Slope Unweighting - Understanding "Effortless Skiing"
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Join the conversation with a better online communityQ. What, then, is the difference between your solutions and Natalia's ?
A. I provided a top leading solution for every possible point in ski technique.
Natalia provides one exercise and one advanced exercise only.
Absorb and practice them until your comprehension of skiing changes.
Then just continue where your lessons have left you.
Magic mushrooms may help..
Can You post out a copy of Your book for comparison?
I reckon ther’d be a couple of Us interested
"Effortless Skiing" is the primer. We all could take it from there.
Non technical, the figures just show how to orient your body relative to the slope.
It should be noted that you paid the Kindle Unlimited price. The Kindle Unlimited subscription is US10 dollars a month until you cancel it.
Reading it AND understanding it ?Last edited:
I have a subscription to Amazon Prime (streaming). I'm not aware of Kindle unlimited.
I understand what she is saying. Does that mean I "get" it? Dunno at this stage.Drill number one :
"This drill is a good way to demonstrate to the skier that the skis can turn with no action of the legs, just through the rotation of the shoulders "
So much for my repeated suggestions to exaggerate anticipation !
Two stage is all the rage, and going viral...
Very interesting how she claims to have looked in vain for a simple description of how a modern turn works.
We wonder if our leg bones are really rotating in their sockets when we should just be tilting our shoulders and throwing them down the hill.
Note that her figures are not an analysis of the forces produced by turning. They demonstrate the movements that YOU apply in the bottom half of the arc to float your skis into the NEXT turn.
She dropped her ebook price to near zero to discourage direct plagiarism, which is threatening to overwhelm her message with extra crap.
Stick with it !
Instructors of instructors feel threatened as they wrongly believe that it is an alternative and limiting technique.
Far from it !
It is a simplification which they should all take on board as it will mean their students will be dragged out of the ruts limiting their progress.
Here my shoulders, rather than deliberate edging and leaping around, are directing my skis.
Effortless !
The above exercise involves a wedeln slide to reduce the critical timing of stopping the shoulder motion.
True wedeln involved the arm as you describe. I can only conclude that Kruckenhauser sent poorly trained instructors to the States or we all would be into Natalia's knowhow from beginners.
Using illustrations of an average good skier was a masterstroke on her part.
Then just pointing out the unexplained inputs that he ended up using after thousands of runs.
Then devising just two drills to kickstart the student.
You have the Natalia book. What she does not stress is that to be effective the forearm inward rotation must end up stopping BEFORE the turn begins. Ignore the final position of the arm in photos. That is a left over static Position Of The Arm which is about to be reversed.
Arm first, feet will follow..
Back to basics. Natalia Exercise One, because Slope Unweighting awaits.
No critical timing, no need for any abdominal strength because we rely on the body's bump stop, think of One Thing.
Don't worry, your progress towards Pure Carving will not be affected.
Me too.
All that jumping up and down is the last thing that we want.
Deb Armstrong skis naturally, but she is using our forward inward arm rotation inefficiently and only with her left arm, a common fault with skiers who unconciously add it to their style.
@teleroo is asking "Where in the hell does the forearm movement fit into the turn?"
The answer is "nowhere". It fits into the previous turn.
That is why watchers of the smooth, strong turns of World Champeen Stein Ericson commented "He seems to be turning in two directions at the same time".
Yes, upper body starts the new turn while lower body finishes the previous one.
Natalia simply says "We create upper body tension (woops edit torsion) and then release it. A two step process"
It is the release of that torsion that is not intuitive. How can stopping a movement affect the turn ?
She suggests "Don't think, just do it."
Wise words. Exercise Number One. Anticipation 101. Go !Last edited:
The skid is to make the anticipation less critical and more effective. It works in that case with just a shrug of the shoulders.
@skichanger pointed out that a twist in one direction will just be cancelled out by a twist in the other direction.
Not if the initial twist is against edged skis and the next (opposite) twist is against flattened skis.
The Natalia turn is the exact opposite of the Speiss turn !
Speiss attempts to free the skis during the first twist, Natalia during the untwist.
So I downloaded and read this on your recommendation BBB. Got to the snow last week and tried to put it into practice. Then I booked myself a lesson and was asked to ski down a medium pitch so the instructor, crusty old Austrian guy, could assess me, when I reached him he said “vat the hell are you doing with your shoulders!!” I went back to steering with my legs after that."Effortless Skiing" is the primer. We all could take it from there.
Non technical, the figures just show how to orient your body relative to the slope.
What did I do to be suddenly dragged into this? I am pretty sure I would have referenced Newton's laws the last time I would have been in a discussion of the "magic" of somehow changing the the direction one is moving without applying a force, most efficiently via edges, as opposed to changing the direction your skis are pointing. They still apply.
Which is all that we are claiming. Yes, pretty skiers should stay under the chairlift.
Copybook style for beginners so that they don't fall over all the time.I go back to my go-to book..Mr Harb is an advocate of the wide open arm position we see with modern skiers, instructors especially? Quite the contrast to Mr Prihoda.
But he teaches something extra to 9 year old wouldbe racers.
