A puzzling choice...

[jim-ratliff]

I almost hesitate to bring this up, not wanting to start another Hatfield and McCoy session, but I would be very interested in people's thoughts on his lower legs. I don't have a very good eye, but I've seen this "lower leg A-Frame" on pictures of Bodie as well with Lindsey Vonn.
I know that the Max "one-liner" will be "Can't tell much from one picture" but I would still be interested in other's opinions. Is this intentional, or has the edge slipped out from under him. Or is the A-Frame look an illusion because he's rotating his femur and knee inward to tighten the turn? Bush/Epic?? Helluva? Anyone? Phil?
Midwif, do you "give a damn" on this one? 

[LivingProof]

Yesterday, the Ski Magazine second issue of the season arrived, showing an Rogan instructional piece on off-piste, frozen wind scour snow at Squaw. It shows a linked 25 picture montage showing 3 complete turns. The article focuses on tactics and not technique, clearly aimed at helping skiers who struggle in this terrain. If you don't have good technique going into the run, you will not find it there.  I could not find the article on the 'net, it may be available in the near future.
 
I'm sure the PMTS crowd will not like the skiing, but, as they are not the audience of Ski Magazine. Choose to accept or reject the advice offered in a 2 page magazine instructional article as you wish. I've been a student of golf for 50 years and each month the golf mags are just filled with similar articles. I would not argue with the great majority, but, putting well-intended advice into my game is very difficult. After reading 1000's of these articles, my game remains pretty much the same.

To return to the OP intent of this thread, that article has been planned for months and has little relationship to Rogan's new duties in the ski racing training programs. My home mountain has a large junior racing program, and, when I speak with the racing Director, I'll ask for his thoughts on implementing this program.

[bushwacka]

Jim if your talking about the carving picture of Rogan here is my take.

"it one picture and it looks good"

as for the recent ski mag tactically instructional article it shows one of my beefs with his skiing and that his inclination as well letting his inside hip drop back and down. All of which isnt great for off trail skiing, as for sure not good for racing...

As for the weird unmatching angles in his skis in that photo spread he is off trail and I know how funky my skis can look skiing terrain like that even when everything else is right.

[jim-ratliff]

BW: Thanks. yes, I was talking about the carving picture.
       Noticing a hip dropping down and back is way too subtle for me.

[jim-ratliff]

OK, I'm obviously hijacking the thread, because I would like to get better at seeing technique. In Max's first link (above), I heard Rogan saying things I understand and we would probably all agree with. Pressure the front of the skis, skis that release together engage together, don't steer the skis, just engage the edges and the skis will turn, etc.

So anyone, working from the second link (the photo montage) and numbering the images from right to left (progression through the turn), tell me what you see or note I should be able to see in his skiing.

[ToddW]

Jim,

Here are a couple of the more visually distinct things from the montage.  I think you can see them clearly.

0.  He isn't smiling.  This is just another day at work for him.  We should all be so lucky as to have jobs like his 

1.  His pole tap is after he changes edges, so it's probably more about dragging a pole in the snow as a sensor than a timing device for the turn.  (The tap is out to the side rather than the conventional PSIA swing all the way up to the tip pole tap, but that's because he's carving.  You only have to get kicked by a pole once while carving to never do that again.)

2.  He uses a pronounced up movement between 3 and 4.  You can see this from the change in the angle of his thigh to his calf, the increased height of his butt, and the significantly reduced outside ski angle which flattened from being pushed on.  A common visual giveaway to the lack of a release is when the legs widen at transition. [aside:  sometimes WC skiers appear to extend when they've actually flexed a stance leg and their extreme momentum comes into play.  You can see the seeds of Rogan's up between 2 and 3 with hardly any lateral displacement (due to momentum), so the WC illusion argument isn't applicable here.]

3.  His upper body and pelvis are in rigid "unibody" configuration with little hip angulation/counterbalance or counter/counteraction.  The CB is easier to see by envisioning a straight line up his outside (stance) leg and seeing how parallel or divergent it is to the centerline of his torso or his jacket zipper.  This affects his ability to hold an edge on hard surfaces.  With this much inclination, he isn't really carving.  Instead, he is micro-skidding to compensate the lack of lateral balance.  Modern ski designers labor to make skis that will do this since so few skiers exhibit consistent lateral balance.  But this still doesn't work well on hard snow.  Look for this skier to favor soft snow conditions.

