J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by Jan I Stenmark

Yippie !!!

I spotted my first Basher of the season!!

And here's the proof:-

http://www.auhof.co.uk/First_Basher.html

Happy bashing :shock:

Jan

Hamish,

I think Pavel means the river Itchen!!

Happy brown sludge,

Jan

Hamish,

It's a funny word isn't it?

Using the word “Fall” is probably not a great image for beginners!

I suspect that I am rather out of date with my terminology. However, my wife (a highly qualified ski instructor – cool hu?) tells me that the term “Flow Line” is now favored.

Whatever the term, the concept remains the same. Imagine a ball rolling down a hill. It will follow the most direct path to the bottom (If you allow the ball to have no mass and therefore not to display the effects of inertial).

We use this term in skiing because it’s helpful to understand where our skis most want to go. Now we know where they want to go we can divert them from this path and still end up at the bottom of the hill in a vaguely human state.

A flowing run down any given piste will tend to have its turns made symmetrically about the Flow Line. i.e. each turn will diverge roughly the same distance and angle from the flow line. Obviously this is a simplification but the concept remains roughly true.

For a hands on image of the Flow Line, imagine a beginner standing at the top of a piste, leaning way back and then pushing off. They are likely to follow the Flow Line down!

Please keep asking great questions,

Jan

Yep, seen exactly the same birds at the top of Mont Fort, Verbier.

Perhaps they are migrant. Travelling from resort to resort just to test their lemming tendencies …

As for the code, you are interestingly close by noting that the first 3 and last 3 letters are the same. That could be a route worth pursuing …

You are correct that:

It is in English
It is constructed by taking the first letter from each word in a sentence
It has to do with skiing (and life in general)
It is very much related to my message
It is logical

Happy sleepless nights,

Jan

I was just thinking about some of the most emotional ski runs of my life, and I realised that nearly every one has been accompanied by great music!

It occurred to me that with the ability of an MP3 player to store 1000’s of songs I’d like to make up some new playlists from suggestions made by the good people of this site!

The problem with asking “normal” people for “good” music suggestions is that they just don’t get what makes great music to ski to … They ain’t got rhythm ?

So, I’d like to tell you mine but if you’ll tell me yours! – Deal?

Ok, I’ll go first. (In some but no real order)

1. Plastic Bertrand - Ça plane pour moi – Just amazing energy. Perfect for giving you a boost ready for a last run.
2. Oasis – Champagne Supernova - Great atmospheric start to do huge sweeping carves to then @ 2:00 mins it changes enough to give some perfect timing for shorter turns
3. Underworld – Born Slippy - The sense of antisipation as the first minute builds is awsome, then keepin up with the beat after 1:35 makes any run mad but worth every ounce of sweat!
4. Pink Floyd – Comfortably Numb – The tempo is perfect for carving crazy, lazy sweeping turns (yes with one hand in the snow) first thing in the morning on cordouroy piste. Just watch out for the guitar solo, you just might drift off into paradise. Personally, I prefer the version on “A Delicate Sound of Thunder” it’s just so majestic.
5. Lynyrd Skynyrd - Sweet Home Alabama – The rhythm changes make it great for testing your “jazz” skiing.
6. Mark Knopfler - Cannibals – Short swing training heaven! Then try doubling the rate so you are always on the same edge on the beat – Crazy …
7. Anne Murry – Snowbird – Somehow just seems to evoke the right feelin’, but maybe that’s just me … I can’t help just kinda drifting along to this, there’s no way you can get all tense and nervous with this wafting in your ears ?
8. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes - Over the Rainbow – If you are feeling a bit jaded after that long lunch and second Schnapps then this will get you back and going again! (If you haven’t heard of MFATGG look em up, they are fab!)
9. Metallica - Welcome Home (Sanitaruim) – Just somehow sounds like it should be a soundtrack to a Warren Miller film, although not the greatest tune for ski rhythm, maybe one for the lift up with a stunning panorama unfolding beneath.
10. The Dixie Cups - Iko Iko (Original)– Yeah, go on, keep your feet still, I DARE ya :twisted:
11. Martha And The Muffins - Echo Beach – Maybe just a personal favourite ‘cos it was in the charts and being played a lot on a ski holiday in the 70’s, but still the atmospherics seem good in the mountains (to me)
12. Tom Russell - Hong Kong Boy – The guitars and Tom’s vocal on this makes we want to ski in a really aggressive way, Muppets beware! Why does it make me feel aggressive? Ask my shrink :wink:
13. Pink Floyd – Learning to Fly – Cruzin’ tune. Nothing hard, difficult or taxing about this but soar with the guitars and your skiing will follow!
14. Eric Clapton – Tears in Heaven – Find a quiet spot overlooking an awesome view, get rid of anyone else. Make a seat by digging your skis into the snow by the tails, place your ski sticks over the front of the heal piece and sit down. (Ah, Pav is this #101?) Now clear your mind of all thoughts and play this song. If you get to the end of the song with tears running down your cheeks, congratulations, you are human and have sufficient emotion to make a truly great skier!

