UUllttiimmaattee SSkkiiiinngg Ron LeMaster Human Kinetics Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data LeMaster, Ron, 1949- Ultimate skiing / Ron LeMaster. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7360-7959-4 (soft cover) ISBN-10: 0-7360-7959-9 (soft cover) 1. Skis and skiing. I. Title. GV854.L455 2009 796.93--dc22 2009025545 ISBN-10: 0-7360-7959-9 (print) ISBN-10: 0-7360-8621-8 (Adobe PDF) ISBN-13: 978-0-7360-7959-4 (print) ISBN-13: 978-0-7360-8621-9 (Adobe PDF) Copyright © 2010 by Blue Sky, Inc. All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, and in any information storage and retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher. This book is a revised edition of The Skier’s Edge published in 1999 by Human Kinetics. 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Box 5076 57A Price Avenue Champaign, IL 61825-5076 Lower Mitcham, South Australia 5062 800-747-4457 08 8372 0999 e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected] Canada: Human Kinetics New Zealand: Human Kinetics 475 Devonshire Road Unit 100 Division of Sports Distributors NZ Ltd. Windsor, ON N8Y 2L5 P.O. Box 300 226 Albany 800-465-7301 (in Canada only) North Shore City e-mail: [email protected] Auckland 0064 9 448 1207 Europe: Human Kinetics e-mail: [email protected] 107 Bradford Road Stanningley Leeds LS28 6AT, United Kingdom +44 (0) 113 255 5665 e-mail: [email protected] E4686 This book is dedicated to Curt Chase. Contents ◾ Preface vii ◾ Acknowledgments xi ◾ Part I Fundamentals: Skiing From the Snow Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 ChAPter 1 Skiing Mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 ChAPter 2 Skis, Snow, and Motion Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 ChAPter 3 turn Anatomy 101 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Part II techniques: Controlling Your Interaction With the Snow . . . . .51 ChAPter 4 Alignment and Stance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 ChAPter 5 Fore and Aft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 ChAPter 6 Up and Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 ChAPter 7 turning the Skis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106 ChAPter 8 edging the Skis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .122 ChAPter 9 Lateral Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135 ChAPter 10 Boots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157 iv ◀ Part III Matching tactics and technique to real-World Skiing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 ChAPter 11 Ice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .180 ChAPter 12 Moguls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .185 ChAPter 13 Powder, Crud, and Slush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .193 ChAPter 14 Steeps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 ◾ Conclusion 205 ◾ Index 206 ◾ About the Author 211 ◾ ▶ v This page left intentionally blank vi Preface In 1998 I wrote a book called The Skier’s Edge. It was published just as the ski world was discovering what have come to be known as shaped skis. Since then, the sport has gone through something of a revolution. Our skis are now cut with an accentuated hourglass shape whose curvature has a radius that is typically 60 percent smaller than their predecessors, and are roughly 15 percent shorter. As a result, everyone skis better. New skiers learn faster, experienced skiers tackle more difficult terrain and snow conditions, and people ski at higher levels later into their lives. As Warren Miller might say, shaped skis are the best thing to happen to the sport since stretch pants. The new equipment has caused the ski teaching and coaching community to reconsider just about everything we thought we knew about how to ski and how to teach skiing. Most of what we thought we knew, we still think we know. But there are some things that I, for one, have either changed my mind about or have come to realize I didn’t have quite right. I’ve been asked many times if I would write a second edition of The Skier’s Edge that addresses these changes, and this book is, in part, that second edition. The core topics are still here, but the material has been revised and augmented to identify the changes brought by shaped skis and explain why they’ve occurred. There are six new chapters, four of which are in a new sec- tion on tactics and techniques for specific types of advanced skiing: ice, moguls, powder, and steeps. Not only has ski technology improved in the last 11 years, but so has photographic technology, and almost every photo in the book is new. Although many new techniques of lasting value have emerged during the shaped ski revolution, none were invented by me or any other technical analyst. Rather, the best skiers retooled their skiing to take advantage of the new gear. What I’ve found is that, with few exceptions, the best skiers still make the same movements they always have. This shouldn’t be surprising. After all, neither the laws of physics nor the structure of the human body has changed—only our skis. What have changed in ski technique, in many cases, are the relative amplitudes of some movements, how often they’re made, and their timing relative to each other and the phases of the turn. These changes, and how the new skis have brought them about, are discussed in detail in this book. I believe that most changes in ski technique aren’t deliberately invented by anyone. I think they evolve in a Darwinian fashion, emerging from the feet of tal- ented skiers all over the world in response to changes in the skiing environment. What works survives. And what changes in the skiing environment is, for the most part, our equipment. In the preface to The Skier’s Edge, I wrote that Vic Braden, the noted tennis