Awesome lecture, and a little golden nugget at the end about which part of the pivoted ski skidding into the mogul does what - tip to wash tail out, centre to stop, tail to create a pinballing effect, wow!
Brilliant. The level of detail forced myself to really think about what I’m doing rather than just chasing an adrenaline rush each time I’m on the mountain
Nice commentary on skidding vs edging and balance. It has me thinking about correcting over skidding in a skiers short turns with balance - cool! Thanks Tom!
Yes but, you weren't taught How to position your upper body and make adjustments in it to move from skidding to edging. Not the correct way anyway. You don't force it, you let it. You don't recreate what it looks like, you do what will make it look like that.
It was interesting to learn that jamming my shins into the fronts of my boots resulted in more weight felt on my heels. But wouldn't the leverage from bending the boot boot put greater pressure on the front of the skis, regardless of where it's felt on the foot?
Its all about control and feeling. Aplying pressure just on the front of the boot is hard to get how much of actual pressure is applyed its more like a guess thing. Its way more efective to have feeling in your foot, also pressure applyed just from the boot its delayed, pressure from your foot has way quicker reponce. Ith has to be combined shin to front of the boot ant your foot.
Where you feel "Pressure" in your foot is way less important than where your upper body positioning is and the results in the radius of the turn. Contrary to everyone's beliefs, skiing and turning originate in this order. The rotation of your eyes, hands, chest, (weight change from your downhill to uphill foot), pelvis, thighs and knees, down the hill. Notice I said nothing about knee tipping or ankle rolling. Those are the results or symptums of what I described. You don't teach the end results, you teach how to get there. if you do, you will have no speed control because all your ski will do is change direction, they won't bend and turn. 25:50 What you see here, he doesn't teach you. He only teaches you from your knees down. That's like trying to teach you how to turn a car by telling you about the steering mechanism instead of what the car needs from you, rotate the steering wheel.
28:06 From this traverse across the slope, this is what you should think about and do. 1. Look, down the hill to where you want to make the next turn. 2. Rotate your upper body and hands to face slightly down the hill and plant your left pole down the hill. 3. Take your weight completely off your downhill left foot and balance on your right foot. Your momentum across the slope, gravity pulling you down the hill and the design of the ski will create a new leg angle and allow the right ski to make the next turn. 29:08 Now watch him do it here.
@@deanl5832 Did you just look at the video of me "Demonstrating how little you have to move your body to allow your skis to make the turns for you" or did you READ and Comprehend what I wrote? All Tom and his playmates do is show you what skiing looks and feels like and that is NOT how you TEACH people how to understand what skiing is and what you have to do to allow your skis to make turns. In one of my comments here I said DEBATE ME. You didn't do that! All you did is say, "My heroes are better than you. You stop it or I'll tell my mommy!" You should have said it that way. It would have better described how you understood what he said in this lecture. If you even listened to his presentation, you would have noticed he has no confidence in what he says. And, if you did understand him and you think he is a great teacher, in your own words, try teaching me how to position my body and change my weight to allow my skis to make turns. I Dare you!
@deanl5832 I didn't learn one thing about skiing from what you said. That makes you a hero worshipping follower, not a thinker and surely not a teacher. Ignorance is bliss, and all you Tom followers are very blissful.
29:24 The Fred Flintstone way to Make your skis change direction. You can do this, or you can just position your pelvis more into the turn to increase the leg angle and the skis will turn more.
26:23 Notice the line from the arch of his left foot through his knee to his hip joint. There is No tipping of the knees or rolling of the ankle. His upper body and pelvis position in relation to the direction of his skis is what is creating an entire leg angle change which is what puts the skis on edge. it is the rotation of his entire upper body down the fall line that rotates the knee which gives the illusion that the knee is bending sideways. If you concentrate on the ankle and knee to make turns, your skis will Only change direction, they won't turn and control your speed. Straight down and across the hill to the right, straight down and across the hill to the left. 26:50 With concentration on Tipping, notice how his weight has transferred to his inside ski which is digging in and turning more than his outside ski, his ski lock onto too much edge, they jet out from under him, he sits back, and the skis go straight and stop turning. So, he has to go into the next turn to catch himself. That's what happens to You on every turn until you are going so fast you have to push your outside ski away from you, rotate your upper body into the slope in a panic stop which usually makes you spin around backwards. You don't blame him; you blame yourself and that just isn't right.
