Author Topic: Fore Aft Balance and how to get there.  (Read 3712 times)

dan.boisvert

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Re: Fore Aft Balance and how to get there.
« Reply #45 on: January 14, 2013, 11:01:38 am »
A quick clarification on Glen Scannell--he does equipment setup and technical coaching at Waterville Valley, NH.  He's independent, but does/did a lot of work with Waterville Valley Academy racers.  He has a rather lengthy ski resume, but learned bootfitting from HH and has a blue cert in PMTS.  He has also mostly gotten out of the ski business since last year, and the bits of time he's still allotting to it are very hard to get.

I think there are two discussions going on here--one about what recreational skiers do to make their existing skiing feel better to them, and one about how to get good at skiing.  I ended up skiing a bunch with the racer Jim mentioned (worked out great for me that he broke his leg and couldn't train :D ), and we spent most of our time working on fore-aft and what PMTS calls counterbalancing.  As he explained it to me, being "forward" is really close to being "backseat".  The range isn't "forward to back", it's "FORWARD to forward", and that's how you have to approach it if you want to get performance out of your skis, and be able to lay down the trenches Jim described.  We skied on a couple different mountains, and the only skiers he ever pointed out as forward enough were the national team guys who were training at Waterville one day.  Everybody else we saw (racers, instructors, normal schmucks like me), was backseat.  I think people here have very different definitions of "forward", and suspect Greg has the same definition as the one given to me last season.

I also think that intermediates fiddling with ramp and binding delta is mostly an internet phenomenon.  Sure, good racers experiment with stuff and video/clock it to see how it works for them, but I don't think I've ever run into an intermediate in person who spends time fiddling with those angles.  At least for me, I get my skis mounted wherever the shop or guy I bought them from had them, and then I go ski.  That's not to say there couldn't be improvements made to my setup, but that's far from being the limiting factor, and I'd rather spend my time on technique which will carry through to every set of skis/boots I ever own.  I just don't feel like a degree here or there makes that much of a difference.  I'm not going to magically start getting world cup starts just because my binding delta is fixed by a degree or two, or even my lateral alignment.  I still need to learn how to ski..