4.  At initiation in 5 and 6 his legs are extended.  This limits his mechanical ability to roll his ankles onto edge at the start of the turn (try rolling your ankles with straight legs and then with a flexed leg right now and you'll see the difference.)  This means he relies primarily on momentum and inclination to get his initial edge angles (slow!)  This reduces his opportunities for speed control in the top of the turn, so expect this skier to sometimes exhibit checked turns / strong edge sets at the end of turns on steeper terrain and to have speed control issues on ice or slick scraped off.

Depending on camera angle, fore-aft and counter are often harder to see in montages.  Looking at the stance leg will still give you clues.

[HighAngles]

I'll add that the sequence also shows a very "big toe"/stance ski dominant turn.  The turn is not initiated from his inside half as you can see his knees come together at his transition - he's still hard on the stance ski at the end and going for getting on the big toe edge of his new stance ski.

It's also very clear that Rogan needs some alignment work.  His alignment is setup "soft" (to the inside) and you can especially see this in the last image where his stance leg is not stacked skeletally - he has a great deal of knee angulation where he is tucking his right knee in behind the left leg.

[jim-ratliff]

I did notice how light he is in 4. His old inside ski is completely off the snow. and there is some daylight under the outside/stance ski as well.

Todd, I think your "zero" comment is style, not technique??    Not to be nitpicky, mind you. The other comments were very good, I was impressed.

HighAngles. I see the alignment issue you noted. Is this lack of alignment, or intentionally trying to get more edge? Obviously you don't know Rogan's mind, but hard to believe it is due to lack of alignment awareness on his part?

Thanks to you both. I think midwif is going to have to cut me a bit of slack at my lack of counter and my tendency toward inclination to get edges.

[jim-ratliff]

Bush/Epic:
Obviously, the comments by Todd and HighAngles are only valid when Rogan's skiing is evaluated in the context of a particular technical paradigm (PMTS) and that is appropriate since I asked for things in terms of what I could see and understand.
How would either of you evaluate that montage in the paradigm of what he is trying to do, or of the paradigm that PSIA teaches.
NOTE: This is not intended to be a trick question or initiate H&M (Lynn's terminology is now entrenched in our dialogue); I'm just really curious what your eyes see. (because we all see through the paradigm that we understand, which may be an integral part of Liam's very evocative and interesting threads.)

[jbotti]

HighAngles. I see the alignment issue you noted. Is this lack of alignment, or intentionally trying to get more edge? Obviously you don't know Rogan's mind, but hard to believe it is due to lack of alignment awareness on his part?

Lack of knowledge and understanding about alignment is more the norm that the exception. In fact very few people outside of PMTS trained even notice alignment much less know how to fix it. This is true even up at the WC level, where we see skiers all the time with aligment that is out (Lyndsey Vonn was a prime example before she corrected it before last season).

[bushwacka]

Bush/Epic:
Obviously, the comments by Todd and HighAngles are only valid when Rogan's skiing is evaluated in the context of a particular technical paradigm (PMTS) and that is appropriate since I ask for things in terms of what I could see and understand.
How would either of you evaluate that montage in the paradigm of what he is trying to do, or of the paradigm that PSIA teaches.
NOTE: This is not intended to be a trick question or initiate H&M (Lynn's terminology is now entrenched in our dialogue); I'm just really curious what your eyes see. (because we all see through the paradigm that we understand, which may be an integral part of Liam's very evocative and interesting threads.)

side rant....

There is no PSIA paradigm; there is **** they do that is plain wrong, some stuff they know, and some options that PMTS'ers do not have. In reality each instructor is free to teach what they see fit. If we compared to politics, PSIA is actually the libertarian democracy when it comes to how each instructor teaches, whereas PMTS is very much an authoritarian dictatorship. It's an interesting disconnect from American politics right now, where the authoritarian candidates do well and the libertarians do not do well. Let face it, like Gary Johnson, PMTS is not going to gain any steam anytime soon.  With that said, I feel that the PMTS system requires less thinking (less thinking can be a good thing) and more effort to learn; and from an outsider looking in seems to breed groomer junkies that have forgotten to have fun (do not just discount what I just said, come to Stowe and prove me otherwise!)  Whereas PSIA has a ton of horrible instruction (the price we pay for freedom), but the best minds from a creative stand point have more tools to use than the PMTS instructors. Very much like American politics in that the PMTS style could help more people learn to become slightly better than park and riders, where PSIA is really good at getting people to ski anything they want and given enough time do just as well.
Look at Reilly. He hates the PMTS'ers more than just about anyone I know even though his style fits in more with your "one size fits all" model, but in his mind PSIA is a much more free, open organization.
Just look at me, my only purpose in pursuing education staff is not to be like them, but to change how the next crop of instructors thinks about skiing and how we are embracing the new tech for what its is (freaking amazing all mountain skis in the right hands) while not forgetting that SL/GS skis still have no equals on the groomers. 

