Slalom.Steve

@MDB1056 certainly a good point lol. I just get a kick out of the technical side of things, my brain thinks in variables and spreadsheets. I'm sure I'll figure out a preference over time, I'm just trying to avoid having to ditch a mostly-new glove that didn't work out, as I'm on a pretty tight budget. I've yet to have any issues with callouses, maybe because I grip more in my fingers? (and I'm only running 15off, 30-32mph). My current gloves are Straightline Tournament, medium. Amara grip, don't really know if they are thin or thick. There's no holes, some wear on the palm, but my main reason for another pair is I think I need to size down to a smaller glove. These get pretty loose now when wet. There's two boat shops about 40mins from me (Skipper Bud's and Munson Ski). My understanding is that neither has a prolific selection - Bud's only has HO gloves, Munson I know has Radar, not sure what else. But I'm gonna swing by both tomorrow and see what feels good.

Me: "Instead of telling me your favorite pizza place, can you explain how using different flours affects the crust of a pizza?" BoS members: "Pizza Hut." "Naw, it's Papa John's." "I love Jet's Pizza." :D seriously, I do appreciate all your responses, but specific models is not what I'm looking to learn, and we're mostly just duplicating threads now, as debate about specific glove recommendations are covered in a variety of other threads. I'm looking for the general characteristics of different materials/constructions, regardless of brand. So if you like the thin Amara MSN, what is it about a thin glove in general vs a thick glove that you like, and has there been any trade-offs? What is it about an Amara glove in general that you prefer to Kelvar, and were there any trade-offs? etc.

Looking to buy my second-ever pair of gloves. I've found a good number of discussions about or recommending specific gloves, and there's pieces of answers to my questions distributed here and there in those threads, but I didn't find a complete, general discussion, all in one place. So not looking for debate on, for example, which Kevlar gloves are best. Brands/models as reference is fine, but just seeking here the general characteristics of different constructions/materials. In terms of performance/grip, comfort/wear on the hand, and wear of the gloves/handle: 1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of inside-out vs. regular? - It looks like all of Radar's hi-end gloves are inside out (or "seamless"). All of Connelly's are regular. And HO has a version of each for their top gloves. 2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of Kevlar vs Amara palms? (tangential comments on HO's "BlueTec" palm also allowed, or some other material I'm not yet aware of :smile:) 3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of thin vs. thick gloves? THANK YOU!

But I'm a 15off, 30mph skier, so... not sure anyone should listen to me lol.

Maybe also comment what line length you consistently run? in case there seems to be more of a consistent answer among different skill groups. How tightly do you grip the handle? OR: How much do you wrap your fingers around the handle? 1 being the loosest, 4 the tightest, with reference pics below (yes, I have strangely short pinky fingers). 1: 2: 3: 4:

Wondering if there's any correlation with these "connected swing" ideals and Zero Off settings? Is there any setting that in theory or in practice better supports this approach? Or would there be a lot of variation in preferred settings even among skiers all striving for this?

Yes

Certainly not the greatest ever, but this one is pretty awesome IMHO. Captures my brother and me catching the early water last season.

this is my brother @Nautique99

...but will it include perfect dread maintenance tips? ;)

@hemlock yeah I feel like a little bit of suspicion is good lol. I know a drummer who is endorsed by Ludwig hardware, not because he particularly likes Ludwig, but because they're the ones willing to give him free gear lol. That said, I wonder if that becomes less and less of an issue as you get the the true peak performers, as they probably have more a pick of brands (ie, could get sponsored by several brands and gets to pick which they want). But I don't really know, it's certainly possible that they'd still get a better deal from one company than another. I added a couple more Men skiers to the list, just to get a larger dataset, if anyone can fill those in too :) HOWLEY, Joel PIGOZZI, Robert DEGASPERI, Thomas

1. What ski (ideally brand and model, but just brand is okay) do the world's top skiers use? *answers added for quick reference Men WINTER, Frederick: D3 - NRG R1 ASHER, William: HO - HO, now called a Will SMITH, Nate: D3 - ??? DESCUNS, Sacha: Connelly - Probably a GT DETRICK, Brian: Goode HOWLEY, Joel: Connelly - GTR HOWLEY, Joel: PIGOZZI, Robert: DEGASPERI, Thomas: Women JAQUESS, Regina: Goode MCCLINTOCK RINI, Whitney: Radar COSTARD, Manon: Connelly BULL, Jaimee: HO DUMALA, Samantha: D3 FRANC, Ambre: Goode 2. And does that influence your ski purchases at all? I'm a professional drummer and drum endorsements don't matter much to me, but with drums and cymbals, those just might sound better but they don't make you actually play any better (excepting for true trash-level quality). The only exception would be bass drum pedals, as those are more of physics/construction thing that does relate more to your ability to actually pull off complicated things. Skis certainly fall into that category, of directly influencing your ability to excel. But drums are also a lot easier to try out. I might be intrigued by a pedal based off an endorsement, but then I can just go to a drum shop and try 8 different models back-to-back and see what I like best. That's not as easy with skis, so do the choices of the pros influence what you go out to buy?

Amazing video! For quick reference, to my rookie eye the time stamps for the cuts that best show what (I think) you're talking about are here, especially the two * ones: 0:07 1:40 3:37 4:02* 6:28* 8:06

Sorry, just to clarify: I've skied very occasionally since I was a small child, but this year was the first year taking it seriously and skiing the course. PB of 4 at 15off at 32mph. I use a fairly new set of D3 Leverage Blackout Front and Countour RTP. I'm happy with them (though don't really have any point of comparison), so this post is more about increasing my knowledge in general than looking to buy something soon. Maybe once I can run a pass at tournament speed I'll think about new bindings (but now I'll already know all about them when that time comes!).

I'm pretty new to course skiing and learning about gear. Help me to understand boots/bindings. Here's my understanding - there's basically two types: hard shell boots, and rubber bindings. Hard shell boots are pretty unanimously considered to be "better" for course/competition skiing, but it looks like Nate Smith uses a more traditional binding? (sidebar, how do you size pics on BoS to be smaller? lol) Is that correct or no? What are the advantages or disadvantages of each? What boots do various top skiers use (type and brand/model), including whatever Nate has? Among hard shells and rubber bindings, who are the "big hitter" manufacturers, and within the manufacturers, what models do they have and what are the differences? I know nothing tell me everything! :D Thank you!

an enthusiastic "YEE-HAW!" is a fun one for a final pass.

In my specific case, I can usually run 6 at 30mph, but sometimes better and sometimes worse. I want to pick it up to 32mph to chase a “new accomplishment,” but I’m wondering if I should just stay at 30mph until I feel like I’ve “mastered” it (where it’s easy and I always feel comfortable and consistent). Or I’ve considered going back and forth, perhaps even mixing in 28mph again, doing a set something like 28,30,30,32,30,28. (only possible other factor is I have a 2016 Radar Vapor, not really designed for such slow speed, so part of me wants to get to 34 just so the ski can do its thing lol).

I’ve seen some thoughts on this idea pop up here and there, especially in @twhisper 's training threads (love if you can chime in here Terry!), but figured it’d be nice to centralize the discussion and see what everyone has to say: What is the best way manage your progress as a skier in terms of when you increase difficultly (shorter rope or faster speed) and when you decrease difficulty (longer rope or slower speed)? I am no expert skier (first year in course, 15off 30mph), but I am what most would call an expert drummer, and also teach drum lessons and have studied a bit of practice/performance theory, and I’m trying to apply what I’ve learned there to my skiing. What I often find is that drums students (and myself) want to progress too quickly. Obviously there’s a desire to be able to do more and more, but if a student doesn’t have a particular pattern thoroughly learned and they try to play it faster and faster, it isn’t really beneficial to their progress. Even if they can sort of "pull it off," its sloppy, it’s not convincing, and it can’t be relied upon for a performance because it might work, might not. It’s better to truly master a pattern before trying to improve on it. I was encouraged by a teacher that when you’re learning something new, play it as slow as you need to play it right, even if it’s painfully/awkwardly slow, because “every time you play something wrong, you’re creating muscle memory of doing it wrong, you’re building a habit of playing it wrong, you’re teaching yourself to play it wrong.” Once you can play it right, you can speed it up, but then again wait at that speed until it’s mastered there before going faster again. There can be some value in occasionally playing it a bit faster than you can, just to get the feel of what it will be like to kick it up, but then right away you go back to where you can play it right. And in broad terms, my teacher would identify times when he felt like my playing in general hit “a plateau” and I wasn’t making much progress. At those times we’d drop all the complicated stuff and go back to the very basics - breaking things down to the foundation, improving the quality/solidity of that foundation, and then re-building the complex concepts. Does the same thing apply to skiing? Should we be patient with increasing our difficulty? Do we build bad habits by upping our difficulty too soon? Should we sometimes break it down and “start over” at easier speeds/lengths and slowly build back up again? Or are music and skiing not really a great comparison? One difference I can see is that in drumming, I can “isolate” one very specific part of a difficult pattern and just practice that. That seems harder to do with skiing (ie, isolating just your offside turn and spending 10 minutes only working on that), given how interconnected every part of a ski pass is, and particularly if you’re on a small ski lake without much distance to “mess around” working on one specific thing, or if you’re paying per set at a ski club. I’d like to hear your thoughts from your own experiences as skiers and ski teachers. Thanks!

