From one skier to another since 2007.
Patience! Have not been skiing well at all this year. I've even dropped back to 30mph to see if I could figure out what was going wrong. (I tried 28mph once but with the S1 I have it was just too much work. That S1 comes alive at 32/34 mph).
Patience! I'm watching some video I have taken of my skiing over the last couple of weeks and I spotted it. Or, I should say I spotted one (one of many) thing I have been doing wrong. I have been reaching for the handle too soon after the turn. You hear it over and over, "ski back to the handle". I know this in my head but why is it so hard to execute out on the water! By rushing the turn I have been rotating towards the wake which has been dropping my weight towards the back of the ski, which is like a brake, instead of keeping it moving forward. By reaching for the handle too soon I connect with it too far away from my body and haven't been getting it close enough to my hips before the boat picks me up. Once that happens it is "do the best you can with what you got". Now I have the pull coming more from the shoulders instead of through the core.
Patience! I had fixed this problem last year by nailing my free elbow against my vest all the way through the turn and focusing on bringing the handle to it insead of reaching for the handle. So, Saturday and Sunday all I did was free ski focusing on just this one aspect. I must have done 100 turns with just this in mind.
Patience! Right off the bat I noticed that I was now getting closer to the first wake before the boat was picking me up so I was evidently carrying more speed through the turn. I felt more balanced on the ski. I view the "power" zone as being from froth to froth.The handle is now closer to my hips and more toward the trailing hip than dead center. Much better acceleration through the wakes. I'm liking it!
Patience! I'll work on this for a while and then address the many other problems. You have to ski with intensity but with control. In this case haste really does make waste. Patience Grasshopper!
Printer-friendly versionAnother evening of skiing litteraly blown away and now at least 2 days of rain. It has been really hard to get into ski shape this year. Staying in ski shape has been impossible.
Free skied Saturday and Sunday. Acutally taped Sunday's skiing on an old tape from last fall. I was able to compare late October skiing to April skiing. October skiing, smooth, tight line, fast, nice crisp turns, and good body position through the wakes. Fun!! It was free skiing and I skied forever. April skiing, slow, slack line in the turns, offside school bus turns, and after only 10 turns I'm sucking wind. The problem is I thought I was skiing OK!
Any muscle memory I thought I had, I think I've lost it!
I did notice that in October skiing I was doing a much better job of keeping my weight forward so the tip stayed down all the way throught the turn and into the wakes. Major bad habit of mine is the tendency to sit back on the ski especially in my offside turn. Got to work on it more.
I believe that you really need to record your skiing and critically review it soon after a session if you really want to get better. After all the Physics has been analyzed it comes down to how did it feel on the water. Did that feeling produce the expected results? I dont' know how many times I've said, "That felt good!" only to look a the tape and say, "That really sucked!"
I think skiing coaches have a very difficult job. If I was coaching, basketball, soccer, or baseball, I could go right up to the kid and adjust a hand, a foot, or a body position to correct a problem. In skiing you are 60 feet away from the coach. You can't hear a damn thing due to the engine. You make your 7 turns and stop. Now, your coach has the task of trying to convey what you are doing wrong, after the fact, with words, while you are sitting in the water trying to breathe. It goes something like this, "Remember what you did at 2 ball compared to 4 ball....". Ah, not really because all I can remember is going throught the exit gates. Maybe your coach grabs the rope and shows you but you can't feel what that position is supposed to feel like because you are sitting in the water still trying to breathe.
If you are lucky you will translate what your coach is saying into understanding and make the necessary biomechanical adjustments. Then if you are really lucky you go out and actually feel the improvement. Once you have that feeling and get it locked in, you know when you are doing it wrong because it doesn't feel right and correct it. Sometimes even in the same pass.
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I agree that digesting coaching and translating it to on-water feel while trying to remember what just happened in the course is... almost impossible. If a coach can watch you ski and tell you to do something that makes you FEEL and REMEMBER something, that's golden. They also have the job of telling you what happened to initiate the problem. So, say you're really jamming on the handle out of the turn, rushing to complete the turn, etc. Some might say- take it easier out of the turn, wait for the boat, others might say or probably should say keep hips forward into the turn, you're slouching in your pre-turn. That pre-turn will help you carry correct speed though the turn and not take a huge hit out of the turn.
We have had some windy days this spring...but we always have windy days in spring. I try to ignore the wind as well as I can. When it's my time to ski, I try my best to ski as long as I can find a willing driver. (unless it's lightning, then I'm out) One thing skiers should realize is that we tend to ski timidly in adverse conditions. Timidly is typically hips back some...non attacking. But the adverse conditions win if you do that. I try to go out with the attitude "I'm going to show this wind it can't push me around". More often than not I won't ski as well in strong wind, but I enjoy the challenge. One of the guys I ski with a lot will always email me when we're scheduled to ski together and it's windy. He'll say something like "are you going to try it in this wind today?"....I don't know why he continues to ask me that. On a somewhat related note, we had ideal conditions all weekend. One of the guys was getting ready to ski when a little wind came up and put a 3" chop on the water and he goes "where did all this wind come from?" Now I realize that skiing at a private site, I don't see the wind that some of you do, but I don't hesitate to try whitecaps (I may not stay out as long as a regular set, but I'll go ski in it).
As far as coaching, it is a difficult job and the really good ones are rare. It is my opinion that if you ski with a coach for a week, 8 to 10 sets, you should notice an improvement in your skiing. I've been to to many coaches that try to put a band-aid on a serious injury. Now it could be that the coach identifies the problem and tells me what the problem is and I hear someone speaking Portugese trying to sell me his chicken.
I ride with a guy every now and then that skis with a very seperated style. I've have been able to get him to improve some at times, but nothing ever sticks because he tries to listen to everyone under the sun (many of them, he should not be listening to) and he hasn't taken ownership of his skiing. He thinks he gets his core to the handle but he's not close at all.
Video is one of those things I should be doing but I don't. I can't stand to watch my skiing, I want to work on to many things. I try to go by feel, space and timing. But I will try to do some video this year....hopefully.
This is exactly why I think the "positive" method of coaching works so well. If a coach can reinforce what you just felt, you can go back and try to feel it again. The challenge is how to get you to feel it in the first place. My best coached moments have been extremely macro in scope and like Joel is suggesting, were designed to affect something further downstream. The catch is that I never actually thought for one second about that downstream thing.
Example: Rushing back to handle: Instead of saying not to rush, be patient, wait for the boat, etc, a good coach might recognize that you are rushing because you are slowing down and feel like you need support from the rope in order not to fall. He may ask you to start from a wider pullout just to get you to feel more speed and width at 1 ball "accidentally" with the result of having a long smooth turn, not feeling the need to rush and skiing into the easiest pull of your life to 2. You fall and he comes back jumping up and down telling you how great that was. Now everything you work on from that point can be geared toward recreating that sensation. Every pass after that you might be thinking, "I didn't run all six" but the coach is reinforcing that that was the best one ball yet and maybe 4 and 5 were really good. When you think back you go, "yeah, I had that same sensation on those too." ...
We have a lot of wind at our site so you're not going to ski if you wait for glass. But it is SO MUCH easier without the wind! Rollers, on the other hand, ruin my day. I agree, timid is the surest route to disaster, sort of like skiing crud (snow). You need speed which gives you the momentum and inertia to bust the chop. But you also need confidence and that's not something you can just turn on.
Well, Lake Norman is 35 miles long, has over 500 miles of shoreline and has 32,000 surface acres. I live at the North end of the lake. Sometimes I think Mother Nature starts the wind and chop 35 miles away from me and intentionally keeps building it up so I can't ski. Lake Norman Tsunami! :-)
The days I'm talking about the wind chop is at least 6" or more and comes at you like boat rollers. I get bounced around too much to focus on anything. Like you said, I start to ski timid which reinforces bad habits.
It really has been ferocious this year, worse than I can remember. Tonight it's thunderstorms starting at 5:00. I guess I'll go to the gym.
Are you going to ski in any tournaments this year? June 4th and 5th, Buoy Busters I and II, sanction codes 11S142 and 11S143 in Maiden NC. This is Ed NeilI's place. Clay actually runs the skiing there. I'm the registrar if you want to come North to ski. It is set as class C/F but they are trying to get it rated for R to bring in some better skiers. We do it a little different up here. You can determine if you are skiing a particular round C or F at the starting dock. I usually ski the first round as class F. This gives me 4 passes or 2 falls as a warm up and gets me relaxed. I then ski the remaining rounds as class C. It's a nice format. We are getting more beginning to intermediate skiers to participate in tournaments this way. Some, like my wife, ski every round as a class F. No pressure, lots of fun, and you get to hang out with some really good skiers.