Here he complimented Michaela on holding her counteracting (anticipation):
Sad. Forgotten his beginnings. Back to stylized skiing for you, but you will miss the slope unweighting .
Were you copying me or Natalia's exercise ?
.
Natalia’s I think, however to be fair I find it difficult to translate the static page to movement on the ski slope. Notwithstanding that I do find that steering by “upper body torsion” rather than using the legs very difficult to conceptualise.
Oh dear, no one should be under the chairlift. You just continue to show your ignorance.
I see you are working on what not to do videos. Technically good skiers are quite pleasing to watch. Except where appropriate they don't push their tails out, they do edge and they do use their knees.
Anyway
That is why you and teleroo must just adjust to the two-step concept. I have posted about it a million times, but it just seems to frustrate everybody.
Do her Number One. It involves not a shoulder shrug, but everything above the waist, simultaneously.
What do you understand by Harb's insistence that you "Hold Your Counteracting" ?
It involves the pause while your coiling uncoils into your flattened ski. Giving your ski stroking a head start !
Harb explained that he used more counteracting than two gurus as he matched turns with them.
And looked to do it quite effortlessly in spite of his installed stainless steel.
Every tight turn for a season starting from the upper body. Refining it until you only need a tiny motion because you then get the fastest response.
But don't use it at all with free carving.
Well, KL.
Time to post that clip of a hundred synchronized vaydellers rotating their forearms inward.
It is powerful because it achieves those two things at once, of course.
Natalia says she looks in vain for an all-encompassing description of how a turn actually works.
Here is my take (but she does it better )
A basic full turn involves 180 degree rotation of your skis. (across the hill to across the hill)
It is enhanced by rotating something above the hips faster than the skis for the first half, slower than the skis for the second half.
This lets you dive into the next turn.
This is the two-step.
(Professor Speiss advocated one-step, for some unfathomable reason, rotate your top and catch it as it happens.)Last edited:
Note that her illustrations are of an average good skier. She just explains what he does and why he does it.
Understanding that is key to freedom from mediocracy. Feel the difference.
Obviously, you do not demonstrate Natalia's exercises to your usual instructor. He got there the long way.
Natalia : "One problem associated with the recommendations included in both steering and transitions is that the suggested actions are physically impossible. They happen naturally as a consequence of some other actions."
Even basic anticipation happens naturally.
We should maybe not include extra turn enhancements in discussions about Effortless Skiing as it is wrecking Natalia's wreputation as a conventional skier.I go back to my go-to book..Mr Harb is an advocate of the wide open arm position we see with modern skiers, instructors especially? Quite the contrast to Mr Prihoda.
I have now memorized her book and she advocates the wide arm position "as an inverted U stiffly connected to the shoulders "
and "pole placement by wrist action alone", both in the Gospel According To Harb.Oh dear, no one should be under the chairlift. You just continue to show your ignorance.
Yes, it took several visits to Japan for me to realize that all those broadcast warnings were directed to ME .
Chairlifts everywhere..
There is no better enhancement to your turns than adding anticipation (torsion ) which is created before the turn begins.
It produces a firmer initial edge (Natalia) as well as a faster transition (for which there are many impossible and futile explanations proffered ).
I'll stick to instruction from my mogul skier thanks. I am sure he knows more about edging, turns etc than most.Non-professional instruction is sometimes effective because the "instructor" just wants to get away to ski, rather than drag out the lesson .
American "Waist steering" and Japanese "Hip steering" were good examples of anticipation, but remained undeveloped.
2004 NASTAR :
"Gary, I wanted to tell ya...I tried pushing my outside hip forward through the turn. I think that helped A LOT! I could feel my skis making a much tighter turn, and that their was a lot more pressure building up in the skis. Also I could tell I was more forward, and my skis were out farther to the side of me."
Take your choice- Covid Talk or Ski Talk.
Nobody is suggesting that it makes sense as a stand alone movement.
But it is vital in order to FEEL the Two Step.
You very quickly get the timing right, or it does not work.
Slow windup, instant stopping of your upper body apparatus of choice throws you into the next turn.
You are then ahead of about three seasons of "standard" lessons.....
My snowboarding technique has greatly improved my skiing.Take your choice- Covid Talk or Ski Talk.
Nobody is suggesting that it makes sense as a stand alone movement.
But it is vital in order to FEEL the Two Step.
You very quickly get the timing right, or it does not work.
Slow windup, instant stopping of your upper body apparatus of choice throws you into the next turn.
You are then ahead of about three seasons of "standard" lessons.....
One edge is perfect with Two Step. Lucky that many instructors are rebels and don't teach too much of the official twist and scrape.
168 with close stance in the gullies works for me.
BBB I really try to hard to understand what you are saying but to be honest I really can’t follow you .Take your choice- Covid Talk or Ski Talk.
Nobody is suggesting that it makes sense as a stand alone movement.
But it is vital in order to FEEL the Two Step.
You very quickly get the timing right, or it does not work.
Slow windup, instant stopping of your upper body apparatus of choice throws you into the next turn.
You are then ahead of about three seasons of "standard" lessons.....Last edited:
