Than_Bogan

@Rednucleus If you're gonna make up someone to vouch for you, you shouldn't pick a name that is so obviously made up.  "Adam Cord" sounds like a character in a spy novel.

Has Austin considered changing his name to Adam?

Easy for me to say, but that looks runnable!!

Do you mean favorites from history or current skis?

At a high level, I agree with what everyone else has said.  But if I were standing in the boat coaching you, I would address your specific issue with a focus on your shoulders.

Your shoulders are leaned toward the boat essentially all the time.  In this configuration, you'd need impossible tricep and core strength to hold the handle down to your hip.

Instead, you want your shoulders to go as far away from the boat as possible.  In order for this to happen, your arms will have be straight (think about how any bend will just pull your shoulders closer to the boat), and your hips will have to go toward the boat (again if the hips come away that means rotating your shoulders more toward the boat).  This means that improving where your shoulders go will magically repair these other issues.

You want to have the feeling that you're hanging your entire upper body off the end of the rope.

When you watch the best slalomers, you'll see surprising variation in exactly what they do with their knee bend and exactly where the rope handle is relative to their body.  But if you look from hips to shoulders, all of them have their shoulders way away from the boat such that their upper body is basically in a straight line with the rope.  Even more interesting is how much they stay with that as they ride the handle out.  The upper body stays broadly in line with the rope even as the edge begins to change underneath, creating the so-called Reverse-C position for a moment.  THIS is what results in the handle remaining close to the hips.  In most other positions, it would require impossible strength to force the handle there.

On 3/21/2024 at 1:29 PM, jpwhit said:

I’ve found that for people that have trouble getting comfortable keeping solid form and crossing the wake aggressively, that also don’t respond well to drills or verbal descriptions of form for more aggressive wake crossings, that it’s better to get them comfortable with good rhythm, early to the balls without struggling and then ease them into better wake crossings by slowly increasing the width of the novice balls. 
 

I find that once they are use to making all the novice balls, and they believe they can make them all consistently, they are more motivated to attack the wakes and develop better form crossing the wakes, as the novice balls get wider. 

This is very interesting -- and even more surprising -- to me.  I've always thought that narrow balls are navigated by turning, whereas the fundamental challenge of the slalom course is the other phase:  Getting the leverage to build the speed to build the width.  So it's hard to see how steering back and forth can ever lead to the fundamental changes that this skier needs to make.

But that's a mechanical element, and you may be alerting me to a psychological element that I hadn't really considered.  I have previously only used narrow balls to "sell" slalom -- for example getting a kid a feeling of success so that they stick with it.

So what "symptoms" would make you send adult students toward the narrow balls?  Is it basically just "it doesn't look like you're trying at all."  Surmise that person may lack confidence and use the narrow balls to build some?

@Horton I definitely think that is the best method for success later in the season.  I did that for many years.

These days my spring routine is to run, jump, and work core strength with "my" high jumpers and pole vaulters, and then somewhere around June just jump into the slalom course and see what I can do.  It's not as effective as the "serious" way, but it's more effective than you might guess, as some of the muscle patterns are similar.

10 hours ago, Adam Caldwell said:

@Horton   Time to put the tools down, settle on a ZO setting and ski.

That should be a fun week!

@GloersenSafe-T!!  Genius name.

@tru-jackGood idea.

But I'm gonna be surprised if people end up wanting a nub at the end.  Baseball bats and hockey sticks are swung, and the centrifugal force then tries to pull it out of your hand.  I don't see anything analagous in slalom handle usage.

I love this idea and would volunteer as a Beta Tester.  (And I mean a real tester -- I guarantee to send a LOT of detailed feedback!)

I see obvious safety advantages, but I would also caution against assuming a strict safety upgrade.  There are ways a T could get a hold where a triangle almost never would, such as between your legs or under your arm pit.  I strongly suspect this is a better risk profile than what we have now, but new ideas always have unforeseen consequences.

COOL!

I can easily imagine some weird alignment issues as it should be easier to rotate.

