bsmith

@matthewbrown Regina is a RFF skier. I would have guessed that a RFF skier would take a bit longer to rehab a right knee since skiing puts more stress on the forward leg. Why do you think rehabbing her left knee would take longer?

@Spencer_Shultz You haven't mentioned anything about your spillway design. Typically, small lakes are designed to safely overflow 25% of the possible maximum flood volume for the given water shed situation. Usually, a lake has both a principle and emergency spillway. Small ponds often just use a flat earthen spillway area next to the dam. If your lake is just dug out with no dam required then a simple earthen spillway is likely ok. If your lake involves a dam of some sort and you have significant water shed, then you will likely need a more sophisticated spillway design such as a siphon spillway or elbow pipe spillway. If you have significant overflow, then a good spillway design is needed to get rid of the excess water without incurring major erosion or even dam failure.

@BraceMaker I totally agree that you should teach beginners with a fat ski as slow as is needed for them to make the course. But do you start them at long line or 15 off when doing so? I always start them at long line.

As a beginning course skier, my understanding of becoming free of the boat from everything I have read on BOS previously is that it happens at the end of the swing out before reaching apex and at about the same time I let go of the handle with the outside hand. It is the moment where I feel no pull from the boat such that is easy to let the ski turn inward towards the first wake. This is in contrast to when a beginner first tries the course and they pull long to a buoy and never get any glide time, free of the boat, before trying to make the ski turn back in. In this mode, the beginner feels a significant pull from the boat at all times. The beginner next learns that getting free of the boat is not just about obtaining some unloaded glide time towards the turn buoy, it is learning to get the right combination of speed across the wake with the right amount of deceleration to the buoy such that when the turn is initiated the skier still has enough speed to be free of the boat but not so much speed that the skier turns into a bunch of slack. This understanding of being free of the boat may be wrong, but it is what I think I have learned from BOS over the past year.

@ral I have watched that ebay listing for a number of weeks and could have won it several times before. Since @Horton left the fin business so many years ago, I figured that it likely wasn't considered as good as current production fins so I left it alone. Now that Horton has mentioned the special status of this fin, I am thinking again about it, but it would seem that Horton would want it back in his collection if he doesn't already still have an example from that early best generation of his fin.

@MISkier If I am remembering correctly, that fin keeps getting relisted because no one will even offer the starting bid price. I think a bid of $49 will get that fin.

@Charliesav7 I am a beginner course skier not much further along than you and the offside turn and body position are still my biggest problems. In order to run the course for the first time, I had to spend a lot of time improving those aspects of my skiing. Your onside body position actually looks great to me. You are "stacked", ie. your body is linear and perpendicular to the ski and you have a forward lean in the direction of travel which is very advantageous but also difficult to achieve even for advanced skiers. Since we don't have a full video of you crossing the wake, what I suspect is happening is that you are standing up too soon and not holding your cut through the first wake. As a beginner it is scary to be leaned away from the boat and hold a load through that first wake and pass through the center line of the boat path with a lot of speed. You need to practice hitting the wakes at speed from both sides and get comfortable doing that. The onside turn is very forgiving of not carrying speed through the wakes and thus you are still able to make a good turn and set a good cross angle. But the off side turn requires you to carry enough speed into it that you become "free of the boat" and wide enough on the boat that you get a feeling of no pull from the rope. It is during that freedom from the boat that you force the ski to turn starting from your feet up. You should have as much weight as you can on your front foot and your upper body should lag behind your lower body on rotation. Let this rotation phase take some time so that the ski can achieve the cross course angle you want before the load hits. For a beginner, making the ski turn on the off side does not come naturally. For me, I could not just rely on the ski carving on its own. I felt like I had to provide a lot of physical input to help the ski turn. On final tip on carrying speed into the off side turn, make that speed early with a hard cut into the first wake. If you keep cutting hard past the second wake, you will definitely make speed into the turn, but you will also turn into a ton of slack.

