Than_Bogan

But, but, it's so fun to stand around and geek out about slalom technique... /vanillaforum/js/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-smile.gif No, I agree that it's a time for adapting, but also think that process has started. Against the backdrop of there being a zillion things for kids to do, there is also a shift in culture toward formal competition. Ironically, I am one of those people who thinks that's kinda silly. Even though I am naturally drawn to measuring myself in formal competition, I don't see that as a key aspect of growing up -- I prefer the concept of kids playing purely for fun. BUT this represents an opportunity, and several of the posts above show how it's already becoming one, with heavy participation in the kids divisions at both INT and AWSA tournaments. We have more to learn, for sure. But I think it's not too late.

Is anybody else a little sketched out by having what is basically piano wire on the back of their hands? I can't figure out exactly how I would injure myself with that, but it seems like I'd find a way...

I think scoke meant to say "wearing skis, bikinis optional."

This reminds me: What's the difference between Amarid and kevlar? Supposedly the "new" Talons have an Amarid palm, but the grip doesn't seem anywhere near as good the old "kevlar" Talons. Both the Radar Strada (http://www.radarskis.com/strada_glove.html) and the Masterline K-Palm (which I borrowed for one set and seemed like a solid grip) also claim to have Amarid palm. So are there types of Amarid or something??

Also relevant here: The count of 'high end' skis that Horton just did. People don't normally look to enter a market that is dying... Technically, this can't tell us anything about tournament skiing, as it could be just folks skiing "seriously" at home. But I would claim that the total slalom population is very tightly correlated to the tournament population anyhow. So more customers == healthier sport.

This seems like a popular discussion topic, but it keeps showing up in other threads where it is off-topic and therefore hard to find. So I decided to start a thread actually dedicated to this. Please complain about how ZO is killing the sport right here! In my opinion, skiing WAS dying, and a lot of damage has been done. The first Nationals I attended had over 1000 competitors, the most recent one I attend had 700. 30% decline in participation (even with slightly easier qualifying in my opinion) is a baaaad sign. But the current direction, in my opinion, is one of growth. In the last few years, I've seen numerous new faces, most 'graduates' of INT -- some old, some young. And there is a very obvious surge in the kids divisions. It seems like we "missed" a generation -- I rarely see many folks in M1, M2, W1, W2. But I think rumors of our continuing decline are not only exagerated but outright incorrect. IF these trends continue -- i.e. we MAKE them continue -- then 3-event skiing may be a very healthy sport as the future unfolds.

Is there an online link? I'm in the market for a new brand of gloves since my beloved Talons are gone and I didn't find the 4wake Talons to be equivalent. Currently using an old set of Connelly Claws, actually!

Also, do everything else that Chris Parrish does! :)

100% true. I feared that from the first moment I read about New School, because the layman's interpretation seemed to be to sit down during the pull, which I had just spent the last 5 years STOPPING (and had picked up 5 full passes by doing so). It's very easy to severely misintrepret without a knowledgeable coach.

You wouldn't call what Jamie does "huge knee bend"? While I agree that "new school" and "old school" are terms that may never have made much sense, and now even less so, I still think there are some pretty different styles that skiers tune toward. The one I personally am most aware of is what Jamie calls "angulation," which I believe is a snow ski term. My "understanding" (if you can call it that) of this is that you roll the ski onto edge with a bend at your ankle and by dropping your knees and/or hips "down" (toward the water and toward the inside of the turn). If you ski that way, then hard-shells may almost be required -- a rubber boot will dampen much of that movement and your ski won't respond as desired. I tried out hard-shells for an entire season a few years back and I had serious problem on them. In retrospect, I believe this is because any movement of my foot muscles or ankle joint is an accident -- I am not using that mechanism to direct the ski. Roughly speaking I am using my entire lower body as one to direct the ski. Rubber boots give me the right level of control; hard-shells amplify movement that I am making for balance -- NOT to direct the ski. So this disctinction matters, because it can determine what kind of equipment will work best for a given style. Importantly: even if everything I've said about angulation above is totally wrong, I still believe there is potential value in "naming" styles so that you can figure out what applies to you and what doesn't. I don't think you are disagreeing with that, but seemed worth pointing out.

