From one skier to another since 2007.
Due to various circumstances I have been skiing very little this summer. Not all bad, mind you, I got to go to hockey camp which was absolutely fantastic. But now, due to house guests, weather, and other commitments it is not the usual. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the water level is going down early, so we may need to pull the course out in a few weeks!
All is not lost though. I am really enjoying the skiing that I am doing. My schedule for the last two weeks and for the next three allows me to ski Monday and Tuesday, instead of the normal weekend. It doesn't get any better than that on a public lake!
So how's it going? Great! I have been skiing at least one free ski session each day prior to running the course since there is no pressure to ski the course before the weekend tubers arrive. Basically, all I have been doing is rhythm and position at various speeds and lines. Then, I'm trying to take this relaxed approach into the course at 15 off, 30, 32 and 34. When it stops feeling the way it did on the open water I stop to avoid diminishing returns.
What have I learned in my three weekends? I have stopped thinking wide. Yup. I have discovered that thinking up-on-the-boat works best for me and I am able to gage this more easily when free skiing. Up on the boat translates more to using my speed to swing more of the arc with less resistance. It just feels more slick and efficient to me. When I think wide I tend to rotate away from the boat and for all the effort, very little of it helps me carry out and up or to swing. Another thing about paying attention to this is that I can immediately tell what is changing when the speed goes up or as fatigue sets in. For instance, when going from 32 to 34, it seems more difficult to move up on the boat at first and I am unable to truly finish my turns and gain angle. If I work harder, it seems to get worse. But because I'm free skiing I can start all over and adjust my stance, pull out, and timing until it feels like 32.
The other thing that I have taken the time to become more aware of is that by moving up on the boat more it has become MUCH easier to get my butt forward and engage my front foot in the preturn. I can be taller and ski farther around the turn before hookup. It even is making trailing arm pressure work where I previously had difficulty. This is just making life much better at the finish and into the wakes. It is also the first thing to go out the window in the course when I'm late and narrow so I have been using it as a self-test as to whether a pass was any good or not.
Anyway, I just thought writing this stuff down would help solidify what has been working the last few weeks.
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i would agree about stop
i would agree about stop thinking wide. being Wide is a by product of doing things correctly. you cant force getting wide, it just happens if you do "things" right.
IF "moving up on the boat" works for you great, it is allowing for you to think about the right things, IMO it is likely allowing you to counter better into your turns, with your hips leading your direction of travel out to the buoy. exactly where you want to be.
like I posted on SA's blog, keep it simple! we over analyze FAR too much, and with the internet it just adds confusion IMO. too much info out there, and most of it good, but not necessarily timely.. There are FAR too many variables with skiing and most of us can only focus on a few things at a time.
cheers
Kyle
Killer, I think you are right
Killer, I think you are right about the countering thing and about not be able to force being wide. My point is that what I'm doing right now is allowing it to happen. In other words, thinking about countering doesn't allow me to get countered (if that makes any sense). BTW, this whole approach is the result of coaching I had several years ago. About the over analyzing... that's the point! I've stopped beating myself up over tweak this, twist that, etc. and started taking a more relaxed, big picture approach. Things are seeming to go well.
How in the world are you
How in the world are you going to be able to ski without pendulum physics and double pendulum physics?
I am! I'm just not thinkin'
I am! I'm just not thinkin' about it.
A lot of that sounds
A lot of that sounds familiar. The harder I work, the less I like the results. There seems to be this point of load application where it's "just right". If you go beyond that, things start getting harder and less rhythmic. If you do it right, it feels too easy and my mind tells me it can't be this easy. There's also this rhythm of handle in, handle out, handle in, handle out that relates to load. If the load is right, the handle tension/rhythm is kind of easy, but if the load is too much this handle rhythm gets distorted and it becomes hard again. These things relate to each other and messing up one can fool me into thinking I might have messed up the other.
A couple of the conversations I often have with myself is "let it be easy" and "slow off, slow on, and be open" (that's my tournament fall back thought)
I try to be as gentle as I can (slowly progressive)
Wax on, wax off...
Wax on, wax off...