Tuesday, November 20, 2012

I am a big fan of Korean Skiing.

These are excellent turns, and excellent demonstrations,  however it is not "PMTS Direct Parallel" skiing. Why?




 I am a big fan of Korean and Japanese demonstrators and skiers. I coached Japanese racers in the 70ies,  my years as a racing coach. I coached one skier from Japan, who finished in the top 10, in two different Olympics slaloms.
I like the skiing, it is precise, more so than North American skiers and demonstrators. However, it's missing two things to be PMTS skiing. If you look at the top of the arc, the tails of the skis are slipping or showing some pivoting. It is very well controlled and I am not criticizing it; because it is well done. 
Again, we strive to engage the skis, by that I mean in PMTS we work on creating an angle earlier in the High C part of the arc. The other thing is the pole swing. If you have watched my You Tube videos, you know we try not to swing the tip of the ski pole toward the ski tip. As in the World Cup today, there is almost no pole swing, this is more efficient and requires less movements. Other than that, there is some minor hip rotation in some turns, but in general this is excellent skiing.
There are great movements here; flexing is the most obvious, tipping with the inside foot/ski first, also holding the CA in many turns and Counter Acting at the initiation. Excellent stuff.

No comments: