Fall on the Wall

Try this one out.

Stand at a right angle to a wall, far enough away so that your
elbow will touch the wall if your upper arm is held out level.
You'll need to bend the arm of course.

Maybe, a foot and a half from the wall?

Stand straight as a stick, then lean your straight body over
until you fall onto the wall. Trust the wall. You *can* fall
into it, it will save you. You're only a foot and a half away,
come on.

Notice what your feet seem to want to do as you fall. Mine
want to stay flat on the floor, and the ankles want to flex
to allow this.

Now, lean in the wall direction again, and at the point
where you begin to fall, move your *hips* toward the
wall and prevent yourself from falling.

Note what happens to your feet as you do this last
movement with your hips. Then imagine skis on your
feet and note how they would want to come up on
edge just naturally when you move the hips inside,
even though you have no ski boots on.

Now go ski, and play with moving your hips down toward
the center of the turn.

Angulation it is. Hip angulation. Angulation is one of the
elements of the mechanics of skiing. Few, and simple
they are.

"lal_truckee" wrote in message
...
foot2foot wrote:
Try this one out.

Stand at a right angle to a wall, far enough away so that your
elbow will touch the wall if your upper arm is held out level.
You'll need to bend the arm of course.

Maybe, a foot and a half from the wall?

When it's that steep, you definitely DON'T want to lean into the
mountain...

No indeed, part of the point of the excercise is to get used to
falling to the inside of the turn, *just enough*, as well as
playing around a bit with the effect of hip angulation.

The steeper, the farther forward and *down* the hill you
need to be. Up on your toes, as if to do a jump shot
with a basketball. I'm definitely wise to it, now if I could
just learn to do it most everytime I want to.

If you fall down the hill and to the center of the turn, while
adding the hip angulation, the same way you're falling into
the wall, it might end up being illustrative.

foot2foot wrote:
Try this one out.

Stand at a right angle to a wall, far enough away so that your
elbow will touch the wall if your upper arm is held out level.
You'll need to bend the arm of course.

Maybe, a foot and a half from the wall?

When it's that steep, you definitely DON'T want to lean into the mountain...

foot2foot wrote:

No indeed, part of the point of the excercise is to get used to
falling to the inside of the turn, *just enough*, as well as
playing around a bit with the effect of hip angulation.


I've got some of that happening, but it's a transfer skill from
motorcycle roadracing, where you visualize falling into the apex of a
turn and falling out the exit in the other direction.

The trick is to make an utterly smooth transition as you fall against
centripetal acceleration.

It's a lot harder when there's nothing solid to hang onto with your
hands, but the sensation of pushing your outside foot away from the
center is a lot the same.

The steeper, the farther forward and *down* the hill you
need to be. Up on your toes, as if to do a jump shot
with a basketball. I'm definitely wise to it, now if I could
just learn to do it most everytime I want to.

And that's just as hard a task to master as being fearless when braking
through a turn. I'd known for a long time that I was _able_ to enter a
turn on just one wheel, and exit on the other wheel, but it never ever
felt safe to me. It's all a simple matter of being One with the
universe within a ten-foot sphere enclosing you.

And then I turned 27 and the YAMIC wore off and I quit riding.

Next time I ski something steep and ugly, I'll think about "nose
wheelies" and how the contact patch really isn't any smaller with just
one tire on the pavement.

"Jim Strohm" wrote in message

I've got some of that happening, but it's a transfer skill from motorcycle
roadracing, where you visualize falling into the apex of a turn and
falling out the exit in the other direction.

The trick is to make an utterly smooth transition as you fall against
centripetal acceleration.

It's a lot harder when there's nothing solid to hang onto with your hands,
but the sensation of pushing your outside foot away from the center is a
lot the same.

And that's just as hard a task to master as being fearless when braking
through a turn. I'd known for a long time that I was _able_ to enter a
turn on just one wheel, and exit on the other wheel, but it never ever
felt safe to me. It's all a simple matter of being One with the universe
within a ten-foot sphere enclosing you.

And then I turned 27 and the YAMIC wore off and I quit riding.

Sounds pretty scary. I'll stay on two skis, and leave those two
wheels to someone like you.

Next time I ski something steep and ugly, I'll think about "nose wheelies"
and how the contact patch really isn't any smaller with just one tire on
the pavement.

Before long, I'm off to try it again..