Derin’s Deal
Derin gets to play in the deep snow for a while – then in turn she agrees to work hard on learning technique and to ski hard.
Advanced Dynamics
Yesterday I observed that despite pulling her legs together actively Derin could not stop her legs from spreading apart. The reason for this is that the lower leg is always being used as a platform to block the end of the turn and so it is kept downhill of the body (as a support) until the next turn is well and truly started – sometimes generating a form of snowplough unintentionally. The solution for this issue is to work on advanced dynamics – which means dealing directly with how the body gets itself out of a turn. Derin was already very comfortable with the Magic Wall aspect of dynamics at the start of a turn – but we had not looked at the end of the turn. Like a motorbike making any turn it has to come back up and out of the turn at the end – and skiing is no different. The key to achieving this it to literally come out of the turn over the top of the lower ski while standing on it. We started the session by revising pivoting from the top ski only. After a break from that (when the off piste was filmed) we then repeated the pivoting but from the lower ski only – which is far harder as you go into the new turn and complete it on the downhill ski only (the “wrong” ski for a turn).
This new pivoting action over the downhill ski trains the skier to come over the top of the front of that ski – with the support provided from the ski pole planted in the snow. The pivot is executed from a sideslip and no forward motion.Derin was then asked to use the same motion over the ski – weight on that leg – while also traveling forwards – so that the movement of the body would become a part of the dynamics (only for a moment to make the turn transition – not the entire turn as in the pivot). Refining this she was told to properly complete each turn to build up enough pressure from the ski so that it would lift her up over the ski naturally (last video clip). In the video it can be clearly seen how this automatically narrows her stance – which was the objective for today.More importantly, Derin could feel the difference in her skiing and how this produces flow. She was able to ski fast behind me and in control at all times.