Shoot, missed this year. @skiinxs , any mailing list I can be on to get notified if/when 2020 happens?

@6balls - Considering a thinner/comp vest. Mine kinda gets in the way when I'm in lean position and get my arms straight (like I have to pinch the sides in and the chest "bubbles" up).

Hoping to get a good price on something used :)

Hey all, new slalom addict here. I live just outside Chicago and am wondering where to get gear (gloves, vests, handles, etc). I know there's Munson Marine in Round Lake but they're more a boat dealer, right? There's West Marine in the city but seems like they may be more "Lake Michigan" focused (boating/sailing)? Any local recommendations? Or for buying online, seems like MiamiNautique.com and PerfSki.com are the heavy hitters. Any recommendation between the two, or somewhere else? I imagine the owners of both sites are probably on BOS lol, so feel free to PM me if you want to keep anything private. Thank you!

It seems to me that defending the conditions in Malaysia by arguing that water skiing is dangerous and that injuries happen even in perfect conditions is like saying there's no point in creating/enforcing speed limits for cars. 1. Driving is dangerous (it is) - Skiing is dangerous (it is) 2. Accidents/injuries happen even when people are driving only 40mph (they do) - Accidents/injuries happen even when skiing in perfect conditions (they do) 3. So there's no point in trying to mitigate the risk by having speed limits (wait what?) - So there's no point in trying to mitigate the risk by finding safer skiing conditions (wait what?) And even if one says, "well these people are choosing to compete in a dangerous sport, whereas driving is almost a necessity of life", then just flip the argument to something like football. Just because it's inherently dangerous doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything we can to mitigate the risk by improving the quality of helmets, for example. Arguing that other sports like alpine skiing are also often at the mercy of uncontrollable conditions is closer to a good argument, but I still doesn't think it really holds up. To have a downhill comp, you need 1.5-3 horizontal miles of snow, with up to 3,200 ft of vertical elevation - not exactly something that's all over the place. To have a water ski comp, you just need 0.4 miles of water, which is everywhere. In downhill, there's really nothing you can do about the weather or deteriorating snow. In water ski, you can find ideal conditions fairly easily by having a small lake with wind protection and at least by ensuring there's no other boats out there. The alpine comparison to Malaysia would like like having a downhill competition on a mountain with a ton of wind exposure even though there's a much calmer mountain right over there, and there's also some amateur skiers going down the course at random times that some skiers have to ski around and others don't. Again, doesn't really hold up as validation for Malaysia, IMHO.

I would do all those things! (...depends how many windows we talkin lol ;))

Hey everyone, I'm a beginner course skier (28mph 15off, though I got that on only my 3rd day in the course), and I live in Schaumburg, IL (NW suburbs of Chicago). Being in the course has given me the ski bug real bad, but I don't have consistent access to water time, so I'm looking for as many local ski buddies and skiing opportunities as I can find! Does anyone have any suggestions or leads in the area? Even if you don't have a connection to water time but live nearby, I'd love to connect just as a fellow local ski enthusiast. I'm 6balls's nephew, if that mattes to anyone lol. Thanks! - Steve