Tele vs parallel.

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Harris
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Re: Tele vs parallel.

Post by Harris » Sun May 21, 2017 1:00 am

lowangle al wrote: I disagree that you can't get enough weight on both skis to engage your edges enough to carve, although I have felt this with stiff double camber skis. I bet you like stiff skis. I may be wrong but don't you want to be weighting and carving both skis in a P turn too?
I'm not talking about edge engagement, I'm talking about bending a ski to its radius limits. Big difference. Telemark you are dividing your weight distribution by two, and therefore you can't bend it like you can doing a solid technique alpine turn that is one ski biased. It is simple science. And you aren't going to truly carve with a butter ski. True carving is just one of the things where tele is very handicapped. You will never do the below skiing using a tele turn, but you can get close using a p-turn on tele gear (this is why you get penalized in a race if your turn doesn't qualify as a true tele):

Or this:

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lowangle al
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Re: Tele vs parallel.

Post by lowangle al » Sun May 21, 2017 3:30 pm

I remember making turns like the guy in the first video with Rossi Hellgates on groomers 15 years ago. They were a lot of fun but hurt my knees. The first twenty years or so of my skiing was all about bending the skis but lately I've been riding my edges without so much flexing of the skis. I have been carrying more speed keeping the skis more in the fall line reverting to tighter radius turns with more ski flexing to control speed.

I'm not saying that T turns can carve as good as P turns, but if the question is if you can flex the skis to their maximum in a T turn I would say that depends on the ski.



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Harris
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Re: Tele vs parallel.

Post by Harris » Mon May 22, 2017 10:59 pm

lowangle al wrote:I remember making turns like the guy in the first video with Rossi Hellgates on groomers 15 years ago.
I don't mean to start a war, but screw it, I'm going to call bullshit on that. Or stun me and post the telemark vid of the century on youtube of yourself cranking those turns out. Do you even know what the turn radius of your Hellgates were? A little hint; the guy in the vid isn't skiing anything greater than 17 meter slalom skis.

You would have to be way better than this guy, and he isn't even coming close:



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lowangle al
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Re: Tele vs parallel.

Post by lowangle al » Tue May 23, 2017 9:11 pm

I don't know what technical aspect of the turn you are specifically talking about, but I was doing short radius carved turns with my body being almost parallel to the snow while still holding an edge. I haven't done turns like that that since then due to fatter skis and only skiing off piste on powder days at the resort.

You are way more technologicly astute about skiing than I am. I don't know what the turn radius was on those Hellgates and I don't know off hand what the turn radius is on any of my skis, and I don't think knowing it would have any affect on my skiing.

I enjoyed that video but I have no idea how my skiing compares to his. What I do know is that nothing that guy did was outside of my skill level.

I think that your idea of a carved turn that you are thinking of and my idea of a carved turn must be different. Most disagreements over simple stuff like this are due to a communication problems.

I don't know much about P turns, but I would think anyone can do a one ski biased turn. When I watch alpine racers on TV they sure seem to have weight on both skis and that is what I'm shooting for when I do P turns. How can you get both skis to flex equally if both are not weighted?



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lowangle al
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Re: Tele vs parallel.

Post by lowangle al » Wed May 24, 2017 5:58 pm

The turns the guy in that last video is carving don't look miserable to me and they are far from lethargic, contrary to your earlier post. That is the point I was making. Can a tele skier keep up with an alpine skier in a race situation? No. But that doesn't mean they don't work.



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Harris
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Re: Tele vs parallel.

Post by Harris » Wed May 24, 2017 10:17 pm

lowangle al wrote: I don't know much about P turns, but I would think anyone can do a one ski biased turn. When I watch alpine racers on TV they sure seem to have weight on both skis and that is what I'm shooting for when I do P turns. How can you get both skis to flex equally if both are not weighted?
A good p-turn is very much a single ski turn, it only appears to be a 2 ski turn because the inside ski is being used to stabilize, but the weight is ideally exclusively on the downhill ski in order to get it to bow to its radius limit. That is how they (all skis) are designed to work.



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iBjorn
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Re: Tele vs parallel.

