jercrane

I was down at Jodi's last weekend and tried thinking about some of this. Specifically focusing on staying in the lean but releasing the ski to point down the lake after the second wake. It was pretty amazing actually. Only did 3 sets so I didn't get a chance to polish it or come close to locking it in. I had two or three 28off passes where I did manage to nail it for the whole pass and oh my god did it make the whole pass feel easier. It felt like my normal 22off. It was the first time I ever felt like "yeah maybe I could bet into some 32s". Of course now I won't be on the water again until April. :(

@Jtim3032 That is awesome stuff. The second one especially. Perfect view of the skier body position. Exactly what I want to see more of. I want access to a library with a bunch of clips of pros running 22 off through say 38 at 36 and 34 from that perspective in 4k. I would happily pay for access to that. I could waste hours of my life rolling that video back and forth in slow mo. :D

@elr yeah interesting thought. I think this breaks down once you get into the course a bit since we all start and exit the course traveling left to right. Interesting thought though for studying 2,3,4 and 5 technique where hypothetically LFF and RFF should be mirror imaged.

My wife just showed me another easy demonstration of the challenge of watching someone do something from the wrong perspective to learn it. Stand face to face with someone and have them move some part of their body. Mimic their movements. Don’t mirror ... mimic. If they lift their right arm you lift your right arm. Just starting the process you have to think for a second and you have to keep your brain engaged pretty much the whole time. I can pretty much guarantee that if you do it long enough or the movements get complicated or fast enough you will find yourself mirroring instead of mimicking. Now do the same thing but instead of facing each other stand facing their back. You can basically now almost turn your brain off and mimic their movement without even thinking. You can also keep up with faster and more complicated movements. It’s pretty wild actually.

yes we need more of this! The view of the body position at 0:45 through 0:47 is amazing. I find this so much more helpful. @MarcusBrown do you need an excuse for more drone playtime? :) build out a teaching library of rear view videos.

Something struck me as I was watching a bunch of videos this weekend. The vast majority of video we watch as we are learning technique is from the boat looking back at the skier. Shoreline video is a distance second. Video from behind the skier is quite rare. Obviously this is because it is so much harder to capture and capturing form the pylon or from spotter is so easy. However I personally believe the value of video from behind the skier would be immense. Your brain has to do extra work when you are watching someone perform a task from a face on perspective. You have to first take that body movement and translate it directionally before you can translate that in your mind to first person. If you view the skier from behind your brain has a much easier time translating that into a first person mental model. My wife was/is a dancer. When they are learning new choreography the instructor or choreographer almost always walks them through the various movements with their back to the dancers facing a mirror. This allows the dancers to map the mental model of the movements much easier as they are learning the new dance. Now creating video from behind a skier is not going to be a practical thing for any of us to do with regular skiing for quite some time. Drone technology would have to advance quite a bit and come down a lot in cost I think. But it is getting closer. https://mydeardrone.com/types/follow-me/ Perhaps some of the schools and coaches out there like Terry Winter ( @twhisper ) can start producing more video of this nature. Maybe pro events can think about video from behind or above the skier. I think it would be enormously helpful to a lot of folks coming up the curve like myself. For instance reading the post from @AdamCord on Connection and Swing I kept wanting to see video and images from behind the skier to better understand what Adam was talking about. Maybe I'm off base ...

On a related note our floating course after lake level drops I find extremely hard to ski unless you pull the anchors taught even with no wind bowing it. Like I can barely run opener. My theory is the lines sag and the buoys move closer down course. So it’s interesting the outboard distance affects only mildly given how much this change effects things.