"here I thought my primary problem was my turns!" Most people do. Turns are where all previous errors finally bite you. But for a skier working into shortline for the first time, the relative weakpoint is nearly always pull position. We've all been there. "How do I pull out farther AND softer?" There are a lot of schools of thought on this, but one thing that I always work on is staying on the left edge until I commit to turning into the gates. This helps get and maintain width without having to wail on it. I haven't figured out how to do this consistently at -38, though. I'm "stuck" with a hard pullout once the rope gets that short. And that reminds me: In the end, we're all working on the same stuff -- it's just a matter of degree.

In general, I agree with everything being said above. But let me give you some slightly different language on how to "fix" your problems (which I think are very fixable). Every person's relationship between brain and muscle movement is different, so sometimes a different way of thinking about the same thing can be helpful. At the risk of repeating myself, I'm not giving you any different advice compared to above, just a different way of thinking about it. If this makes less sense to you, please ignore it! Begin by focusing on what your hip is doing as you finish the turn. Currently, your hip is one of the last parts of your body to finish the turn. The result is that it trails your center of gravity all the way across the wakes, resulting in suboptimal leverage (or suboptimal angle -- focus on whichever one makes more sense to you). Instead you want to initiate the turn with your hip. The "old school" way of describing this is to ski your hip right back to the handle (and THEN regrab it). New schoolers actually drop their hips toward the ball a bit, and ultimately end up with the handle almost down by their knees -- so they don't use this terminology, but nevertheless you need to get your hips to come all the way around such that your entire lower body is leading the way across -- NOT trailing. Knee bend is fine -- some great skiers bend their knees tremendously. Just don't allow that knee bend to be combined with "sitting down" and thus removing the largest muscles in your body from the equation. I strongly advise practicing this on shore. Experiment with different knee bends and hip positions and you should be able to feel which ones give you more leverage. I'll close by agreeing with another thing everybody else said: You look pretty good. You only need subtle adjustments, but subtle adjustments can take a lot of time and focus to become routine.

I recently had a serious problem with outbound direction at the end of my off-side pull (entering on-side turn), and moving my fin backward 0.01" improved it almost miraculously. From what I understand though (which ain't much), this adjustment is only likely to work when the problem is asymmetric. For a general lack of outbound direction on both sides, my thoughts would match AB's. My personal first choice would probably be to add depth, but be alert for turns getting harder. If turns still feel good, you're done. If turns feel worse, restore depth and try shorter fin instead. Disclaimer: The one thing I know for sure about fin adjustments is that it's an inexact science. I think for every single rule of thumb out there, somebody somewhere can cite a case where they did the exact opposite and it worked great.

INTERESTING, TW! The mystery deepens.

scoke, dave -- would either of you be willing to whisper me your email addresses? I think I want to take this discussion to a level of geekiness that may cause physical harm to the less geeky :). Then perhaps if I/we can make sense out of these thoughts swirling in my head, I'll eventually come back and publish something coherent. I'm also starting to seriously think about videotaping the screen at various settings and charting the reported RPMs and speeds. This would only be one input, because the information displayed is only so accurate, and may well be slightly delayed. But one thing I think it WOULD reveal is whether the min/max RPM are different for different values, and similarly whether the min/max boat speed are different for different values. I have my guesses, but actual recorded data would be a LOT more meaningful, even accounting for the display information probably being pretty noisy.

Also, I hate to criticise any chart when I'm waaaay to lazy to make my own, but I'm going to anyhow :) I think I'd want any chart of what the boat does to be centered (in y) on the average RPM, and thus show what it's doing both when more RPM is needed and when LESS RPM is needed. Then I'd want to see one full period -- i.e. the entire cycle from one point in the course to the next corresponding point. It's possible to interpret Dave's charts in that way (as the ends are at the same RPM level), but scoke's charts for A and C do not have that property, so there is some missing information about what happens next. It would be my expectation for the RPM over a period to form roughly a Sinusoid (i.e. ramping up and down very smoothly), which neither of the presented charts suggest. Oh, and for those who accused scoke of being a geek, you ain't seen nothin' yet! :)

scoke -- from that post I don't find a description of what the axes mean, nor what A,B,C, and D are, nor what the dotted line represents. And while there are more posts in the thread, the interface of that forum seems too challenging to navigate for my lazy ass.

I actually think it's bizarre how little information ZO seems to be giving out. In order to actually build a control system (using the formal meaning of control system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_system), they obviously must understand exactly what each parameter controls.  So "surely" it must be possible to provide at least enough information that someone else could then take it and make a readable presentation out of it. Most likely, this could all be spelled out very precisely using standard control system terminology. I'm not saying that, in and of itself, would make it much easier to decide what setting to use, but it just seems weird for them to be so vague about what these parameters are. It's not as if control system theory is a brand new field or anything! The only explanation I can think of is some Intellectual Property concern, if they don't have good patents around it. Then giving out too much detail would make it too easy for a competitor to copy it.

