and visualize. Happy to help contribute as well.

Here's a beginner friendly yoga video that might help (added bonus: only 20 minutes). Particularly the stretch at the time I'm linking.

I get a similar pain from time to time. A family relative chiropractor helped me realize that mine is actually connected more to neck tightness. If you are the same, tilt your ear towards your shoulder and slowly look towards the ceiling. You might feel it right under your shoulder blade as you describe.

Recently discussed here:

https://www.ballofspray.com/forum#/discussion/23751/helmets-for-slaloming

@sixball knew exactly what lake you were on. Such a terrible situation, sorry about the loss there...

@jhughes that's sort of thought provoking. I wonder how the market will change when all the open water friendly direct drives become 20 year boats. I use a 2006 Nautique 206 and look at all the >2010 boats. None have full benches in the back for my wife to sunbathe on, or anywhere to stick a beach bag, etc. I get why, but eventually there's going to be a real gap to fill.

I agree that vlogs are missing from the sport. I waste hours watching bass fishing vlogs and I barely fish. I'm talking about more entertainment leaning than educational.

Joel and marcus have a few like that. Wakeboarders are better represented(eg Shaun Murray)