Yep, a good coach is worth a million dollars. That's why I keep going back to Oz for some of Seth's good coaching!
I will be skiing our tournaments, I have talked to Jeff about doing the TC work if ya'll had a record....but I don't like doing TC work, and I don't own the equipment to do it. I would love to come ski it if I had the time and the money, but I don't have a surplus of either right now. That being said you never know, if I can figure out a way, I'll be there.
I skied at Seth Stisher's this past Saturday for 2 sets. I managed to get my 2 sets in before the winds picked up. Unfortunately for my wife she only got one set in. The first pass of her second set had white caps at the far end of the course. She tried to ski back but it was just too windy.
Back to the topic. I didn't have Seth's usual driver for my first set. It was someone who had been there all week. Seth's regular driver was taking a break. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate anyone who will drive for me but it reinforced to me that when I drive for someone I have to concentrate on driving just like I concentrate on skiing, maybe even more. Anyway, here are some things that went wrong and the consequences.
I should have confirmed Zero Off settings before getting out of the boat. I didn't. I should have specified the type of start I wanted, I didn't. So, I got a hard pull up when I like a slow to medium start and 32 mph when I had asked for 30 mph. At least Zero Off was set to A2 which I like.
Since the start was hard, Zero Off engaged at 32 mph before we hit the turn island. I'm just recovering from the unexpected hard start when I'm heading into a sharp right turn at 32mph on the wrong side of the wake. Zero Off backed off in the middle of the turn then hit me with a big acceleration coming off the back side that almost dumped me as I try to get across the wake. Now I'm rushed getting set for the gate pull out. I don't get the pull out I want, never get free of the boat and when I try to turn the boat picks me up before I'm ready and it's an OTF, big time. My wife caught it on video and it hurts to look at it. The good news is everything is intact just really sore. I managed to dive into the water and roll a few times instead of hitting it with my chest. However, my skiing for the rest of the passes in that set were terrible. A great way to start things out.
Next, instead of slowly taking the slack out of the rope before a pull up, the driver just put the boat in gear and kept going. I see it coming and try to brace for the jerk. I can't hold my position and I'm getting drugged down the lake. I'm trying to yell, "Stop! Stop!" while trying to avoid swallowing half the lake.
Anyway we got things sorted out but the lesson learned is that communication between the driver and the skier is really really important and a driver can really influence the performance of the skier. So, when we are driving for others it is our responsibility to give the best pull possible for the skier. It is not just something we have to do between our own sets.
Second set, much better. The major takeaway is that I have to get more pressure on my front foot, especially in my off side turn. When I do that the turns are sooooo much easier. The second coaching point was to work on the rhythm of the course to be more fluid. All in all I expected to be doing a whole lot more things wrong that needed correcting. Now I have to go practice, practice, practice.
Printer-friendly versionTerry, glad to hear you got out unscathed. My body always faceplants in OTF scenarios. I lack the gene that makes people tuck and roll.
Terry, tough break on the driving. It sounds like that person shouldn't have been driving at all. You should never idle right through tightening the rope and you an experienced driver knows you can't pick everyone up the same. You need to watch them in the mirror and use some feel. I am glad you didn't get hurt.
While the driver should have been more attentive I'm not trying to come down on him. When you ski tournaments you get what you get and they aren't all the top drivers. In fact, I've had a driver in a tournament, who has pulled an open men's world record, give me a bad pull up. We agreed on the commands. I like to give an "In Gear" and then a "Hit it" series of commands. I like a little drag before power is applied. Well, when I said, "In Gear", he hit it. I almost let go of the handle. When I dropped at the far end of the course, I had missed 5 ball, he was very apologetic and offered me a re-ride due to driver error. The wind chop on the lake was at least 8" that day and I said, "I'm not skiing through that again"!
My point being that the experience, while not the best, was a reminder to me that when I get into that driver's seat I have to focus on what I'm doing to give the skier the best pull I can. Don't chat with everyone else in the boat while ignoring the skier. It was also a reminder to NOT take it for granted that the driver knows what I want, especially when its a new driver for me.
Finally, when something bad happens it doesn't do any good to get mad about it. We talked, worked it out, and maybe he learned something that day. I know I did!
The guy who probably drives me 50% of the time is fine when he's by himself, but if you put someone in the boat with him, my blood pressure triples. I end up saying things 3 times, each time louder than the previous time. It was so bad the last 2 times he had a passenger, that I'm considering intentionally doing the same thing to him, that is not pay attention to the skier at all.