@jpattigr if you haven’t yet, I highly recommend a trip to Silverton Mountain. Trust me

Knee to waist deep untracked powder I go snow skiing all day long. Part of that is I have been snow skiing since I was 2 and of the 43 years of skiing I spent 14 racing. so at this point snow skiing is a completely mindless experience in all but the most extreme terrain. I really don’t have to think about it anymore than I would going for a jog down the street. Still physically demanding but technically it just happens now. Water skiing is a lot more work and a lot less free flowing for me at this point. My brain isn’t to a point in the water where I can turn it off like on the snow. All that said I agree though that an average resort day on the east coast I’d rather be working on my 28 off in the course.

we did some testing on a 197 a few years ago and determined that you could safely throttle out of just under 3 feet with a Prostar 197. SN 200 is roughly the same but we never restested. /forum#/discussion/18563/depth-data-prostar-197

Only slightly ahead of you @SlalomSteve. I was where you are about 2 years ago. So take this with a grain of salt. I find two types of practice sets really productive for me. 1) I stay at one speed and 1 line length the entire set and just work on trying to make it perfect. I never get it perfect but I can generally make it feel more "fluid". Typically I like to do this when I am with a good coach. Work on like 1 thing every pass with their guidance and just ignore my ego. I find this personally to be best at a speed and length that is makable 100% of the time but not so easy you can get away with really terrible stuff. For me this is currently 22 off/34mph. I do one warm up pass at 22off/32mph and then go to 34 and stay there for 6 or 7 passes. 2) The second one is what I'd call more of a pyramid. I just started doing this at the end of the summer. I start with my tournament start speed and length (22off/32mph). Then I go up until I'm not making it or if I just barely make it. Currently that is usually in my 28off/34mph pass. I take 2 shots at this. Then I progress back down to my gimme pass. I usually do this when I don't have a coach and its just me and my buddy skiing. I really like this approach because I'm still relatively fresh (around pass 3 for me) when I get into the hard stuff so I can push the boundary a little. Then I end it on very clean passes that feel incredibly easy. Essentially go to failure and then end back it down to easy success. I have no idea if my second type is helping me at all but I like it a lot and it keeps me from getting tired of the same old same old. Strokes the ego just a touch without it being totally counter productive. I'd say about 75% of my sets are in bucket 1 and 25% in 2. This past weekend I did mainly what I'd consider traditional sets with a coach, going up the line and ending on my hardest when I was most fatigued at around pass 7/8. I didn't really care for it. I didn't PB and I didn't nail some core fundamental so instead of walking away from each set fired up I sort of walked away feeling mildly defeated. just my 2 cents to add the pile of loose change.

lots of good posts in the archives on this issue Here’s one /forum#/discussion/15836/best-video-capturing-device-for-wakeye-new

@VTskier nope we're done with the portable now too. We're skiing on our second permanent course occasionally but maybe only a couple more times. @"Keith Menard" I dumped the Excel doc I got from @Bdecker into a google sheet. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10SLLm6iC0sEtZ-o03jIAwD3axrPeSUYSfCszdA2ypeI/edit?usp=sharing It's super detailed. The "buoy setup" tab has the detailed schematic of the buoy design. It's pretty slick. Some hot tips I got from Brian ... - use braided poly cord not twisted or it snags in the pully ... more expensive - use the highest tolerance pulleys you can find. Any wobble in the pulley wheel can cause jamming - the counter weight needs to be long and skinny

@VTskier very good point I'm still shocked no one messes with your duck.

Also its worth mentioning that if you have a permanent location for your course but need to submerge there are better approaches than the portable. It's a lot more work than the portable for initial setup but the ongoing raising and lowering is much easier. I got the schematic for this from @Bdecker at one point. We currently have this setup on a second permanent course we use on the shoulder season. You essentially set anchors for each ball and have a pulley system with sub buoys. This is setup is very ease to raise and lower by simply running down the course with a boat hook and clipping or unclipping balls. It's a big job to build one of these setups though. We used our portable as a template to get the dimensions and spent a lot of time with scuba tanks mucking about. Debating whether to replace our main ski site with this setup vs going full wally sinker but need to give it another season or two to make sure the neighbors don't flip out before investing a bunch of time to put in a permanent course.