Post by iBjorn » Thu May 25, 2017 3:05 am

Harris wrote: A good p-turn is very much a single ski turn, it only appears to be a 2 ski turn because the inside ski is being used to stabilize, but the weight is ideally exclusively on the downhill ski in order to get it to bow to its radius limit. That is how they (all skis) are designed to work.
That sounds more like a description on how we did ski in the 80's alpine racing. Today both skis are usually engaged in the carving turn, however they are weighted different in different parts of the turn.



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lowangle al
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Re: Tele vs parallel.

Post by lowangle al » Thu May 25, 2017 9:56 am

Thanks Bjorn.

Harris I think are differences are in how we think of a carved turn. You think the ski must be bowed to the limit for a good carved turn, this may be important for racing but is not what I am concerned with.



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Harris
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Re: Tele vs parallel.

Post by Harris » Thu May 25, 2017 8:36 pm

I think you may have failed to fully read my earlier posts that you were responding to because I distinctly described what I consider a carved turn over an edged turn: i.e. looking back and seeing a solid, no-skid arc left in the snow between transitions. As to Bjron's comment, my nephew races, and it my understanding that alpine race coaches are still teaching kids to ride the outside ski through the turn. A big difference today though is that with modern skis turn initiation and radius is achieved much easier, and because of this they aren't teaching kids to drive the heals to flex the tails on turn exit like old skis used to require. Anyone who was a young racer fan of Max Julian and Phil Mahre knows what I'm referring to. It was legend that Phil Mahre's so drove his heels that his custom K2 710 and 810 FO's were so tail stiff most mortals couldn't ski them. But back to today's coaching, nor are they emphasizing the wide-stance A-frame and extreme knee/hip angulation needed to get the weight on and over the edge all while achieving lean, but instead promote more committed lean angle and trusting the downhill ski edge to hold. One of the reasons FIS rules changed GS sidecuts to a straighter cut was because big sidecut GS skis carved so well they were putting too much force on knees and destroying them prematurely. But back to what I was originally getting at and stated, you CAN carve sick alpine turns on tele gear that you cannot achieve in tele mode, and it is very fun, especially making GS radius turns, and because of that I was promoting the idea guys should learn them. You can however turn as tight on tele, no argument there, in fact when I tele a run, any run, I only tele tight radius turns (slalom or tighter), but otherwise these days almost exclusively alpine larger radius GS turns (GS tele turns hurt my 48 year old knees now). But to tele slalom equivalent tight turns it by nature of the two ski turn that it happens with a bit more side slide at initiation to get the same radius. As for skis, a former K2 rep I know and a Steamboat Telemark Team coach I grew up with both agree that most tele racers today are using exclusively Alpine GS or transition race skis. Tele ski development, which is becoming non-existent today, has for many years been almost exclusively focused on powder/backcountry use. In my storage somewhere I own an old pair of K2 Poisons, which are possibly one of the last skis developed for tele racing, and compared to today's alpine race skis they worked like shit. Next to them are some serious sidecut old Atomic TMs from the early days of heavily side-cut skis. Personally, today I think alpine skis like the K2 Pinnacle 95 are far better all-mountain tele skis than anything the industry produces with a TM label on it. And for groom only, or hard pack days I advocate an alpine race ski; my preference a transitional race ski (I use a second-hand pair of Volkl World Cup SGs, which are a 17 meter mid between slalom and GS). I see guys out trying to "carve" groomers on their backcountry tele skis, and I can't help to think that they don't know just how badly they are handicapping themselves, trying to stay true to a pointless granola street-cred.



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iBjorn
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Re: Tele vs parallel.

Post by iBjorn » Fri May 26, 2017 3:06 am

Harris, I dont think we have failed to read your post - there is just different opinions on what a carved turn is. It can be a single ski turn, but it is usually more efficient using two legs/skis instead of one. I cant help it, but what you are describing reminds of how we skied in alpine racing in the 80's - you are also refering to some of the greatest skiers from that time as examples of "carving" technique.

Nonetheless, I use a lot of the 80's alpine technique to make carving p-turns on harder snow with tele gear - but that does not rule out that I cant make perfect carving turns in a telemark stance - or use p-turns with more equally weighted legs/skis to make carving turns when the snow is softer.

The beauty of telemark is that we can mix it all, and use whatever technique that is most fun for the situation and conditions - and that I think we fully agree on.



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