I've been on the receiving end of the one you're refering to, did you mention something to Seth? I have to admit that I thought I was a pretty good driver at a time when I really wasn't. The ones who can take the constructive criticism will grow and the ones who can't, won't. You should have swung by, we were having a big time 5 miles up the rode and Seth's normal driver was skiing with us.
We drove up and down Maybank enough on Saturday that we could have easily stopped in.
The count down is on. A little over a week and I'll be at Oz for some South Carolina skiing. Unfortunately, winter decided to come back here in NC and my plans for being in skiing shape have taken a turn for the worse. Cold, wind, rain, and the water temps have dropped back below 60. Bummer! I know, it's better than some parts of the country.
One of my ski buds moved up to Chicago this past fall. He moved into a development that is on a ski lake. What a year to move to Chicago. I think his lake still has ice on it.
Anyway, my goal is not necessarily to be running the course but to find out what I need to work on so I can run the course better.
Gordon Rathbun's email newsletter this week has a nice picture of Seth coming into the wakes from his offside turn. Something to strive for.
Printer-friendly versionTerry, have fun at Oz. I love the whole atmosphere there and Seth is great. BTW, did you see this...
http://www.ballofspray.com/krista/897-seth-stisher-breaks-cost-rica-slal...
Uh Oh, I forgot to look at the calendar.
Terry, you in OZ yet or what?
Skied Friday evening and Saturday. I'm still working on getting into ski shape with free skiing. Getting more comfortable on the ski even thought I feel like the Pillsbury Doughboy with the wet suit and jacket.
My two handed turn, crank it through the wakes, get as much speed as possible, drill is paying off. I've been skiing at 32 mpg -15. At -15 you don't have the angular momentum helping you with the edge change that you get at the shorter lines, so speed is important. I really concentrate on elbows tight against the vest and arms straight and relaxed, handle on the trailing hip. In the work zone I've been getting the little counter rotation I need and am holding it past the second wake. Off the second wake it is trailing elbow (right elbow going from 1 to 2) locked against the vest for as long as I can hold it there. I even look back towards the boat for a little counter rotation as I move out on the swing. It really feels good. Lots of speed and I'm getting way up on the boat.
Sometimes I think when I ski at -15 in the course, since I don't have to get up on the boat, I don't really get free from the pull of the boat for a nice controlled turn.
Saturday, I finally let the ski cast out at the apex on both sides! I have a tendancy to keep it more under my body on my off side. The hips got lower and with getting further up on the boat the ski came around nicely. Elbows locked in and I was off to the races.
I wish I could do that everytime.
Printer-friendly versionTerry, sounds like some solid fundamentals at work!
Inspite of 10 - 20 mph winds, my wife and I did manage to get out both Saturday and Sunday this weekend. Managed to find "relatively" calm water, at least it wasn't white capping where we skied.
Concentrating on the wake crossings with the "handle to the hips".
I prefer to think of it this way instead of "hips to the handle". If my hips are low then the ski is on edge and I want to keep it there, so "handle to the hips". If the handle is high and I think "hips to the handle" then the hips come up and the ski flattens out a bit.
I locked my elbows against the vest as tight as I can get them for as long as I can hold them there. Since I'm free skiing with no buoys, I just do 2 handed turns and try to crank my wake crossings (applying a little counter rotation between the first wake and the center) getting as much speed as I can and try to get as far up on the boat as possible. I let the speed bleed off and then its another 2 handed turn trying to get as much speed as I can.
I think it gets me into the habit of not releasing the handle too soon. It's getting better each time I go out.
Printer-friendly versionIt has been a cold winter but two weeks ago the air temps were in the upper 60's and the water temp finally got back to 50 degrees. Thank you, O'Neil Psycho II 4/3 wetsuit. Never felt the cold in the core or extremities. Hands and feet, well that's another story. They were cold.
My ski buds talked me into going right out and ski the course. I never do this. I normally free ski for about 10 outings first and then start chasing buoys. First of all, I almost didn't get up out of the water. It was my fault. The boat wasn't lined up with the course when I got in. I just zipped up and jumped in. Being LFF I natually move to the left coming out of the water and the boat had to turn left to get lined up. Not a good start to 2011.