31:30 What you feel in your feet should not be a teaching method. How you position your body to make a technically correct turn is all you need. I have never once in 54 years, told a student to think about their heel. Does telling you what your tires experience in a turn matter or just how to rotate the steering wheel? The reason you feel pressure on your heel is because there is a straight line from your leg bones to your heel. To feel pressure on the ball of your foot, you would have to manipulate your foot dramatically to bend it down in a boot that is clamping your foot in place. You teach how to ski, not describe what it looks and feels like.
Interesting comments. My husband of 34 years is an expert skier, ski race trained as well as freestyle, I am not. He doesn't know how to teach but has always told me he feels it in his feet, his feet are tired at the end of the day from gripping foot to foot etc. He also feels it in the pelvic girdle area and knows to call it a day when he uses more hip movement than he should. I couldn't understand what he was talking about until I started some land training from watching some of Tom's videos. Stand on one foot at home and you will notice that you are a lot more stable and can stand one footed longer as you concentrate on the foot contacting the ground, now do it on a wobble board. On my mountain bike I absolutely put pressure on my pedals during the descent whether one foot in banked turns or both on straight runs as I am not in the saddle and don't load the handlebars with extra weight. I've made huge improvements in both sports when I started focusing on my feet. Thanks for all your conversations on this video, I got me to think about what exactly it was that pushed me to the next level in my sports, feet.
@@debbielombard5132 Hi Debbie, Let's start with this. If his feet are hurting at the end of the day, either his boots don't fit right, or he is doing something with his feet that is making them cramp. My feet never hurt no matter what type of skiing I do. I just spent 5 hours straight carving turns at Okemo and the last thing that hurts are my feet. I felt plenty of pressure under the arch of my foot but not pain. I don't understand the pelvic girdle pain. Again, I never have pain in that area and never have. The only place I feel pain is when the front of my thighs starts to cramp up after a long hard run. At this point I will tell you that ski teaching and race teaching is done completely wrong. Since I have never skied the way that it is taught, I never feel those pains. Tom Gellie has no idea how to teach skiing or even land training. If you just listen to him speak, there is no confidence coming from him. His one-foot analogy and on a wobble board have absolutely nothing to do with skiing. Balancing on skis has nothing to do with and cannot be compared to balancing in your living room. Try balancing on a bicycle that isn't moving. What you do pedaling a bike has nothing to do with skiing other than, you can't pedal a bike unless you completely change your weight from one pedal to the other very quickly. What you feel in your feet is not the starting place, it is the end result. Where you feel pressure in your feet is also dependent on what you do with your body. When I make a parallel or carved turn, I only feel things happening with my feet After I have done things with my upper body and my weight and balance change from one foot to the other. In ski teaching methods, just about every organization focuses on what skiing looks and feels like, not on what you have to do with your upper body to allow the skis to make turns as designed. I wouldn't be suppressed at all that skiers feel a lot of pain from skiing the way they have been taught. Read all my comments on my video. Everything you need from beginner to racer is there. The Right way!
@@JB91710 Hello, thanks for the reply. I didn't say he felt pain, I said he and now we feel tired in those areas. Like any sport that uses muscles specific to the sport but not to daily life or general fitness routines you will feel more tired in some areas. I've skied for years using the "traditional" method of skiing that you are referring to, this includes two Heli-ski trips. When I say my husband is an expert skier, I'm not exaggerating, I just can't learn from my spouse. I was looking to increase my skills especially for all mountain skiing to feel more confidence in extreme conditions, that's how I found Tom's videos. Using these new methods has changed my skiing considerably and I'm really happy with how much fun it is. We skied yesterday in wet heavy non groomed snow, concentrating on my feet and pelvis-core, I lost my fluidity every time I lost focus on those two areas. I could quickly get my balance back without stopping by refocusing my intentions. Last Friday we skied perfectly groomed snow on piste: you are correct the skis do the work when you topple over them, so much fun! That was a long skiing day, I could have done that from dawn to dusk, mostly short turns with some big GS turns added in for fun when appropriate. The skis do all of the heavy lifting in those conditions. You are also correct about your hands; I have a lazy right hand while skiing, it's magnified off piste, and did a lot of work yesterday to try to fix this problem and make it effortless. I'll take all your suggestions to the hill today and see what I feel. As a side note I keep my upper body weight forward not from the shoulders or upper body, but from my pelvis and lower core. As a woman my center of gravity is different from men, and this keeps me from getting too "hippy" or in "the back seat". Thanks again, have a great day.