For quite some time now, someone in Leander, Texas has been trying to sell on ebay a carbon fiber fin that appears to be signed by J. T. Horton. The seller only wants $49 for it. Seems like a good deal to me. Just wondering if @Horton can confirm that this fin is genuine and that the signature is in fact his. The ebay link is this https://www.ebay.com/itm/Carbon-Fiber-Water-Ski-Fin-/264959121697 Since that link will die in 6 days (although it has been relisted about 6 times now), I have provided a screen shot of the ebay listing as well.

@unksskis and @Hallpass I actually already own a 43.5" graviton trick ski and have learned all the basic surface turns and am now trying to do wake turns. But as you guys say, it's hard and I took a lot of falls to learn S's, F's, B's, and O's. I am thinking that I could learn more tricks faster on a bigger ski or wakeboard and then pretty easily carry those skills back to a real trick ski if and when speed becomes important as @unksskis mentions. And while all kinds of wakeboards can be picked up for a dime a dozen, I did want to avoid the problem @Bruce_Butterfield encountered where he tried an arbitrary wake board as a trick ski and discovered that it caught edges easily when sideways. According to you guys maybe that is not really a problem for most boards so I will try to find a relatively flat wakeboard and make my own experiment on whether I can progress faster or not with it.

One of the other comments in the thread on trick skis for big guys is that instead of the 54" length of the large size Goode trick ski, that something closer to 50" might be better. To that point, I found this brand new World Industties 48" kids wakeboard here https://www.amazon.com/World-Industries-Battle-Wakeboard-124cm/dp/B00GNA0SCG for just $59. On another sales site for this board I saw that it is a continuous rocker board for wake boarders up to 130 pounds. Would this board be ok as a trick ski for a 195 pound skier?

Wouldn't any model for handle path have to also account for the possibility of small amounts of slack line as the skier rounds a buoy? Or at 41 off, is there never any slack to the handle on a pass that is run complete?

@jgills88 You mention that for a beginner using a wakeboard makes a lot of basic tricks easier to do than using a standard sized trick ski. I have been wondering about whether to try that myself for awhile. But in this thread https://www.ballofspray.com/forum#/discussion/24201/big-guy-trick-ski @Bruce_Butterfield explains how a lot of wakeboards have a continuous rocker which makes them prone to catching an edge when in a sideways position. Since you and many of your friends in college used wakeboards for tricks, did you guys ever have a favorite brand or model of wakeboard for use as a trick ski?

Good one! @ScottScott But the main thing I take from this is that no matter how far I might ever go on my own, my offside turn is still likely to be my main weakness.

What I would do and what I suspect many here would do as well is not listed in the choices available. I would hang on and just merely try to right myself and not fall. This means that I would give up all cross course angle and just ski straight down the middle, assuming that I managed not to fall.

I second what @thager said, Scrappiest pass I have ever seen! Unreal!!!!!! It was interesting to see that her troubles were all on her offside turn, just like many of us mere mortals experience. The way she was able to reset her angle on ball 3 after a near fall was amazing. If such a recovery can be done at 39' off, it makes me wonder whether I should try harder to regain angle when I falter at much longer line lengths.

@matthewbrown The pic of an ideal body position that you posted is a little past CL such that the skier had some time to raise his COM. Whereas the pic of Jeff Rodgers was right at CL where some lean away would still be expected. The Adams' have recently been talking about the benefits of raising COM at CL. It could be that you guys are not far off on concepts in that a raised COM would give a more vertical looking stack position at CL like your ideal pic and not have so much lean at CL like the Jeff Rodgers pic.

@matthewbrown As a novice course skier and not knowing any better, I would be very pleased to have the body position at CL that you show Jeff Rodgers with. However, you are saying that his COM is not stacked over the ski. To my untrained eye, it looks like his body is linear and pressing directly perpendicular through the center of the ski. Could you show a picture of a skier at CL who has their COM stacked properly over the ski? Just wondering if it will be a very subtle difference from the picture above or something very different.