Well I’m gonna hop off the couch now and let someone else have a go.

By the way a simple list of tracks isn’t any good, I want to know what makes it worth putting on my iPod!

Happy boogying,

Jan

Pav,

I guess having English as your 4th language puts you at a natural disadvantage ... I may post some help later if you and your gang are too slow to work out a simple game :)

Although I have to salute your industry, and all without coffee - Wow !!

Jan

So here we are standing at the top of a wonderfully inviting run, maybe it’s one of our first runs of the day, and maybe we have a small group of people we would like to impress about us! We are motionless, we have a world of infinite possibility before us and maybe we are immortal!

Now we punt off down the hill and make a right podge (Ed: Please no technical terms here!) of our first turn – we get our weight all wrong or we let our outside ski skid away or we catch our inside tip too hard or we just plain wipe out! Anyways we then spend the next few precious seconds struggling to recover composure and show that we really can do this skiing thang.

So what happened?

Well luckily I have the power of second sight and I was watching what happened and maybe I have an idea about a way to improve your posing ?

How often do you find yourself cruising down a hill (green, red, black, off-piste, whatever) and you just wish you could have that crowd of admirers watching now?

The point is that you are (Caution: Yoof talk imminent) “In the groove” – “Hangin Sweet” – “Chillin” - “Rippin” … “Layin down some trax!”

In translation, you have made a significant number of turns and now you are settled into a rhythm. This is the key.

Now, delve deep into your subconscious ... and ask yourself one question: - Why can’t my first turn be as sweet as those further down the hill?

The reason (almost certainly) is that you made one critical mistake:
1. You started your first turn too early.

At the risk of boredom there are two possible reasons for this: -

1. You started moving away from the top of the run by choosing a route that took you across the fall line (what used to be called “On a traverse”) – This (IMHO) is the most likely cause and also the greater of these two possible sins. Why?- The problems you have set yourself is that your first turn has to be a full turn, you have to turn from a “static” position and pound to a pinch you will start your turn before you have sufficient speed. The first two problems don’t exist for any of your subsequent turns (well unless you like to do long traverses with a quick turn when the piste runs out!) As for the speed issue, most people will have a comfort zone within which they are familiar with the “forces” involved. As the speed drops the forces reduce and yet the technique usually stays the same, hence we see people falling into their first turn because those damm skis don’t push back as hard as we expect them to!

or

2. You started off down the fall line (well done, this means your first turn only needs to be a half turn) but made your first turn before you had achieved the speed that you would normally make your turns at. This is easily cured once you recognize the problem. One good tip is to use the first second or two of your run to check you arm carriage and general posture. By the time you have run through a mental check list of feet, ankles, knees, hips, abdomen, torso, shoulders, elbows, hands and head you should certainly have enough speed to start thinking about that first perfect turn.

As a final thought, you won’t be surprised if I mention that the steeper the slope the faster you need to do that pre-turn check list but ironically it’s also much more important that you do!

So in summary, start your run from a straight run down the fall-line, use that time to carryout a full body posture audit and then pose your way to glory!