3:15 No he isn't learning any of those things. All he has been taught is how to make the skis change directing by forcing them and how to angle JUST his leg to Force a ski onto an edge. I can see Gellie's teaching method in the results of his son. The Fred Flintstone way of skiing. Force it to turn instead of letting them perform as designed. 3:40 The boy is concentrating on Just his foot and lower leg, not on the positioning of his upper body which will allow him to BALANCE on that one turning ski in order to allow the ski to make the turn for him and allow it to Complete the turn to control speed. Making turns the Gellie way or just about any ski instructor's way, will not help you on steep trails or at speed. You don't force a ski, you let a ski do what it was designed to do. 4:05 Now watch this stop. This proves that he has Not been taught how to make a proper stop or he would have. He forced his left foot to change direction by twisting his leg and foot and pushing it away with his hip which created a perpendicular angle to the slope to flatten the ski instead of edge it and also caused his right foot to stay pointed straight down the hill with his upper body weight over that ski instead of his left ski. You don't HAVE to steer or force a ski!!! People who do and Teach that are the ones who don't know how a ski is supposed to work. 8:12 Ski is Not this complicated. Do you need to know and understand how your car makes a turn beyond rotating the steering wheel? Tails like this are not going to make you a better skier, they are just going to confuse you which makes you feel you need more of these lectures! Think about that. "The more complicated a person makes his subject sound, the less he knows about it." It's called, Deflection! 26:08 You know how Gellie and all ski instructors talk about tipping your knees and rolling your ankles over? Does it look like he is doing that in this turn? No, he isn't. 25:50 He has positioned his entire upper body, from his head down to his pelvis, back in the fall line or straight down the hill while his skis are still trying to cross the slope. That is creating the new LEG angle and rotating his knees that is putting his skis on edge. It is physically impossible to roll your ankles over especially in ski boots. You don't tip your knees to the side; your hip joint and knee ROTATE while your upper body is trying to go down the hill while your skis are still crossing it. Stand up now and try it. You are completing a turn to the left on your right foot. Rotate your upper body to go to your right and watch your body twist right down to your knees. Take your weight off your right foot and you will fall to your right. Notice the left leg angle change. Combined with the twisting of your knees, your weight will be loaded on the inside edge of the tip of your left foot and that right turn will be made by the ski, not by you. The LAST thing that happens in a turn is your skis rolling over and your skis turning, not the first!!! You think about skiing down a hill with your hands and chest, not your feet. I'm not going through this entire lecture; I'm going to get to the point. All you need is to become confident balancing on one ski at a time while positioning your body to allow your skis to make turns and make minor adjustments during the turn to keep your track and speed where you want it. Think of standing on the pedals of a bicycle and pedaling. Point the front tire down the hill and get off the downhill pedal. To slow down, press the brake pedal which is the tongue of the boots and rotate your knees into the slope. That bends the tips more and the tails slide around to slow you down. THAT"S IT! That's all you need to know about skiing whether you are a student or ski instructor! Understanding skiing is not hard! In today's teaching climate, learning is!
When you read all my comments here, DEBATE ME, tell me where and how I am wrong, not That I am wrong. My 54 years of teaching and especially my 51 years of Thinking, says I am most likely right. Here is one example of how I am right. With the creation of shaped skis, snowplow and stem turns should have been completely removed from ski teaching. They have not. They are still in mainstream ski teaching worldwide.
