David 3

Today, with the weather clear and some fresh snow around, it was time to put David’s newly acquired skills to use and take him up the mountain for his first attempt at a green run. During his first proper ski run we managed an excursion off piste which he handled perfectly.

 

 

Once being confident that David could handle things well the goal was to generate mileage with David following me – showing him the line where he could manage the best control and keeping him away from other skiers as much as possible. Feedback from me mainly concerned reinforcing the most relevant points that we had worked on yesterday. This was not going to be a highly technical day as David needed to turn as often as possible to work through all the information that needed to be processed already. Had there been difficulties we would have focused differently but David was doing extremely well and handling the steeper slopes and higher speeds very effectively for only his third morning. The intense groundwork covered yesterday was really paying off. Although I didn’t capture David’s best moments off piste on video I did manage to record some interesting ones! David applied both sideslipping and pivoting on steep pitches very effectively.

 

End of Turn Dynamics

The only new technical issue that was brought up was “end of turn dynamics”. When there is forward momentum it is necessary to complete the turn by supporting the body with the lower leg/ski when crossing the hill – bringing it out to the perpendicular. This is a failry scary act but it guarantees easy entry into the next turn and easy engagement of the new supporting leg and ski. The body comes up and over the lower ski – resembling a motorbike coming up and out of a turn. This generates stability and directs the centre of mass across the hill and down into the next turn. David responded very well to this concept and was able to tighten his turns accordingly and survive strongly off piste. There was also a brief explanation of how this movement completes correct “timing” but there was no time left to demonstrate how exactly it also connects to skating. The important thing was that each new concept was grasped, applied and put to constructive and appropriate use sucessfully. David needs to get to work on sorting out his obvious stance problems which we clarified yesterday but he did a great job of working around that today.

 

Grande Motte summit in Tignes.

 

Mont Blanc with a little more that its “hat” on.