Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Hate Catching your edges and crossing your tips?

Who doesn’t?
Rid Yourself of these Life Long Skiing Problems in One Day!

Catching the inside ski edges and crossing the ski tips are two of the perpetual and persistent dilemmas that plague skiers. How is it that regular ski instruction can’t seem to cure these problems?

Let's Start with, Stop catching an Edge:
To understand these situations completely, let’s look at them more closely. If I understand correctly, you are catching the new inside edge at or after transition. Or to many skiers who have never had a PMTS Lesson, at the beginning of your turn. This is a occurrence that simply means one of two things are happening. You are either leaning your body into the new turn too early. Or you have “old weight” still on the old stance ski and you are pushing yourself into the new arc by extending the uphill leg. This is known in some circles as (extension off the old inside edge and leg ) or inside leg extension, which we don’t teach in PMTS, some think it’s a technique, I won’t go there.

The instant solution, try to time and strengthen your counterbalance.



Notice how my upper body is leaning out over my outside ski? Blue and red lines indicate leaning upper body toward outside ski. That’s counter balance! Develop it at the beginning of each turn.



Also, lighten and lift the inside ski or free ski more aggressively, until you have gained better timing. This is basically the Phantom Move. For references about and more in-depth descriptions, check my Books on Amazon. My first two books are “Anyone can be an Expert Skier 1 and 2.

Link to Amazon: Look over to "Links" on the right of this page, click on Harald's Books.
Counter Balance is described in my fourth book called:

“Harald Harb’s Essentials of Skiing”



Crossing your tips?

Crossing the tips can be disastrous, while being the easiest problem in skiing to rid yourself of, in the shortest time. Fear of crossing the tips can be even more devastating. It holds you back, which makes you a defensive skier. A defensive skier lets more things happen to them, instead of controlling what is happening out front. You can’t just become an aggressive skier by thinking aggressive. You have to make the correct movements that instill confidence, to raise your aggressive levels.

How do you get confidence? You feel your skiing become easier and it begins working for you. So what is the greatest movement to stop crossing your tips and increase you skiing confidence? The greatest movement in the history of skiing, it’s called the Phantom Move.

The Phantom Move is very easy to learn, but very difficult to perfect. With a little practice you can become a Phantom Move expert, instantly functional and reap the rewards. It can be learned by following these simple steps. At the end of each turn, lift your downhill ski. This means you have to shift your weight to the other foot. Try to shift your balance to the other foot while keeping it on the uphill, little toe edge. Your little toe edge is on the outside of your foot, trust me, remember this, as it’s hard to check with ski boots on.


Starting the Phantom Move

As you begin to lift the stance foot or downhill ski, at the end of a turn to get the Phantom Move started, tip the lifted foot toward it’s outside or little toe edge. Just to confirm, both your skis are tipped toward their little toe sides now.



Not really, this can never happen, but the more you try to accomplish this, the better your turns will become and you will never cross your skis again. Notice how my lower ski leads, with the wedge movement background you learned, skiers keep doing the opposite, the upper ski leads, that's why skis cross.

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