mwetskier

regarding reaching forward at the ball i think it might have been rossi who said you want to have an imaginary bungee cord between your inside hip and your elbow of the reaching arm. this is to help you push your inside hip forward as you reach forward so that your hips don't go out behind you in the turn.

@Brady - careful. in some religions its a death penalty offense to utter the name of God out loud.

my favorite is an update on an old joke about Friedrich Nietzsche:

facebook is currently rife with stephen hawking died memes. most are funny, and more than a few are fairly irreverent. if you're a hawking fan its worth a look.

found it:

not terribly long ago someone posted a video of seth stisher coaching from the back of the boat, where he explained about driving the trailing hip forward through the wake to intentionally "upset" the balance point. i no longer remember his explanation regarding why this was desirable and i don't have the time at this moment to find that video, but i can tell you that this was something being promoted by seth in his coaching.

fyi the world slalom record for cable slalom is somewhere into 44 off, so maybe not so stupid after all.

@Stevie Boy - many years ago the right arm on the way to 1 ball used to be called the ' back arm ' because it was farthest from the boat during the pull. the prevalent coaching back when was to ' hide your back shoulder from the boat ' during the pull. of course that was when the boats had 240 hp and were driven by hand. these days the strongest pull behind the boat comes from loading both arms as equally as possible. when i first heard coaching referring to the ' leading arm ' it was accompanied by the opposite term ' trailing arm '. to me that seems like a easy to understand description that is just naturally devoid of confusion - for example no one with any understanding of the sport would think the right arm going going through the gate should be called the ' trailing arm '. i have no idea why that term isn't used more commonly, and no idea why the seemingly confusing term ' back arm ' hasn't fallen out of use but maybe its just old habits dying hard.

@oldjeep -' Stuff will last several lifetimes. ' thats only a strong selling point if you're buddhist.

the track advocates seem to have missed the point that you would still need an actual dock to get in and out of the boat after its rolled out into the water. i think @Brady was clear that he could not have a dock extend out past the edge of his property due to the narrow turn around channel. but looking at the pictures included by the track & cradle fans i noticed they all have the necessary side loading dock extending out from shore. the best solution i've seen so far is the one pictured below. i bet a much smaller one boat version without the boat launch would be pretty ease to build and it seems to answer all concerns.

this thread does a better job than any other in recent memory of embodying the phrase ' everybody wants to buy a better turn '.

@adamhcaldwell -not only is a grown cat a unit of measure, it can also be used to show the relationship between rod length and angular velocity of a pendulum by swinging it around by it's tail. and yes canting my bindings brings both knees together over the center line remarkably well -much better then the bungee i tried years ago to *pull* them together. also i'm kidding about the tail swinging thing -our cat is a manx. (no cats were harmed in the crafting of this joke)

@adamhcaldwell -i think @gavski offered up the best solution to the bow legged dilemma which is inserting cants between the boot and the plate its mounted to. when i'm standing on flat ground with my ankles together you could throw a grown cat thru the gap between my knees. following a similar discussion on this forum a few years back i canted my bindings front and back and it improved my skiing. it also made a huge difference in my comfort level.

if you can get your hands on the actual ski you want to duplicate you could probably do a pretty good job of imitating the base contour. just buy yourself a contour gage and use it to make plywood silhouettes for every inch down the length of the ski. connect all your silhouettes in line on a large board and use that to check and re check your work as you progressively sculpt the bottom of the wood ski.

one advantage with a softer binding implied but not spelled out by @adamhcaldwell is it makes it much easier to maintain pressure on the rope after center line with the upper body -but *without* simultaneously edging away from the boat with the ski. i would liken it to having a skate board with looser trucks vs one with tighter trucks. i preferred the former for the freedom of movement it allowed on a short board, but went with much tighter trucks on a long board for stability at higher speeds. short board with loose trucks for slalom and long board with tight trucks for ' downhill racing '.

@ToddF -thanks. it's the third button from the left.

@Than_Bogan -i know nothing about pole vault but when i watched your video the glaring error i saw was you trying to pull your body up to a greater height by bending your arms. if you want your hips to swing up higher than your shoulders the *last* thing you would want to do is pull your shoulders up with your arms. in fact -again i know *zero* about correct technique -i would say that allowing your arms to get as straight as possible during initiation of the ' invert ' would mechanically make it much easier to swing your hips and legs up over your body. i see a parallel here between trying to gain height in vaulting by pulling yourself up with your arms and trying to gain more power in skiing by pulling in with your arms during the cut -both are intuitive but futile.

he's getting quite a bit of slack on his offside starting right after the edge change. maybe add a little depth and decrease the dft.

well there went that lifetime subscription.

there is so much negativity directed toward that west coast slalom video that it almost seems like animosity toward toward suyderhoud himself -where as marcus brown and terry winter are practically worshiped here. but to be fair at the time the video was being made marcus and terry were also advocating those now dated concepts. in any event there are some very valuable aspects to that video that cannot be found anywhere else. which are the split screen chapters comparing the same skier at different line lengths with a real time stopwatch running, comparing two different skiers and also the chapters showing short line skiers with real time strain gage data. i personally think this stuff was and is a valuable addition to the slalom science knowledge pool. so until someone else comes along and does a better job of producing such visually clear real time data maybe you should hold off throwing what we currently have in the trash. imo.

@lpskier -jokes involving bruce jenner and pole vaulting kind of write themselves.

two words: freddie winter stronger.

maybe you could ask oswald bates to get involved. booked on phonics

@adamhcaldwell -' pickle ' is a euphemism -right?

thats definitely gonna leave a mark.