Alex was aware after yesterdays improvements that he was still coming up too early in the turn – though not nearly as much as before. Today when the snow was still fresh he discovered that the extra speed and staying down later in the turn now left him vulnerable to being spat out of the course. This is a normal and typical situation – where correcting one issue and improving in general then exposes other issues. To move ahead we had to begin working on reducing Alex’s rotation – regardless of our time being limited due to the mountain both opening last and closing early.
Skiing on plastic has always drastically affected Alex’s timing and this has been corrected through exercises and specific focus on timing in the past – always to return with more exposure to plastic. Now for the first time Alex had corrected his timing and also fully understands where and why it has been going wrong. The result turns the full poles into a relatively easy and enjoyable experience instead of an uncertain battle.
Alex on very sticky snow – dealing with a late start to the day where the fresh snow was heating up. Normally Alex has a hard time transitioning from plastic slopes to snow but today only the very first run in the poles was problematic and he quickly snapped back into focusing on his technical skiing.
We didn’t have a lot of time in the poles so the aim was just to focus on strengthening technique – specifically regarding being able to pressure the fronts of the skis and deepen angulation along with this as the turn progressed – so as not to be pitched over the fronts of the skis. Alex has a tendency to try to stand on the outside edge of his inside ski – which causes the outside hip to lose angulation. We worked on this issue with static exercises.
During the runs you can see that timing is a bit off. After the second turn there is a dip prior to coming up for the turn. The previous turn should have been completed with an up motion – so we will have to look carefully at this tomorrow. There is a tendency to come up (unweighting) to throw the skis outwards – which loses pressure. There is excessive rotation on the right side – but all of the issues mentioned are connected so tomorrow we will continue using the 14 brush gates and try to improve the movement pattern – taking it into the long gates. When the technical skiing is corrected then hitting the poles should not provoke any problems.
