Hipsup

I was wondering if a ski can really get waterlogged? I've always been told and advised to repair a ski when it gets damaged in case it gets waterlogged but is this just an old wives tale? Years ago I was told by an eminent pro/coach that I shouldn't ski on my red/blue sixam when I took a chunk out of it with the handle until it had been repaired for this very reason. My daughter was also told on the start dock of a comp last year that her ski was waterlogged by another skier's coach after he tapped it a few times!! I ask because I just bought a brand new top end slalom ski and took the fin box off and was amazed to see that the slot for the fin was just a naked slice taken out of the ski without any visible sealing/waterproofing or finishing whatsoever - you can even see the internal construction of the ski which is therefore exposed every time you put your ski in the water. Forget a small dink - this is a large area constantly under water and pressure every time you ski. So whats the answer? I'm no engineer but surely it can't be good for a ski to fill with water so either the inside of ski's are waterproof in some way or it doesn't matter if the internal construction is exposed to water constantly because otherwise the manufacturers would do something different - wouldn't they?

My favourite subject! The bottom line is you need to be balanced with your weight over your feet. Trouble is there are many different ways of achieving this like @gator1 says. Keeping your back leg straight or your hips up or your front knee pushed forward are all still possible while having your weight too far back so they may not work for you either. What you need to do is find a way of moving your front hip over your front toe and this requires you to move your entire body mass forward - much like in snow skiing when moving your body mass forward results in you pushing your shins against the front of your boots. If you ski with a rear toe loop there is an easy way of finding out if you can stand on your ski properly. Whilst skiing take your back foot out and if you squirrel down the lake before taking a face plant you know you're doing it wrong. If you can stay balanced over your front leg and keep that position when you put your back foot back in, then you've got it!

I've seen a TW armguard and it is a nice well made product. The fact is that no-one can say with any degree of certainty whether any guard would prevent an arm through the handle or not or indeed whether a home made version is any less effective. However, what I can say with a degree of certainty is that any well secured guard would lessen the chances of putting your arm through and DEFINITELY prevent your head going through and for that reason alone any version is better than none in my book.

Thanks Bruce, they look really nice! Dumb question, but how do you tie the spectra cord? One long piece knotted at the top on one side?

@brewski I will get the details of my handles when I go to the lake later today. Your version looks a lot better than my homemade efforts, although the central eyelet to attach it to the handle is definitely needed, I think. I'm in the uk, so not sure what the shipping options are at this stage. Personally, I can't understand why more people don't use handle guards for both head and arm protection and having a central strap to the handle really makes no practical difference to your skiing but might save your arm one day. I was at Princes Club when Aidan Willers nearly lost his arm putting it through the handle and trust me no-one wants to go through that if they can possibly avoid it!!

They look really nice, although I think they would need a bungee strap to the centre of the handle for them to serve any useful purpose. I've been making and using handle guards for myself and my family for several years and you really need a strap to the handle otherwise they are pretty pointless.

My 12 year old daughter is a lovely little skier and ski's with a natural style and grace that I can only dream about. Currently, she can smoke all her passes with ridiculous ease but she keeps coming up short @34 mph 18m. The problem seems to be that she just cannot get the ski to slow down enough - she is very close but is getting frustrated and I think the size of her ski is holding her back. She is currently on her mums old 66 inch red/blue Sixam (still a great ski)) but at 5'6" and 110 lb's soaking wet its probably just too big for her and @34mph she has to run just about the perfect pass to get it done. I'm trying to find her a suitable 64 inch ski to try out but was wondering if there were any fin adjustments that I could try which would make her current ski feel turn quicker and slow down easier. Maybe move the fin forward? Anyone have any bright ideas?

The thought that works for me is trying to force my front foot as flat as possible. If your front foot is flat then your hips automatically move forward and you get the front ankle flex that Shane is talking about. The other obvious thing that should help is making a conscious effort not to push on your back foot coming in to 1,3,5. Keeping your shoulders open and only turning with your lower body also really helps when trying to get your hips moving over your feet.

@Brady Don't despair, it looks pretty good. Keep at it and things will improve quickly. You are a big guy and its really not easy skiing at 32mph or slower on anything smaller than a surf board at your weight. I have dropped from about 240 to around 210 this year and I cannot tell you how much easier things get when you drop weight and improve strength. I know that when I was heavier deep water starts used to absolutely kill me and learning to start with only one foot in made things much much easier and enabled me to save my strength for skiing. I don't know if you start with both feet in but if you do and you have grip issues at the end of the lake then try one footed starts - as @skijay says please don't put your arm thru' the handle!