if this is offensive to anyone. let me know before it comes down. I would rather save this that just let it get deleted.


now on to Rogan

on the carving with control video
His transitions are extensions. For these relatively low dynamic turns its not really an issue, if he wants deeper angles and tighter turns then he will have to rework that and probably can rework that.  In the shorter turns at :40 second in he is being hurt by this transition.

Disclaimer! I myself am a retraction guy when skiing off trail. IMO it's a much better transition and lets me vary turn shape both on edge and off edge easier.

AS I said about an earlier photo from the newest ski mag, Rogan lets his inside hip drop back and towards the ground. IMO this is not good skiing the majority of the time, but again there can be uses. In the past couple of years I have discovered just how much more edge grip there is when I drive with my inside hip into every turn.

I went through and made changes to the grammar. Hopefully no substantive change to the intent.

[midwif]

Bush
Not an offensive post at all.
I think you would actually enjoy a Pmts  session with a high level instructor.
A lot of what you say  has some similarities.

Don't worry, no one here expects that to happen!

As a side bar: I don't think any one post has been deleted in its entirety.
There have been "trimmings".

And who is reilly?

Sad to hear anyone "hates pmtsers most" because of the ski technique they prefer to practice.

I don't hate anyone because of how they ski. Unless they hit me on the slope while being an a**hole.
 
L.

[HighAngles]

I value this place very much because we can actually have an open discourse on the different approaches to ski instruction and what actually equates to "good skiing".  I hope that we can all always keep that in mind.

I think that PMTS definitely still has some "baggage" due to preconceived notions of what the program is really about and what it can do for your skiing.  As Bush noted, I have felt the frustration from the lack of a real consistent method for teaching skiing from the PSIA.  I bounced from instructor to instructor getting a tip here and a tip there - all tips that I should put in my "bag of tools".  Comparing the PSIA to PMTS really isn't comparing apples to apples.  I imagine that there are some fairly good instructors within the ranks of the PSIA and I'm sure there are more than just Bush that are frustrated with the current state of affairs and aspire to something more.

I've skied with Bush and I've seen that he can rip (and that was a few years ago now).  I would love to have Josh seriously consider diving into the PMTS methodology and really learn the system from the inside.  It's extremely rare to have anyone from the PSIA truly get fully involved with PMTS (there are a few guys I know from the mid-West ski hills that have made the effort).  As a LIII+ I think having Josh's perspective on PMTS would be valuable (if he would truly learn the system and terminology).  Of course there's really no money in learning PMTS and I totally get why someone who chooses ski instruction as their career would embrace the PSIA and strive to achieve as high a standing as possible within the organization.

It's too bad that Rogan is "exhaulted on high" within the PSIA because I think there are better skiers in the organization that could do more for advancing their methods and improving what is being taught.

[jbotti]

Walter Edberg is a Blue level PMTS instructor and a PSIA level 3. He is a ripping skier and fully versed in the PSIA/PMTS differences. He teaches out of Alpine Meadows. I think we are seeing more and more PSIA full certs looking for better tecahng tools and also wanting to improve their own skiing and this is bringing them to PMTS.

[ToddW]

And who is reilly?

Lynn,

Reilly McGlashan is on the APSI (Australian) demo team.  Last I heard, he worked at Thredbo and Aspen.  His skiing has improved over the past few years.  3 years ago, give or take, He and Harald got into a bit of an internet flame war via proxies.  Reilly called him out on Epic and chose to make an ill-considered comparison between Harald on recreational skis making short turns and Thomas Grandi making relaxed training GS turns.  Harald responded by pointing out how nonsensical the comparison was (true) and how flattered he was to be compared to an active world cup skier.  Reilly started the fight because Harald critiqued the skiing of Reilly's colleague.  Reilly came in guns blazing.

Reilly is one of the skiers in the videos Max posted in the stoke thread.  He's a far better skier than Rogan, and PSIA should have let him on the US demo team when he tried out (he has dual citizenship, so he's eligible to try out for either team.)