Now for the competitive amongst you, this may help you to remember:

FTPIPTF

Happy first turn,

Jan

Hi Mickey,

Welcome to the madness that is J2SKI :)

I will gently slip my neck onto the chopping block and risk the wrath of others by venturing a view on this topic ...

If you hang around here long enough you will doubtless discover that I cannot answer a simple question with a simple answer … Sorry

Let me first ask a question: Why do you wear socks?

Ok, a mindless question you might think, but when applied to skiing it seems to take on a whole different meaning.

Let me guess some possible answers to my question:

1. To keep my feet warm
2. As a fashion statement
3. To protect my boots from my feet
4. Because I always wear socks
5. To stop my boots hurting
6. Because the ski-clothing industry marketing machine leaves me begging to wear their “ski socks”!
7. To stop the smell of my sweaty feet being transferred to my expensive boot liners
8. To protect my feet (shins) from my boots

As an aside, perhaps we should run a poll to gauge the most common answer to this question!

Personally I would probably answer this question with answer #3 but more of that later.

However, I would expect many people to answer with #1. This seems to be a fear that grips many, many skiers (and possibly snowboarders but I dread the thought of presuming to talk on their behalf – So boarders what’s the lo-down?) but is this a reasonable answer?

Well on the whole skiing takes place in a cold environment (if you exclude an August day on the dry-slopes of England) so wearing warm socks would seem to make sense. But why do feet get cold? There are probably 2 reasons: The surrounding environment is cold (well durr!) or the blood circulation to the feet is restricted or reduced. Ah, “Hey Presto” we have a winner! I would stake good money on the fact that 95% of skiers who have cold feet have poorly fitted boots! Think what is happening – Your foot is being crushed by the ever so cleaver designers of modern ski boot clamping systems, all it takes is for a blood vessel supplying fresh, WARM, oxygenated blood to the foot to be closed and you will get a cold foot!

So here is rule #1, if you want to have warm feet, get a boot that fits! (This probably means getting it fitted by a specialist – or cheaper but much more mentally challenging, subscribe to Pavelski’s boot fitting class!)

Now once you have a boot that fits you can probably dispense with answer #5 – Well fitting boots don’t hurt. What may hurt is the unaccustomed muscle activity that skiing provides but that’s not something I’m going to get into here.

Ok, so how about answer #8 (I think you alluded to this as a concern in your post). Well in some ways I salute you if your shins hurt when you go skiing. This suggests that you are flexing your ankles and exerting some pressure on your shins – This is a good thing! What shouldn’t happen is that this results in PAIN. I remember “back in the day”, when ski boots started to rise above ankle height (yes and stopped being made of leather) the front (plastic) part of the boot was solid and the point of highest pressure was right on the shin-bone – Ouch!

Nowadays (good) boot design tends to provide a channel down the front of the inside of the boot to allow the shin-bone to move forward whilst the “weight” of the skier is supported by the muscle structure on either side of the shin-bone.

This whole long and possibly boring dissertation comes down to one thing – Interference.

Let me explain, the two, true purposes of a ski boot are to transfer your wishes to your skis and for your skis to talk to you in return.

Now imagine wearing a big pair of industrial ear defenders and a bondage gag (no – you are still in the correct forum, so please be patient!) whilst trying to create an atmosphere of intimacy with your loved one. Your whispered words of endearment would sound very muffled and any reply you received would almost certainly not hear – Not a great start for a good evening!

Applying this to the sock question I believe that the thicker the sock the less your messages of love will be transmitted to your ski. In fact any message you try to send may be actively confused by “inappropriate” socks, not to mention the replies made by the skis – Hence “Interference”.

I have skied for 25+ years in thin “sports” socks and have never had cold or painful feet. For reference I class thin as the thickness that I could use whilst wearing my normal street shoes without feeling that they are tight.

In essence, thick socks will “detune” your ability to ski accurately, will “hide” poorly fitted boots and may well actively participate in causing blood to be restricted to your feet.

When choosing socks start by removing all other issues and then chose the thinnest you can find.

NEVER wear socks with a knitted pattern!

DO NOT choose socks to compensate for the failings of other equipment.

Enjoy skiing with warm, comfortable feet!

Jan