[Pat-n-the-hat]

B, you are not bad for a second year telemarker. You are doing a lot of things right. One thing that needs work, though, is your stance. Head down to some mellow terrain and work on closing up your stance. Tuck that back knee in right behind your front knee, and move your hips back over the rear ski. Once you have done that I want you to also think about pulling your front ski back under you. Make sure your shin is pressuring the tongue of your lead-ski boot.

A tight stance is a powerful stance, and it will be an important key to your advancement. Keep up the good work, you are doing great.

[Kokotele]

I agree with Pat. The first thing I noticed was that your stance could be tightened up (aka "less poodle"). A compact stance combined with a pelvit tilt to the front (push your hips forward) creates lots of weight on the rear ski.

Looking really great though, I wished I looked as good during my second year! (I was on skinny skis and leathers...)

[Grant]

Pat's tip on tightening your stance is right-on. However, I don't recommend tucking your trailing knee behind your downhill knee (sort of an old-school approach when skis were skinny) other than to get a sense of how 'tight' your stance could be.

To get your uphill ski on edge, bow your uphill (trailing) knee outward until you feel pressure on your little toe - the cowboy stance. You can over-emphasize this while you are learning. I've heard people explain that when you are properly on edge you should feel pressure on your big toe on the downhill ski and on your pinkie toe on your uphill ski.

Pat's point of pressuring the tongue of the downhill boot is great as well. Don't drive from the heal of your front foot.

Try this - at the bottom (or any flat area) put your poles out to stabilize yourself. Now get in a tele stance and rock over onto your edges. Feel the pressure on the big toe/little toe? That's how it should feel when carving a turn.

Good luck and keep at it. Hope this helps.
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[Mick]

Agree with all of the above, get your knees closer together. A powerful, modern tele stance will have your knees almost parallel to each other. That's the way to take full advantage of big boots and shaped skis.

[granpa]

It's difficult to know what sort of input you're looking for if we don't know what your goals are. You've got a great "basic" tele that will get you down a lot of runs.

Good: Eyes and head looking down hill, arms in front, hips rotated downhill, good edge control, comfortable with speed, very smooth turn transitions.

I think the previous feedback is correct but I see a different "cause" for the "poodling". Big toe, little toe is a good mantra but other than having not enough weight on your back ski, it appears to be angled correctly, otherwise you'd be crossing you're skis all the time.

I tend to harp on this a lot but... I think its the way you initiate you're turn. Intermediates tend to "bring the back leg forward" to initiate the turn. This tends to overweight the front ski, causing less weight to be on the back ski resulting in poodling, and I'll bet you have a hard time in the bumps with this technique.

You want to start thinking about bringing your lead ski backwards, almost as much as you bring the back ski forwards. This will help center your weight and get more weight on the back ski, helping to reduce poodling. Start looking at the videos and watch how the better skiers do this. The Flying Ryan vid is a good example of this technique (and others) even though it is rather "athletic". The key is to keep the weight centered over both skis. You might also think about dropping straight down in you're up/down motion rather than stepping forward.

You're lookin good ...I'm afraid you just have to do a lot more "suffering" [sarcasm] and practice more
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[batesy]

Good tips. Add some good body angulation (the "C shape") to the mix and you are rocking and rolling (and carving the edges better).

Think about your shoulders - always aim to have them parallel to the slope as you traverse it. Generally, the steeper the slope the greater the "C" needs to be.

Adam

[dobish]

either use the poles or get rid of them. out of all of the turns, you only did one pole plant. That pole plant (if done properly) will help you direct your body into the correct position to initiate your next turn. if you punch with your poles and really point them down hill before your turn, it will help you make that C shape that is so important to getting centered balance and a stronger carve. if you just let your arms go whilly nilly your center of gravity is not directed to where it should be. Not bad for year 2! keep it up!
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[Jon Sulzer]

"Knee touches" would help Skier B get more angulation.