Well, since the 80's the increase in the price of lakefront property, boats, AND skis has greatly exceeded inflation, so at the least it's getting more country-club. Also, man-made lakes that just plain ski better than public sites contribute to the "exclusive" feeling. These days, even if you live on a lake, you may not even know what a slalom course is. I probably chose the wrong word in "everyman." But I remain convinced that the character of the sport has changed very significantly during my lifetime. Darn -- I am completely failing to stay on the topic of my own thread!!!

At a tournament this weekend, I was talking with someone about ZO settings, and I said I was using B1. He said he was using A3, and then said something like "which is almost B1 anyhow." I didn't think much of it at the time, but that's wrong -- isn't it? I think it reflects the myth that the settings are just 9 stops along one line, i.e. A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3. But in fact (according to information gathered here and linked from here), the letter and the number are two independent parameters. So B1 vs. A3 is almost as different as you can get (with only C1/A3 and A1/C3 being further apart). It would be much more accurate, when considering similarity, to think of it as a square: A1 A2 A3 B1 B2 B3 C1 C2 C3 Right?? And I don't think this is a purely academic consideration, as it effects how one should experiment in finding a setting. If B1 seems pretty good, but you're still experimenting (as I am), then the ones to try out would be the neighbors: A1, C1, and B2. Similarly, if you want to get a feel for the range of parameters, you'd want to try the corners: A1, A3, C1, C3. If you (incorrectly) think of it as a line, it will be harder to figure out what to try and how to understand your results. So let's spread the truth on this! (Unless this isn't the truth...)

So, steering this back toward my original question, today's totals on the Big Dawg poll http://skibigdawg.wordpress.com/what-zero-off-setting-are-you-using/ (then hit the view results button) remain pretty interesting -- and to me a bit surprising. The surprise is how spread out the selections are -- there is nothing resembling a clear choice. B3 and C3 can now officially be considered "unpopular" -- although a few folks are using those settings. C1, C2, and B2 have a probably-statistically-significant lead, although I think B2 comes with a bit of an asterisk because many people consider that to be "the default" -- it may be getting all the people who haven't really worked at figuring out the best setting for themselves. But the "lead group" isn't very far ahead -- all of A1, A2, A3, and B1 are also nicely represented. Each is near the 11% that would be expected if every option were equally popular. Personally, I believe I have settled on B1, although I may still give C1 a chance. Last weekend, I ran -35 for the first time on ZO in a tournament (though it would be a stretch to blame ZO, as I had a significant injury right when it first appeared and am just getting over it), so that gives me a little confidence I've got the right setting -- or at least real close! And on the second topic of this thread: My general area featured 4 tournaments this last weekend, at least 3 of which can be considered excellent sites. Even with that "competition" for skiers, the tournament I attended was completely full and ran from 8am to 8pm. So the sport is not quite dead just yet! BUT there are scary signs. The number of pulls at 36 mph in this tournaments was ... drumroll please ... zero. I was the youngest "adult" skier, at 39. There were 3 kids, though, and I've been seeing a lot of "new" kids lately, including from my home lake. I believe the character of the sport is changing from an "everyman" sport to a "country club" sport. I can argue that's a bad thing, but then again it seems to work for golf.

I am so jealous!!

A few years back my inlaws got me some Underware Ultras from a race shop. At least for me (and admittedly I ski in pretty cold water compared to most on this list), these last more than a full season -- at least 3 times as long as the "regular" Underware. Not sure if they are actually a good value, though, if you can get the regular ones for just $3! Less kevlar in the garbage I guess, for those ubergreens out there.

I'm afraid I was a bit disappointed by these 4wake "Talons." The palm material doesn't seem to be the same as the original Talon, and even after several sets on them, I didn't feel the grip was nearly as good. The original HO Talons had a grip that I simply never had to think about. These just aren't completely solid. I also had some stitching come undone in one finger after just a few uses, but that could just be bad luck. Bottom line: These ain't the HO Talons. At least not yet. I hope they'll get there, though -- still like those better than any glove I've tried since they stopped making them.

Wow TW, that is awesome. Best laugh in a while.