I get lined up and the course is really looking sweet. Something about green, yellow, and red buoys all lined up that just makes you feel really good. I had been watching Slash all winter and picked up something with JB's pull out that I wanted to try. It worked too well. I had lots of acceleration on the pull out and immediately lost my balance. Also, every thought I had last summer about what to do what and when flew right out of my head. Managed to recover and turned for the gates. I had a clear view of the gates as they passed about 5 feet infront of me. Still, the brain isn't registering anything. Oh well, timing can come later.
One ball! I don't remember one ball. Somehow I got around it but the brain is still somewhere else. Surprise, surprise I have lots of space before 2 ball to screw up which I did. One rule of cold water skiing is DON'T FALL. I forgot that rule and as the 50 degree water went down my neck I thought, "Yeah, I'm skiing"!
The rest of the passes were uneventful. I managed to find the gates and actually saw 4 ball as I passed inside of it a number of times.
That was Saturday. Sunday, I free skied behind my boat, slowed things down and actually got the brain engaged. First time firing up the BU this year. God, I missed the sound of that Monsoon engine.
The guys at work think I' nuts. My wife thinks I'm nuts. Everybody thinks I'm nuts except my ski buds. They think I'm as sane as they are!!! We just enjoy the hell of this sport! Come on summer!!!
Printer-friendly versionAwesome news Terry! It'll only be a couple weeks for us!
Good to know you're back on the water. I just got out of a drysuit a couple of weeks ago. Our water is up to low to mid 60s right now, but we'll probably lose a few degrees this week.
I have 2 sets with Seth the afternoon of April 9th. What do you think the water temps are going to be?
My wife and I are driving down that Friday afternoon. We are staying at some hotel on Savannah highway. She takes care of hotel reservations. I wanted to stay at Foley Beach but one has to watch the pennies.
if I had to guess what the water temps would be on April 9, I would guess 70-75, it was 64 the last 2 weekends. But be prepared for anything, I would bring a suit or top just in case. I usually keep a top in my truck year around...cause you just never know.
if I had to guess what the water temps would be on April 9, I would guess 70-75, it was 64 the last 2 weekends. But be prepared for anything, I would bring a suit or top just in case. I usually keep a top in my truck year around...cause you just never know.
The Mid Atlantic boat show is in Charoltte this weekend. I'm going because I'll get to see April and Chris Eller there. I haven't congratulated her on her first pro win yet. Hard to believe she hasn't won before. I've seen her in so many run-offs for first place only to loose to Karen Truelove or Regina.
I'm betting I won't see 1 ski boat there. I already talked to the Malibu dealer and they don't even have one on their lot this year. The Nautique dealer isn't even going to participate in the boat show. Mastercraft will be there but I bet they only have their cross-over boat.
My definition of a cross-over boat is, "Nobody is happy"!
Printer-friendly versionChanged email addresses and wanted to correct the one I had on Fifteenoff.com. Wow, I expected to see the old site but this looks really nice. I'll have to poke around awhile to get comfortable.
Didn't post much in the last year. I had the wrong set of priorities but am going to correct that this year. I got my Assistant Scorer rating and am planning on working and skiing a lot of local tournaments this year including the NC State Tournament.
Trying to get to Seth Stisher's place on April 9th for some coaching to start the season out right. It was another cold winter in NC this year. The water temp dropped below 50 really fast and hasn't recovered yet. 50 degree water is about as cold as I'm willing to tolerate. I'm hoping to get back in the water around mid March. I know, I shouldn't complain.
I did get to ski behind the new Centurion ski boat last November. It is definitely a tournament ski boat. The wakes were very nice at 30, 32, and 34 mph. Are they better than the Nautique 200? In my opinion they are about the same. It had one really nice feature. On the front starboard gunwale there is an adjustable sight that the driver can use to line up his boat path. It was adjustable from inside the cockpit with a remote control lever. I didn't get to drive it but everyone who did said it handled really nice.
I also got a new ride last year. A 2010 S1. What a difference from my 2005 Monza. The S1 is so easy to turn and really fast across the wake. It's my new BFF.
Printer-friendly versionTerry! Great to see you posting! I hope you stick around! Congrats on the new stick- don't tempt me!
So we can take your face off the milk carton now.