@Clydesdale to sink we currently just remove all of the boat guides, main turn balls and gates. We leave the mini-course buoys attached as it helps make it easier to bring up but isn't enough buoyancy to keep the course afloat. We attach a sub-buoy to the two pregate pvc pipes on either end. The sub buoy is just a small float that we adjust line so it sits about 4 feet below the surface. Something easy to spot from a boat. We also mark the subs by more or less triangulating off 3 landmarks on the shore. It's usually just a minute or two of driving in circles to find the sub on one end or the other. To bring it up we use a small 13 foot Whaler since its a super pain to try to do the following form an inboard. We use an extendable boat hook to grab the sub. Then pull that up and attach the pregate green balls. Then we hook the boat hook under the main line just past the V and drive forward "running the line" through the hook. It's important to keep the line down a couple feet while you do this. We learned this the hard way wrapping the mainline on the prop a couple times. Luckily the mainlines are tough (assuming you have cable and not poly). Also important to just idle along the cable. You need minimal momentum when you get to the next PVC When we get to the next PVC we attach the gates and continue the process again on the other side of the V. When we get to the long PVC they come up pretty nicely with the Mini course balls pulling the opposite end up as you pull the mainline up. The worst part is we then have to hand over hand along the PVC out to the turn ball and attach that. The pipe is covered in algae and pretty slick. This part sucks and really is the only thing about the process that has me considering adding the sinker kit. We do this all the way down the line until done. Then we generally give one of the anchor a pull with the Whaler to take any slack out of the line and straighten things out. Oh important to note we also have permanent sub buoys on each anchor so we can do this. Again about 3-4 feet below the surface to prevent strikes form random boats. We alternate the end we take the slack out of to prevent the course "walking" down the lake over the summer. The final step is to remap the course in ZO since we usually move the anchor 2-3 feet at least to take slack out. Whole process of raising takes about 15 minutes now with my regular ski partner since we have it dialed. When I do it with my wife and the kids it takes about 20-25. Sinking takes less than ten minutes. If you want more details on an actual sinker I agree with @WoodySkier, Wally is super helpful. Give him a ring.

You have to buy the Wally Course AND a Sinker kit. If you also want pregates you need those kits as well. Full Wally sinker system with pregates requires the following Kit 1 $2,233.75 Kit 1a $521.50 Kit 2 $2,505.00 Kit 2a $455.25 Total price = $5,715.50 If you get just Kit 1 and Kit 1a you will have a fully functional course that requires leaving up or submerging manually. I know this since I am trying to justify upgrading our Wally course to a Wally sinker by adding kit 2 and kit 2a. We currently submerge manually on our lake by removing the buoys. https://shop.wallyskier.com/WallySkier-kits_c4.htm Also you need to buy your own PVC pipe locally and make 2 anchors yourself.

Best season of my life so far. First tournament in 23 years and managed to post a PB 3 at 32off/32mph having never even attempted 32off ever before. Got the speed up to 34mph in the past month and can now come off the dock at 22off/34mph. Then I finally got my first full pass at 28off/34mph. On top of all of my own achievements my 14 YO daughter did her first tournament and got a PB there as well and is super excited to hit a bunch of tournaments next summer. We're heading to FL this weekend to see if we can squeeze out just a bit more. I'm looking forward to snow ski season but I'm not ready for this water ski season to end either.

Believe it or not no one was seriously hurt.

Some folks on our lake had a rough night last week ... or at least it ended rough. Wide open throttle at night on our lake is not recommended.

@Jordan unless you are just interested in understanding my personal physique I think you might have intended to @ mention @bsmith for the comments on strength.

Well what you are describing sounds like you may be trying to keep elbows close to the vest for too long which may be resulting in pulling too far past the second wake. Another counterintuitive thing I've been struggling with. getting off topic a bit though ...

