Learning to turn with Gammes

[tkarhu]

By the way, an anecdotal video.



The kayaker steers his boat with stern rudders mainly. Stern rudder is a typical kayak turning maneuver, when you want to slow down speed.

EDIT: Also, when the kayaker is tilting his boat, he is leaning and not edging his boat. When leaning a kayak, you tilt it to same direction as when you edge a ski. When edging a kayak, you tilt it to its opposite side.

I chose this snow kayaking video because the kayaker has a paddling technique that does not destroy your shoulders. Some other snow kayaking videos make my shoulders hurt already, when watching.

I like the philosophical closing words of the video, too:

The only constants that we really have: the water; gravity; our search for freedom; and our instinct to return to the sea.

May we add freedom to telehiro's list of skiing goals? May freedom even be a shared value across all disciplines of free heel skiing? Further, I guess many alpine skiers share the goal, too. I can feel even the goal of unity in the above words.

When skiing Gammes, I have the freedom of moving fast across flats. We have plenty of those here in Finland between our hills, cliffs and fjells.

[Sidney Dunkin]

So Parker’s instructions are still from the era of leather boots. The subtitle of his book was "The Secrets of Telemark and Parallel Techniques", so Parker does have alpine influences still. By1988 the leather boots had got somewhat sturdier, but skis were still skinnies.

Yes- and despite all of the drama that a stride-initiated telemark turn is not legit-
Parker clearly indicates a striding telemark turn in his most excellent instructional book. (One of many free-heel turning techniques.)

I think Parker said to stride with your feet, not your hands. Once you get moving downhill, pole alpine style.

[tkarhu]

I think Parker said to stride with your feet, not your hands. Once you get moving downhill, pole alpine style.

Agree. Drill #3 of first post is quite directly from Parker's book (citation below).

According to Paul Parker, telemark originated from a classic cross-country stride. [...] Parker writes that in a telemark turn, you stride with your feet only. For this part, a telemark stride is different from XC skiing and walking strides. You don't swing your arms, but keep them relaxed in front of you.

[CIMA]

By the way, an anecdotal video.

Very interesting!
It appears to be luge sledding taking place in an open field.
That would be fun.

The kayaker steers his boat with stern rudders mainly. Stern rudder is a typical kayak turning maneuver, when you want to slow down speed.

EDIT: Also, when the kayaker is tilting his boat, he is leaning and not edging his boat. When leaning a kayak, you tilt it to same direction as when you edge a ski. When edging a kayak, you tilt it to its opposite side.

Do you tilt the kayak to which side, up-steam or down-stream?

May we add freedom to telehiro's list of skiing goals? May freedom even be a shared value across all disciplines of free heel skiing? Further, I guess many alpine skiers share the goal, too. I can feel even the goal of unity in the above words.

This reminds me of John Lennon's song "Imagine".
In the 1970s, telemark skiing was developed in Colorado and "freedom" was the buzzword among all the founders. This skiing style matched with the political movements demonstrated by young people in developed countries at that time. However, it seems that telemark skiers have gone their separate ways as time has passed. As skiing styles may somewhat reflect the lifestyles and beliefs of the skiers, I wonder if it is possible for us to mix up all the styles and find a middle ground.

[tkarhu]

The kayaker steers his boat with stern rudders mainly. Stern rudder is a typical kayak turning maneuver, when you want to slow down speed.

EDIT: Also, when the kayaker is tilting his boat, he is leaning and not edging his boat. When leaning a kayak, you tilt it to same direction as when you edge a ski. When edging a kayak, you tilt it to its opposite side.

Do you tilt the kayak to which side, up-steam or down-stream?

That turn with leaning is called low brace turn.
https://www.bestcoastoutfitters.com/blo ... -lean-turn

In the turn, you tilt your kayak to the side, where you have planted your paddle. That is the side, where you want to turn.

In terms of tele, the side is uphill or inner ski. So in whitewater kayaking, it would be upstream I guess.

[CIMA]

That turn with leaning is called low brace turn.
https://www.bestcoastoutfitters.com/blo ... -lean-turn

The second picture looks very similar to the b-turn of tele...

[tkarhu]

An observation from another discussion (@EYT), about how telehiro uses weighting. How simple can it be!

Telehiro’s unweighting seems to be based on a tall stance. When skiing b-tele turns, he is tallest in a side slip, ie. when skidding. He initiates a turn by unweighting, rapidly bending his ankles and knees. See video below.



Having just watched telehiro do that, a "drop your knee" style, up and down unweighted tele turn started to look overly complicated. It seems tricky to unweight from a posture, where you have just dropped your weight to a stance that needs some mobility.



Bending your ankles and knees to pivot your skis unweighted over fall line, that should be helpful with any gear and even any type of turn. Yet I guess you need good timing for that because a free fall created by bending your legs will be short.

[CIMA]

@tkarhu
Your observations seem correct.
The two videos effectively demonstrate the height difference of two skiers at a pivot, highlighting a key contrast between a-tele and b-tele. However, to further improve your technique, it's beneficial to focus on how your posture affects the allocation of foot pressure inside your boots, followed by the engagement and disengagement of your edges. It might be challenging to reproduce those turns with Gammes and soft boots and feel the differences, though.

[tkarhu]

@CIMA Thanks. Yes the side slipping drill is difficult on stiff double cambers, but the idea of unweighting applies to all skis, I believe. Maybe we should have another thread for b-tele drills because Gammes are not the best skis for practicing that. I have had my first b-tele attempts with Åsnes V1 and FTX skis that have 30-35 mm sidecut and maybe 1.5 cambers.

I have made up a walking drill exercise of the following telehiro video. I do several such edged swipes in a narrow kitchen where I have something to lean to on my both sides.



I also do the basically same swipe walking as above on a balance board. You compared telehiro’s B-tele to movements on a balance board (citation below), that is how I came up with the drill.

Telehiro refers to as "THE B-tele." You may see he is shuffling the legs as if on a twisting board. In reality, he repeats the following three steps: fix the left leg and sweep the right leg, return to neutral, fix the right leg and sweep the left leg

I do the "balance board walking" both with and without edging. Currently my main focus there is to expand my rear leg, and to compress my neutral stance.

More into skiing, my main effort at this stage is to make my mountain side leg expansion brake work. To get there, I think I need to relearn my unbalancing so that I expand into a neutral posture with slightly bent knees, so that I can then somewhat expand my rear leg slightly from the position, when I want to brake.



Maybe surprisingly, the simple "bend your knees" drill (video) gives you a "free falling", unweighted feeling, when you pay attention to pressure sensations on your foot soles.

The edged walking exercises described above add some "little toe / big toe" pressuring feel to the "bend your knees" drill. They kind of combine several aspects of a b-tele turn without skis on already. Yet I am just a beginner, so I still need to get the feels and movements right.

[Stephen]

.

The above video finally brought the “B-Tele” thing into focus for me. I got it before, which took a while, but his demonstration here really crystallized it for me, especially the part starting around 0:40.