Weigh In

[Manney]

Yep. Agree with all that. Especially the lack of athleticism across the market. Lots of occasional skiers, short distances, low angles, fetichism, gear obsession, etc.

What is "fetichism" (feti: plural of fetus; chism: division; ...?) , and what are the rest of the skier groups besides what you listed?

Unnatural attention to esoteric things. Obsessive prattle.

“rest of the skier groups”? I didn’t use that term…

[TallGrass]

Return to XCD
Returning to the sport after many years. Work, location (Munising), and crazy weather might allow me to get out five or six times a season (1-2 hours a sesh).

Will this be enough to build or maintain a high skill level? Would a big quiver help me develop rapidly as a skier? Maybe four or five new/used skis?

Yep. Agree with all that. Especially the lack of athleticism across the market. Lots of occasional skiers, short distances, low angles, fetichism, gear obsession, etc.

[Manney]

Returning to XCD. Not returning to skiing. Not interested in riding chairs for XCD. Going to the BC *between* DH and XC.

Xc skied 300 miles this year.

[bauerb]

I can understand the importance of BMI in the beef cattle business, but I don't see it being important to skiers.

[Manney]

I can understand the importance of BMI in the beef cattle business, but I don't see it being important to skiers.

Only important if you can’t find ski, break skis due to weight, or start riding the chairs because it’s getting too hard to climb the hill. I can find posts on all three of these things in the past month. All affect skiing. Must be important, or people wouldn’t have posted them.

[TallGrass]

I can understand the importance of BMI in the beef cattle business, but I don't see it being important to skiers.

Yeah, it's kind of like judging intelligence based off one math test. Sometimes it correlates, possibly more often than not.

Type I and II Errors:
Yet as it could mislabel a high BMI (lo-fat hi-muscle) person as 'overweight-obese' (Type II Error, false negative, false "unhealthy"), I wonder what a Type II for "underweight" BMI, and Type I (false positive, false "healthy") for "normal" BMI, just to round out the possible error categories. Perhaps a "normal BMI" error would be for "skinny-fat"?


Methodology Mental Exercise:
Think of this not only for BMI screening, but also for cancer screening, or anything else "unhealthy" a doctor would want to bring up with their patient.

A system that only errors by "flagging" healthy people is fine as a quick screening tool if it is followed up with a more detailed analysis that would catch the error and correct an initial "unhealthy" classification as "healthy", such as a body fat % test (electrical pads, skin pinch, water tank, etc.). I.e. it catches all the "unhealthy" and some "healthy." Yeah, annoying for "healthy" to have to jump a second 'hoop,' "we think it's a tumor, so are going to have a second look."

By contrast, if a system only errors by "failing to flag" those it should, it is worse because while it never puts a "healthy" in the "unhealthy" group, it would let "unhealthy" pass a screening as "healthy." The person would continue along thinking they were good when in fact they are not and their health would continue to degrade, "test show that you have no tumors" when the patient actually does.

Back to BMI:
It clearly can make the former error. If it can also make the latter error (classify an "unhealthy" as 'ok') with no steps in place to catch that error, then it has serious issues as a screening tool. The best it could possibly be at that point is merely one of many in a battery of required tests where somehow it could catch an error in another test just as other tests could catch an error with it in a cross-checking fashion.

[mca80]

Obviously y'all don't oay attention to cultural shifts, which render this whole debate offensive and opressive. Fatness is now both beautiful and healthy, doncha know?

[bauerb]

what's even more troubling than BMI is the rise of HBAR in skiing. HBAR = Human Body Arm Ratio that calculates arm length in proportion to height. I understand that to combat excessively long skate ski poles, the FIS is looking to abandon the simple rule of pole height as a proportion of skier height, and will instead shift to HBAR measurement instead. what's troubling about HBAR restrictions is that it can favor shorter skiers with long arms, while penalizing taller skiers with short arms. BMI is nothing compared to this potential mess.

[mca80]

Short Arms Matter.

[bauerb]

stumbled across this video by accident. I didn't watch it. no need to.