But once accustomed, I wonder if it would result in way fewer misgrabs!?  There is nothing at the end to get fingers around AND if you grab too close to center, the rope actually guides your hand to the handle (I would think?).

Fair price for a great hull.

TWBC is probably my favorite "TV program" these days.  Annoying that there aren't any at this time of year!

But I don't really watch anything live.  I need more control of where my entertainment fits into my day.

Very impressive,  but also Guinness seems to be asleep at the wheel.  How could they miss Lucille?

You left out the option of "I know what I could improve, but I'm probably not going to try that hard to improve it."

I guess that sorta falls under the "fun" option, but that sounds like totally ignoring results.

Could three middle schoolers jump on top of these boxes without destroying them?

I ask this only because ... it is almost certain to happen!  This box will be at a field that is heavily used and mostly unsupervised.  I don't expect a ton of malicious activity, but a LOT of thoughtless actions...

Hoping some of you have a favorite storage box that is truly weather-proof, STURDY & DURABLE (unlike the craptastic resin boxes I've tried so far), and lockable.

This won't actually be to store slalom skis, but that's about the right size.  Maybe could get away with a little smaller -- maybe down to about 4' of interior length.

Naturally, I prefer not to spend a fortune, but I need something that will actually last in an outdoor public space!

@vtmecheng Although interesting, I think you're kinda putting the cart before the horse.  There's a fair chance that resonant frequencies don't mean Jack about ski performance or breakdown.  My "goal" here is what it often is:  Fail quickly.  If we can do something kinda easy that suggests that resonant frequencies aren't very correlated to anything, then we can move on.  Only if they start to show some promise (or convince me that a simple test is fundamentally flawed), would I be interested in more complex test methodologies.

I mentioned in another thread that it might be possible to measure the resonant frequency of a ski and (if so) that it might be somehow meaningful in detecting material degradation ("sk breakdown").

I still have no evidence for the second part of that, but today I conducted a simple experiment that suggested a ski does have a fairly consistent resonant frequency that is not very challenging to measure.

I used my iPad's Fine Tuner app, and I grabbed an old Goode 9900 that had no bindings on it.  Then I just held it in various places with one hand and smacked it in various ways with the other hand.  The frequency measured was shockingly consistent at 115-116 Hz.  To be expected, there were also occasional readings of half or double (58 or 230), which is how resonance works and, if anything, makes a stronger argument that I'm actually measuring an inherent property of the ski.

Mildly interesting.  If anybody has an iPad or iPhone, get the free Finer Tuner app and then grab some skis without bindings on them and see if we discover anything.

(Most likely we won't, of course, but useless experiments sometime lead to better ones in the future!)

Riffing off something @DW mentioned, has anyone tried to measure a resonant frequency?

For some 3D printers, the actual recommended method to test belt tension is to pluck it like a guitar string and use a tuning app to get the right frequency. 

I wouldn't be very surprised if the resonant frequency of a new ski is different from an older one (of the same model), but I'm not sure how to measure that!

Firstly, congratulations to her on an amazing set of trophies for the year, most recently Collegiate National Champion!!  Geaux Cajuns!

I find myself curious why I haven't seen a lot more of her.  She seems like she'd be competitive with The Big Girls on the pro tour right now, with an opportunity to still improve a little and threaten many podiums in the future.

(If there is some can-of-worms type issue here, @Horton, feel free to just delete.  But I doubt I'm the only one who would love to see her compete more on the tour!)

Surprisingly fun video.  Still surprised you had no success on the 3.1.  Loved that thing.  Not as good as the 5.3, of course.  (I suppose that's my #1 "oddball" ski.  Had the privilege of testing that out one year and it was freakin awesome.   Personally I liked it more than the c65 -- although the c75 left both in the dust.)

Just listened to TWBCs Face-to-Face with Joel P.  Joel states that MC told him to go and set records behind every boat.  If that is truly MC's approach, then HUGE kudos to them, and it couldn't be in starker contrast to the embarrassing behavior of SN with Jacinta.

If we're doing "comps" now, I feel like we have to go way back to Wayne Grimditch to find another male with this combination of raw athleticism and dedication to waterskiing.