The D3 vest is indeed made by eagle. However, they are not exactly the same as the eagle zip front because for some reason they are all tiny! I can just squeeze into a eagle front zip XL vest but couldn't get anyway near getting the XL D3 version on. My wife had the same problem - don't know why they come up smaller. I don't think eagle vests are available anywhere in the UK - they may well ship them but that might be costly. Got mine in FL last year but had to get it directly from eagle as performance doesn't stock them either. Worth going to a bit of effort though because they are fantastic vests!

Ah! Got ya. No, there is no compulsory purchase order.

@LeSkiAvantTout - Thats right, BAA are buying it (not done yet tho') and want to use the lakes for water management purposes from Heathrow airport. I'm not sure what that means, but I guess it means they can dump all the runway water in the lakes without worrying about poisoning any skiers/public. They wanted the club closed before they agreed to buy it and don't want the water to be used by anyone! So London loses a world class sporting venue in the year of the Olympics just so Heathrow airport can dump polluted water - That's progress folks!! @bogboy - sorry don't know what you mean (eminent domaine?)

The trouble with slalom is that most of the time what you think you are doing or what you think you see other skiers doing is often wrong. The old cause and effect conundrum! Take the issue of getting stacked. For me, trying to flex my ankles or straighten my back leg or trying to push my hips up or stand tall - just don't work. I just end up pushing on the ski even more. If you think about it, you can't do any of the above if you don't move your hips forward in the direction of travel first. You can't flex your ankles if your weight isn't in front of your feet- I believe that's why guys like Marcus always bang on about all movements starting with the c.o.m (hips) - you just can't do it any other way. I think that's also why they promote swinging/sliding the hips in towards the wake at the apex with the inside hip leading and thereafter trailing arm pressure. A turn with no rotation is the best way of moving the hips forward in the direction of travel on the inside/turning edge of the ski. If you move the outside hip around you are just putting weight on the high side of the ski or falling away from the handle. If you start all movements with the hips then you can stay close to the handle and on the inside of the arc - if you do this the theory is you will naturally be stacked, with weight over your ski and ankles flexed. Cause and effect!

It is much much easier in terms of load, but needs better balance. You have to trail your rear leg out behind you and use it as a sort of counter balance. Just make sure your hamstrings are nicely stretched before you give it a go!!

@MaryTee - No, the members did not know about the sale at the time.

@otisg - I haven't made any disparaging remarks about anyone as far as I can remember. We in the UK love moaning and whining about things - its what we do when it rains and we can't find anything better to do! I can see we are not going to agree on this and that's fine - you and Shane are entitled to your opinion and I am to mine. All I will say is that Bill did not buy a bit of land or an empty building. He bought a club with existing members, some of whom have skied at Princes for more than 30 years, some have grown up there and some have spent all their spare time there. Ultimately you are both right - he owns it and he can do what he wants with it but nothing we do in life is without consequences and the consequences of him closing the club are that it will leave many,many members and skiing enthusiasts in the uk saddened. We can't force Bill to do anything he doesn't want to do because he holds all the cards. All we can do is try and see if we can get him to change his mind - if he wants to. At the moment he wont talk to us, but maybe in due course he will. If we do nothing the club closes - If we try to make some noise there is maybe a chance it won't. I can assure you we are not making disparaging comments and not slagging him off in any way. If you look at the comments on the petition they are all polite and all just asking him to re-consider. All very British!!

@otisg - haha . I can assure you that I am neither a marxist or a "do-gooder" but I do believe there should be some controls on development and land use, otherwise we would have chaos. In this case, the owner bought a ski club and we are just trying to make sure that it stays a ski club. I don't think thats unreasonable. Whether he wants to continue owning it or sells it is up to him, but we will fight any proposed change of use or closure.

@SHANEH - Ultimately he does own it and in law, of course, he can do what he wants with it, however I don't think its necessarily that simple. We have seen a lot of this lately in the uk with football clubs (soccer to you guys) where new owners have come in and saddled clubs with debt, run them to ruin with overspending on giant ego trips and then put them into receivership or administration. The law says that the clubs are owned by the bank or the rich man on his ego trip but in truth they are owned by the people that pay to watch their team every week. I'm not saying a ski club is truly comparative but there are similarities. Clearly, John Henry would not be allowed to just shut down the Red Sox or Liverpool football club if he wanted to and whilst we don't have the lobbying power of those supporters we can stand up for ourselves and try to make sure that the club always remains a skiing venue in some form. At least, thats our aim. Thanks to you all for your interest.