I'm back with more ideas. Has anyone heard that skiing is like a pendulum? :-)
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I don't know if this might be
I don't know if this might be affecting your reaching for the handle to soon, but often times that is cause by not having enough speed to ride through the turn. It's difficult to ski back to the handle if you don't have enough speed. One of the things I try to do is be progressive on the load and be progressive off the load. This keeps the speed more consistent. Leaving the handle quickly is one of the worst things we as skiers do, followed closely by loading up really quickly. A couple of things come to mind concerning this: sometimes we just react quickly and it's all in our head as far as slowing reactions down....but if the line you're trying to ski is to perpendicular to the boat path, I don't care who you are, you won't be able to stay connected after the centerline if the angle you're trying to ski exceeds your ability to stay connected. It's one of those counterintuitive things about skiing, where less equals more. The ground you gain by being in control of your connection after the centerline will double any high angle gain you make right out of the buoy....not only that, you'll crash less and your body will love the less stress and less crashes. The best payoff is your buoy count will go up. A good read concerning this Chris Rossi's (I think) "Skiing the impossible line" or something like that.
It may or may not be patience that is the contributor, but to recognize the problem is the first step to the solution.
It's in my head
You hit the nail on the head when you said, "sometimes we just react quickly and it's all in our head as far as slowing reactions down....". I was trying to ski aggressively but translating that into doing things too quickly. Pining my elbow is my crutch to slow me down.
Ski back to the handle
I'm working on keeping the arms in. I can't tell you how many times I was in a bad position last time out. And, you are right. Once you're there, nothing to do about it except do the best with what you've got. Skiing back to the handle is something that might help me with that. Thanks!
This is going to be the
This is going to be the biggest thing I work on this year. Carrying speed into the turn. I think that 15-offers have the hardest time keeping the handle down through the wakes and not taking hits out of the turn because we do not preserve speed and width into the ball and through the turn. I'm going to write my next article on this. I was free-skiing the other day and focused on pointing that inside hip into the turn during the pre-turn, and I really felt the ski CARVE, rather than skid/stall at all. Awesome feeling.
I have previously thought off
I have previously thought off the connection as "handle down" or "handle low", but my thinking has changed to trailing hip pressed to the handle. The reason I now think this way is because when the line is loaded at several hundred pounds of tension your arms are pretty much going to be in a straight line with the rope, so when I think about trying to move the handle low, I'm exerting a lot of energy towards something that is almost impossible to do. I reasoned that it was much easier to "push" my trailing hip/thigh to the handle than it is to take the handle down low. To me the arms are where they are, and it's my job to engage my core enough to get my body up against the arms and my lower body up against the handle. As I keep getting older, I keep looking for the little things that save energy.
One of the things that plagued me in my connection was having the legs be to stiff or pushing as if I was in a tug-of-war. Doing this locks the ski under me and does not allow it to fluidly move out. So I have learned to "soften" the front knee some to make the connected position more efficient. (I still struggle with this some times).
I believe the things required to be a fairly successful skier are:
1) being connected: driving the core, body aligned, elbows to the vest, handle touching thigh (or pretty dog gone close, my target is handle touching thigh by the time I hit the centerline, I don't always get there but that is the target)
2) direction: you can't ski perpendicular to the boat path, so don't try to. You do have to get to the buoyline in time to carve a turn, maybe 10 to 15 feet before the buoy. You'll be surprised that if you make a turn that ends up pointed at that spot, that's where you'll end up (assuming you can do a decent job of number 1).
3) Timing, pace, progression: being smooth, feeling the rope, progressive load and progressive unload. Once you have a decent handle on 1 & 2, this is what makes slalom really, really fun! being able to control how your body reacts to the rope, carving fluid turns with no disruptions. No matter what the line length, when you can keep a tight line and a near perfect rhythym, it just doesn't get better than that on the water. It should start on the very first move....the gate pullout.
Vision: I didn't give this one a number because it affects all 3 in my skiing. I can do all the above well but intergrating vision is my link to success or failure right now. I can get through 32off with or without it, but it's the difference in my ability to run 35 or to have any chance getting 38 going. The funny thing is as the line gets shorter, it takes more eye discipline to move the focus from 10' in front of you to several hundred feet in front of you. But like the other things above, I have to keep working on it and evaluating it.
Having these 3 (or 4) things will take you a long way, but I'm constantly playing with or tweaking these 3 to find better ways for me to think about things.
Now you are in trouble....
So you've felt the ski carve a turn and it felt awsome. That is what happened to me and it started a whole different obsession to learn what used to be called "West Coast Slalom". Counter rotate, speed creates angle, movement of the center of mass, stay light on the line, and on, and on. Not sure what it is called now. Seth just calls it, "the right way to ski".
Don't forget patience. You have to LET the ski carve. You don't have to force it.
Anyway, good luck to you in your quest for the perfect carve.