Korea Technical Freeskiing contest, short turns

The major realization of this video is the poor alignment of the competitors' boots and legs.

There is some very good skiing and a few great skiers in this video. The amazing thing is that the alignment of the right boot on most of the skiers, until the very end; is off by a considerable amount. There is one skier I noticed that has bad left foot alignment, see if you can spot him?

Its interesting to see that alignment in general is not addressed in ski instruction. However what is noticed is that the skiers with the best alignment are scoring the best points here. You can see the point scores in the video frame below each competitor.

  It ironic that the ski industry doesn't understand or want to deal with bad alignment, but we reward those that are naturally well aligned, because they naturally ski well.


That should tell you something! Good skiers have good alignment. Bad ones struggle.


This is not the case at Harb Ski Systems, where we understand alignment very well and know how to fix it.

The first skier leans to the inside and falls. If you use slow motion and stop action you can clearly see the asymmetry between his body from one side, or turn, to the other. This is also true for most of the skiers coming after him. The first skier doesn't have enough Counter Balance or CB. You can see this by how his upper body to boot line,  is almost straight, from his boots to his shoulder. He is probably also adapting to the lack of response of the ski in that turn to the left where he falls, so he tries to push against the snow to get more ski engagement. This is his downfall, ha!. Had he increased his lower body tipping and CB, he would have easily made the turn.
But the problem still exists, you can't adapt to bad alignment in very fast turns, because the body can't make the adjustments fast enough.

Watch the video and enjoy the skiing, then review it and begin to pick out the obvious right leg "A" frames in most of the skiers. Compare the right side to the left side  and you will see that the left side for the right turns is more solid, and much less "A"framed.

I will continue to add and make new comments about each skier over time, so come back in a few days to investigate the Movement Analysis.

Your first clue will be to look at the still frame show in the video box below, that's an "A" frame on the right leg.