coach, once told me that every great coach he had known understood the physics of his sport and of human movement. If you’re an avid skier, you are, for the most part, your own coach. You improve by watching better skiers, talking with your friends, picking up tips here and there, and, maybe, reading books like this one. But chances are you don’t have the understanding of the sport that Braden (and I) would think you need to be the best coach you can be, and therefore the best skier you can be. ▶ vii viii ◀ PreFACe This book will help you ski better by becoming that coach: the one who under- stands the sport well enough to analyze, evaluate, and modify what you are doing. This book explains how the skis, the snow, and you, the skier, work together to make skiing happen, including the basic mechanics of the sport, the movements you make to take advantage of and control these mechanics, and how you can apply them out on the mountain in the real world of skiing. You don’t need formal training in physics or kinesiology to be a good coach or a skier, and I don’t intend to provide that. The mechanics of skiing are pretty simple and I hope to explain them in terms of everyday experience and what you feel when you ski. If I have done my job, you should, as you read, come to understand the more technical material by thinking, So that’s what I feel when I make a turn! This touches on an issue at the heart of coaching and skiing. As coaches and instructors, we often confuse what we teach with how we teach it. And as skiers, we often confuse what we feel with what we actually do. My objective is to untangle that confusion so you know what is fact and what is feeling—so you know what the goal is and what you need to do to reach it. Of course you need more than an academic understanding of skiing to coach yourself toward better performance. You need images, visual and visceral, that you can absorb and emulate when you’re out on the slopes. With this in mind, I supply photographs and photomontages, picked for their ability to expose certain techniques and convey particular concepts, of some of the best skiers in the world, and descrip- tions of what you should feel when you pull off a specific movement. Many of the images show World Cup athletes in competition. These athletes are, in my opinion, the best skiers in the world, technically speaking. They don’t get judged on style, only on how effectively they handle challenging situations. People who’ve skied on slopes that have been prepared for World Cup races know how formidable they are. The snow is like formica, many of the pitches are precipitous, and the courses are fast. Skiers who look pretty darned good on the double-diamonds back home are instantly transformed into hackers by these race hills. In short, there’s no doubt that someone who can win on the World Cup must be doing it right. There are also many photos of expert skiers whose technique is exemplary and deserves emula- tion. Finally, I’ve included images of skiers exhibiting particular common problems. Many of the photos are relevant to more than one topic, or chapter, in the book, so I occasionally point you to photos in other parts of the book that are good examples of the topic at hand. Once you understand how skiing and ski technique work and have read about how good technique is supposed to feel, you need to practice. By that I don’t mean just going out and making turns. I mean directed, focused execution of specific move- ments so that your body, not just your brain, learns what to do and how it feels. To this end, I’ve included exercises, drills, and cues to help direct your training. The book is organized in three parts. Part I, comprising chapters 1 through 3, explains the basic mechanics of skiing, including how skis do their job. These aren’t complicated. Unless you have novocaine in your bloodstream, you already know the mechanics of skiing by how they feel. Skiing is a sport of big, tangible forces, and when skiing feels good, it’s the effects of those forces on your body that you feel. Once you understand how what you feel corresponds to the mechanics of skiing, everything about the sport will make more sense. Part II, chapters 4 through 10, details the movements we make to work with the forces of skiing—why we make them and how. This is technique: the collection of movements we make with our bodies to summon up the right forces, and to get these PreFACe ▶ ix forces to act in the right place at the right time. Part II also includes a chapter on boots. Every movement you make to control your skis works through your boots, and they must set up right if you’re going to ski your best. If 20 pages on boots (chapter 10) sounds like overkill, think again. They are the most personal and important part of your equipment, and you can only ski as well as your boots let you. Part III, chapters 11 through 14, examines real-world skiing in specific types of terrain and snow that are the bread and butter of advanced and expert skiing: ice, moguls, powder, and steeps. In these environments, the tactics you choose are as important as (and largely determine) the techniques you employ. We’ll take a good look at both. I mentioned that one of the reasons I wrote this book is because of the changes that have occurred with the new generation of skis. Another reason is that, over the past 10 years, I have had the good fortune of working with and learning from a good many knowledgable, gifted, and generous people. They have given me opportunities to learn that I could have only dreamed of; they have shared their knowledge and wisdom and disagreed constructively with me when it’s mattered. I want to pass on what I’ve learned. Most of all, I wrote this book to help you enjoy skiing more by skiing better. This page left intentionally blank x