Post by JimRatliff on Jan 30, 2015 21:43:24 GMT -7
Last day. I'm not sure exactly what to write. This has been the most enjoyable of all of the camps I have attended. Some of this was the people, much of it was my mental attitude before we ever started, some of it was that I had enough base skills to really add to it. In fact, I almost got permission to do pole plants.
I came into this camp with a much more relaxed approach rather than the past, where I brought too much ego. Lynn and I ski most anywhere on the mountain we want with whatever technique we have. We aren't as good as many, but we enjoy ourselves. That is the important part. We still do drills and work on things that will make us better, but we also aren't too averse to doing a snowplow through a section of trees if that is what works for us. And we have been places off the trails where the appropriate action was just to sideslip to the bottom (a time at Alta in Katherine's area comes to mind here) because we were clearly over our heads.
On the first day when Walter asked my objectives, I told him that 1) I had an ongoing problem with fore-aft balance, and 2) while I could make some decent turns when going faster (IMO) I couldn't do the same at slow speeds. As we all know, momentum can mask balance problems. Walter came up with drills that have dramatically improved this. As I said, one of them was actually pushing the inside ski forward (opposite of free foot pull back). It was only a drill to get me to feel weight forward, but it helped, and it had the side effect of helping me feel counter in my hips (cheater counter).
What to say? Bottom line, I am an observably better PMTS skier today than on Monday. They helped me in the area I wanted to focus on (fore aft), they helped me in areas that I didn't know were missing (holding counter on the little toe edge until I have new edge engagement), and although no one will mistake me for a lifelong (bump) skier, I am considerably farther along the PMTS progression. My overall biggest surprise was what a good coach Harald is in terms of enthusiasm, knowledge, approach, and encouragement without sugar coating the items that need to be corrected. There is a lot to be said for the camp experience of shared frustration and shared accomplishment.
Ohhh. Today's AHA moment was adding the opening of the downhill hand and elbow to reach down the hill for a pole plant/touch. Helped a lot to solidify upper body movement and to "remind" my hips that they were supposed to move as well.
Jim
I came into this camp with a much more relaxed approach rather than the past, where I brought too much ego. Lynn and I ski most anywhere on the mountain we want with whatever technique we have. We aren't as good as many, but we enjoy ourselves. That is the important part. We still do drills and work on things that will make us better, but we also aren't too averse to doing a snowplow through a section of trees if that is what works for us. And we have been places off the trails where the appropriate action was just to sideslip to the bottom (a time at Alta in Katherine's area comes to mind here) because we were clearly over our heads.
On the first day when Walter asked my objectives, I told him that 1) I had an ongoing problem with fore-aft balance, and 2) while I could make some decent turns when going faster (IMO) I couldn't do the same at slow speeds. As we all know, momentum can mask balance problems. Walter came up with drills that have dramatically improved this. As I said, one of them was actually pushing the inside ski forward (opposite of free foot pull back). It was only a drill to get me to feel weight forward, but it helped, and it had the side effect of helping me feel counter in my hips (cheater counter).
What to say? Bottom line, I am an observably better PMTS skier today than on Monday. They helped me in the area I wanted to focus on (fore aft), they helped me in areas that I didn't know were missing (holding counter on the little toe edge until I have new edge engagement), and although no one will mistake me for a lifelong (bump) skier, I am considerably farther along the PMTS progression. My overall biggest surprise was what a good coach Harald is in terms of enthusiasm, knowledge, approach, and encouragement without sugar coating the items that need to be corrected. There is a lot to be said for the camp experience of shared frustration and shared accomplishment.
Ohhh. Today's AHA moment was adding the opening of the downhill hand and elbow to reach down the hill for a pole plant/touch. Helped a lot to solidify upper body movement and to "remind" my hips that they were supposed to move as well.
Jim