Derin 7

Today’s filming doesn’t really show Derin’s capacity – but I’ll try to film more tomorrow. In Slalom Derin is losing a huge amount of time through totally failing to understand the “line”. I’ve tried to explain it several times but she clearly doesn’t yet grasp the idea so somebody else will have to try to get it over to her. I’ll put the explanation up here and then leave it to someone to translate this into Turkish.

 

 

Here’s a diagram of racing lines. Derin is taking the first line – going straight for the poles and ending up late on the following poles. She needs to be working on the second line where she aims to go wide so as to turn high above the pole and then pass directly beneath it. This second line can then be tightened up as technique improves and greater speeds can be coped with – finishing up with the third line with the turns right on the apex – to the outside of each pole neither above nor below.

 

 

Pivoting and One Ski Skiing

We did some work on pivoting but Derin is still not grasping the idea of the use of the pole for support – whcih means that she cannot move her centre of mass inwards very well and struggles with the pivot. She still has some trouble getting onto her uphill ski to start the pivot so this is a great exercise for her overall development.

When turning the “wrong direction” on one ski the problems are even greater – but she now understands how to remain on the inside edge of the foot and has successfully completed a turn in the “wrong direction” (right ski – turing right etc.) She wants to do more of this now that she gets the idea and this will help her to both use the poles better for pivoting, to stand better on one leg and to differentiate the edges of her feet from the edges of the skis better. Her overall skill set should improve quickly with this in place.

 

Carving

Derin was introduced to carving for the first time ever today – she didn’t know what the name meant. She was able to do the traversing exercises and on very flat ground successfully change edges just by angulating. Later on she followed me at high speed carving and amazingly she was immediately able to do this. I’ve never seen that happen before so can only put it down to her never being taught to snowplough or make any of the traditional compromises in her movement patterns.

 

In general Derin was following me at quite high speed and though I intentionally make it very tight and difficult for her (as in a slalom course) she was seldom being tripped up by any of this. She does need to be more aware of her body – but at 8 years old we can only ask for so much! She’s doing really well.  After each exercise Derin would ask me if we could “real ski” now! A few days ago when we skied to Tignes Le Lac she asked if we could return to Real Tignes.