Just curious, @ktm300 now that you realize the expression "straight legs" really means relatively straight legs or more straight then compressed, do you feel like your current stance on a slalom ski is within this extended definition of straight legs?

As @Than_Bogan mentions, I too think the bending moment reference is intentionally meant to be a little under specific. For those familiar with a bending moment curve, the colored areas are actually an inversion of what a real bending moment curve looks like. Since the ski shape stays the same in all three examples, my take on this is that each model is designed for a different maximum bending moment. Obviously, the highest level skiers submit their skis to much greater bending moments than regular skiers do. As such, they need a ski that can take those great loads without over bending. But as @AdamCord points out, it is not as simple as beam design in structural engineering where you are just interested in having the smallest beam possible that can survive the expected loads without excessive deflection or exceeding the yield strength of the materials. I have no doubt that the Insanity model will be felt as generally "stiffer" than the Standard model by all skiers. But I also believe @AdamCord in that the increased stiffness of the various models is added in a much more complex way so as to benefit advanced skiing technique and not just to merely survive increased loads.

@BCM Whew! Your workout regimen is pretty intense. If you don't mind me asking, what kind of a job requires that much fitness?

@Horton Wow! That is a pretty emphatic response saying that long line is just something to get you running the course and that once you can do so, never use it again! I was not expecting that. I got so used to running long line when I was first trying to make a full pass that it doesn't seem like a bad thing. It feels like I could just keep increasing speed and making passes up until my max speed. I guess there is some technique issue that kicks in starting from 15 off that if you master properly, then long line feels terrible. Since you don't seem to have any doubt whatsoever on this point, I should probably take your word on this and never ski long line again.

@Horton As a beginner course skier, the decision to go shorter line or faster speed first is something that I am wrestling with right now. I am getting a late start on skiing a course this year (will do so tomorrow) and trying to decide whether to stay long line up to my top speed of 34 mph and then start shortening the rope or whether to go ahead and shorten to 15 off right now at 26 mph which I am able to do. Based on what you did with Maddie, you would advocate to go ahead and shorten to 15 off and then work on building speed. But that approach will take me longer to make a 34 mph run. Why do you think shortening the rope first is the best approach? And if this topic should be addressed in a new thread, let me know and I will create one.

I had often wondered why so many on this site thought that 15 off was the best way to start every new skier on the course. As @Horton saw with Maddie, going really slow with a full long line made by the course doable for her at her initial level of skill. If Maddie had been forced to only ski at 15 off, she would have still ultimately run the course, but it would have taken longer and possibly discouraged her. I think that there is no doubt that she had more fun learning by being able to run the course as early as possible in her development. Hopefully, that old canard about 15 off being the best way to learn the course is now fully disproved.

Besides the likely benefit of getting more buoys from being LFF, there is also a nice benefit if she plays soccer left footed. Most soccer players are right footed so when they defend a left footed player they automatically assume their opponent is right footed. This makes it easy for the left footed soccer player to fake right, go left and then shoot hard with the left foot. In kids soccer, it takes a while for the defender kids to really get in their minds how to defend a left footed attacker. And if your daughter plays defense, coaches will love to have her play left back because she can shield the ball with the right side of her body while being able to make an accurate down the line pass with her dominant foot. Only a few kids on any team will have that left foot advantage in defense. Of course, all good soccer players should learn to play well with both feet. But even so, there is always an advantage on accuracy and power when kicking with your dominant foot. Being left footed is a nice gift to have in the soccer world.

@mccowherd2006 I think if we had all known upfront that you were getting coaching from Corey Vaughn, we would have all said just do what Corey says. I was thinking that you were in a self coaching situation where the internet is your only coach. That is much harder because you really have to be careful when sifting through all the disparate advice you get just like @vtmecheng explained. But even knowing now that you do have a great coach, I would still say that you have to go for it and not be afraid of taking hard falls. If you follow Corey's instruction and try really hard, you will be flying at the wakes in good control before you know it.