@SDNAH20SKIER Thanks - wise words. "Old bagger up for a good slagging off" - Not quite right, but v funny! Love you yanky dudes!

@SDNAH2OSKIER of course you are right- I accept there is always two sides to all arguments. In many ways Bill has been really good to the members because he has kept the club open for much longer than he needed to. On the other hand he has done many things to lose and alienate members and overall membership is now down 2/3rds from the numbers when he took over. Without wishing to bore you about the details there are specific reasons why the club now loses money and it could be quite easily turned around over time. True to say there is a complete mistrust between the owner and members and I'm sure he feels let down by us as much as we do by him. Trouble is he has never talked to us, never met us and refuses to open any sort of dialogue with us. The sad reality is that he chose to buy the club and his decisions have turned a business that broke even into one that loses money. He is a very wealthy man and whilst I don't expect him to keep ploughing money in to a failing business I do think he should give us the chance to keep the club open in some form or rent it to us. The club has been a waterski venue for more than 50 years and has a rich history. I guess it boils down to whether you believe it is right for one wealthy individual to be able to play god and just close it down on a whim. For those of us that love the sport and want to ensure that it has a future we need to make sure that clubs like Princes are protected. I have nothing against Bill and in many ways I feel sorry for him but the purpose of the petition is not to slag the guy off but to hopefully show him how much the club means to us all and to maybe open some form of dialogue.

Not sure why I'm commenting on this 'coz I still do the same thing!! If you look at the video, the first thing that happens when you pull out is the tip rises. This is telling you that your first movement is back. Having a leveraged position with your shoulders behind your hips is great, but you must not let your centre of mass fall back over your rear foot when you do it. Its difficult to do but you have to move your hips forward so that your weight stays between your feet at all times. The way I think of it is that if you were standing on a skateboard and someone pulled it forward while you just stayed still you would end up on your backside. If you moved your hips forward when they pulled it you would still be riding!

Thanks. Yes, we're hoping he may change his mind. But as things stand the doors close in 2 weeks and all the assets will be sold.

@Jordan Thanks - you are right, that would be logical. But at the moment he won't consider it and says he'd rather close the doors!!

Princes Club is the best waterski/wakeboard facility in europe with 4 boat lakes and 2 cable tows just half an hour from central London. Over the years it has been the home of champions from Andy Mapple to Jodi Fisher, Nicole Arthur and Aaron Larkin. The Princes pro-am slalom event has hosted all the sports great and good over the years including Willie, Parrish, Cox, Ross, Rossi Beauchesne, Tgas, Travers, you name them and now it has all come to a sorry end. Skiing has now closed at Princes and the doors of this once great club will be closing for good on November 8th. The owner has no interest in the sport and due to general mis-management over the last 5 years the club is making a huge loss and he's not prepared to bankroll it any longer. The trouble is he is also not prepared to talk to members to see what can be done to turn the club around or to sell it for a reasonable price to people willing to keep the business going. He is talking about selling it for redevelopment (unlikely) or just mothballing it and keeping the asset for his kids. We are hoping we may be able to persuade him to change his mind by the strength of public opinion and have set up a petition site. If as many of you as possible could sign the petition we may just change his mind. Oh and If anyone has a spare £2.5-3m to spend just let us know as well!!! the link is as follows http://www.thepetitionsite.com/232/671/619/save-princes-club-from-closing-down/ thanks ballers!!

This is an interesting thread - personally I would love to comprehend how Seth runs that pass so beautifully, but I think rich's explanation is overly simplified. It's really NOT that easy and I think the real explanation is that Seth ski's for a living, spends countless hours on the water and is a million times more talented than me and the majority of us normal folk!! Rich, I really don't understand this "right arm is the accelerator" thing going from the gate turn in to 1 ball either. Does that mean you are loading your right arm (meaning leading arm - old terminology back arm)? Coz if you load your right arm on this side all you are doing is pushing your weight backwards - try it on dry land. If you load the left or trailing arm you magically swing forward in the DOT. This is why Rossi always talks in his articles about trusting the trailing arm pressure and not the leading (old back arm) as we have always been told. If you DO mean leading arm, then I can't see how that will act as an accelerator- unless I'm missing something. I'd really love to believe that slalom is not hard and that the difference between running 15off and 38 off is not that much - but I can't. I have no comprehension of how the top guys do what they do. To me, I think it must be magic. Take a look at Aaron Larkins gate and try and tell me how te hell he does that - because I have no idea!!