@bsmith I'm not sure I am qualified to provide advice or coaching but I'll tell you a couple things that worked for me. Honestly I still struggle with all the things you mention as well it just happens less frequently. Usually gets a lot worse as I get to my 6th or 7th pass in a set and I generally consider it an indication I'm getting tired and it's time to end that set. Anyway couple things that helped me that came from coaching and reading some of the advice on here. I found advice along the lines of "get your hips forward" or "get stacked" pretty much useless for me. Just didn't help no matter what I tried. The other thing I have read a ton about but I just haven't been able to execute is "standing taller throughout". What clicked for me was a couple things. - Square and level shoulders as much as possible (at first eyes level was helpful for me) - Eyes down course at the ball (stop looking at the ball ... still very hard for me) - Eyes on the pylon behind the boat (stop looking across the wake ... I found this very counter intuitive) - Elbows to vest behind the boat (lately working on back arm pressure) - Pressing the front knee forward to get off the tail (knee not shoulders which is what I used to do when told to pressure the tip more) Now thats a laundry list so the other piece of advice I got from multiple coaches was one of those things at a time. If you try all of those or even 2 of those you will do none of them. In my opinion. Also I did a zillion "whips". Go on Youtube and look for "seth stisher whips" And I try to lock in good body position from the second I get up on the ski. Like during the run in to the course and even after the pass. I square up my hips and shoulder, I press the knee forward until the water is breaking well ahead of the binding. I used to be very sloppy about this. Bad habits are hard to break so you have to more or less never let yourself slip and get lazy. All that said I am still working on every single one of these things and I'm lightyears from having any of this locked in the way I would like. So much so that I feel foolish writing any of this as if I am some sort of expert. Hell it might be months before I manage to get -28 again. Good luck

@Than_Bogan totally fair and quite possible but I got a ton of coaching last year including two trips to FL schools. I really struggled to execute the guidance provided by previous coaching until I got on the fin this year. You are 100% right in that the fin alone was not the biggest contributing factor. Yes improving what I was doing on the ski is what has gotten me the gains. I'm just saying I felt more able to work on those things with the new fin. Had I continue to ski like I was skiing in June of this year I'd still be struggling to get 15off/32mph ... fin or no fin.

I've hit this thread a couple times and gone through the full arc of emotions over my admittedly self indulgent impulse buy of the Whisper Fin. Since it has popped up I figured I'd drop in my latest thoughts after essentially a full 3+ months of usage and sticking with it. I'm not even remotely a short line tournament skier. Maybe my experience can be some help for those of you wondering if this fin can help someone who isn't a hardcore short line skier. For reference last season I could barely make a clean pass at 15off/32mph. I struggled at first with the Whisper fin but most of my issues were really centered around some very very bad technique problems. After working a bunch with Jay via email with some video he basically gave me two paths to choose. Option a) he could give me a fin setup that would allow me to keep skiing with my poor technique and maybe get a little further down the rope or Option b) he could give me a setup that would allow me to work on my technique and achieve more once I stopped doing some terrible things. I would "achieve" less in the short term relative to speed increases and/or line length. I decided to take my medicine and went with the option b setup and got to work. Jay actually suggested along with option b I stay out of the course for the rest of the season and dial in technique. I only made it like 2 weeks staying out of the course. It's just too fun. Sorry Jay! Fast forward to the mid August and my first tournament since college (23 years) and I got a PB at 3 buoys at 32 off/32mph. I had never in my life even attempted 32off for what its worth ... not once before this day. I was still struggling to get to 34mph but felt solid on the ski and was starting to get to where things were predictable when I did the right things. The mystery was starting to wash away. Labor day weekend I finally got my full pass at 22 off and 34mph. I've been trying to come off the dock since then at 34mph and the ski just seems to behave more predictably now that I'm getting used to it. When I dropped back to 32mph things just felt so slow and "draggy" so I took that as a good sign. Last Sunday with water temps dipping below 70 degrees and everyone talking about the cold water killing their skiing I managed to pull off my first full pass at 28off/34mph! Now in all fairness I only pulled it off once and was only able to get 5 balls on my next two attempts but I did it and it didn't even feel that hard. What I could feel was that I was doing the right things. I was not fighting the ski at all. The ski was predictable and when I didn't do something quite right I knew it right away. For me this is a very different experience to have things predictable enough that I can be self aware of my laundry list of technique flaws. Long story short ... I am skiing better than I ever have and I attribute a lot of that to the Whisper Fin. Now if only I could find a way to extend summer in New England another couple of months. If it matters to anyone ... Connelly GT 66" Reflex Supershell 3.0 with RTP Bf = 28.938 Wg = 7° FD = 2.530 FL = 5.760 DFT = 1.920 LE = 7.680