In this exercise the skier touches his right knee with his right hand while turning to the left, and his left hand to left knee while turning to the right.

It's almost impossible to do this exercise without breaking at the waist and angulating out over your skis.

[dana]

A lot of focused commentary on the fore-aft spread, but in addition to the spread, it always seems predominantly front-ski loaded in all phases of the turn, with the rear ski mostly just along for the ride. You're carving well and early on the lead ski, but hardly at all on the rear ski for the first half of the turn. You need to flip that around: Try initiating the edge change on the new rear-ski first, pressure and edge it MORE than the lead ski, evening up the fore-aft balance toward the end. When you do that it may feel like you have 75% of your weight on the rear ski, but trust me, it's still less than 50%.

Other aspects of those turns:

Pole plants are tentative and late (when they occur at all), partially a result of the fact that you're allowing your shoulders to follow the ski direction rather than facing squarely down the hill. Try swinging that pole ahead wrist-wise (no big arm movements), and actually engaging the snow a bit (don't stab the mountain, just let it plant naturally.)

Leaning-in: You're grabbing more edge angle by leaning rather than sucking up bending sideways at the waist, which makes for slower and less-balanced transtions (not to mention less powerful edging overall.) You're even leading the turn by diving/nodding into it a bit with your head & upper body. Instead, try to intiate the turn while standing tall in the transition by ankle roll, then suck that rib down to your pelvis at the apex of the turn to grab more edge angle, keepping your upper body upright. It'll grip & rip that way without expending much energy, 'cuz with the extra 10-15 degrees of edge angle the ski does all of the turning for you.

Finally, on that lead-ski edging, it looks as if you're tail- weighted which is responsible for some of that skidding. (It's hard to see the leg- position from the camera angle on the first few turns, but the skid is apparent.) Some of this will go away when you tighten up your fore-aft seperation, but that won't fix it alone. You need to keep that lead-ski knee out over the toe to stay on the ski's sweet spot, and you're mostly straight-up from the heel. Think about feeling on the bottoms of your feet- any time you feel weight on your heel, suck the ski back under you until you feel more pressure on the ball of the foot. It won't be always possible to keep the ball of the foot pressured through every phase of the turn, but any time it's heel-weighted the ski is going to straighten and skid instead of carving a nice round turn for you. If you can keep dancin' on the balls of both feet it's possble to lay down perfect clean railroad tracks in your wake, which is fun, fast , and powerful.

[pow]

Good turns! Keep up the good work. Also, good comments above with lots of good advice.

As many have mentioned the stance could be tightened up. You can work on this even when not skiing. I used to practice around the house, in the office, etc. Keys are to keep your front foot from getting in front of your kee----when you are in your stance and look down your knee should block the view of your foot. In your ski boots your shin should be pressed against the tongue of the boot. Currently your foot is in front of your knee so that you would feel pressure on the back of your boot cuff, not on the tongue. Bend the knee and pull the foot back underneath your knee and body.

The back foot is also trailing too far behind you (as mentioned above), making it hard to get weight on the back ski. The ball of the back foot should be pushed into the snow as if you are putting out a cigarette with that foot, and the ball of the foot should be directly under your butt. Check your stance in a full length mirror at home.

On snow, one of the best drills for getting weight on the back foot and getting into a proper stance is to do wheelies----lift up your front foot and ski while in a tele stance and tap them on the snow a few times, then change leads and repeat. Do this while traversing a gentle slope. I do this everyday when I start skiing to make sure I am weighting my back foot properly. If your back foot is not right under your butt you won't be able to balance on that back foot to lift your front ski off the snow.

Like Dana says the weight should feel like it is 75% on the back foot but in reality won't be 50-50.

After improving your stance a bit you could work on the upper body. A good drill there is to ski without poles and imagine you are carrying a lunch tray with soup on it. Try to keep the tray facing straight down the hill and keep it level so that you don't spill the soup.

Keep up the good work.

[dana]

[MikeNick]

[pow]