Telehiro and B-Tele Discussion

[Montana St Alum]

@Montana St Alum i would call that “A” Tele well done. Your transitions take advantage of unweighting.
If it is “B” Tele, I’ve been doing it for quite some time.

Honestly, I don't know. I was thinking I might have gotten in 3 "B" turns at 1:41, but maybe not. I do remember that in those 3 turns, I wasn't up/down weighting much.

[Montana St Alum]

Shows up now.

Probably not worth the wait! But it shows some stem christy turns for sure.

Looks like a good variety of turns to my untrained eye. Why did it look like there was a lot of skidding at about the 2:30 mark or thereabouts (red outfit instead of green)?

I just needed to control my speed. This section was pretty steep and hard pack. I had mentioned in an earlier post my skepticism at the need to practice a side slip. Maybe it's good to practice after all.

[mca80]

Probably not worth the wait! But it shows some stem christy turns for sure.

Looks like a good variety of turns to my untrained eye. Why did it look like there was a lot of skidding at about the 2:30 mark or thereabouts (red outfit instead of green)?

I just needed to control my speed. This section was pretty steep and hard pack. I had mentioned in an earlier post my skepticism at the need to practice a side slip. Maybe it's good to practice after all.

That's what I figured. Looks too steep for me at this stage of my learning freeheel techniques.

P.s. your skiing looks good. My limited understanding sees it as A tele though, but I may be missing something.

[tkarhu]

Today I will try out with rising to my mountain side ball of foot, when starting the ski slash / pelvis sweep. Let's see how that works.

Here come the results from yesterday's down-unweighting experiment… Of creating space / height to fall before pivoting.

Creating the extra height helped with down-unweighting pivots, but I had to do it in another way. Rising to a ball-of-foot felt unnecessary and insecure on skis. It was more practical to straighten my legs there.

[Capercaillie]

So I was way off, stem involves other ski. So what do you call these where Stenmark lifts the inside ski stepping in order to carve the other ski?

I would call it "lifting the inside leg too much." Sometimes Stenmark seems to do a bit of a skate. Lito Tejada-Flores emphasizes unweighting the inside leg as part of what he calls "inside leg action," and it is a big part of his book Breakthrough on Skis and parts 1 and 3 of his ski instruction videos: https://www.breakthroughonskis.com/ski-videos.html

As bbsense points out, unweighting the inside leg (not stemming!!) is the way to make parallel turns on long skis.

Here is a US military ski instruction video from 1941 that explains stem turns well:



The exaggerated check the demonstration skiers do to start the turn really emphasizes weighting the new inside ski. There are also the upper body contortions, and the vague hand-waving that somehow the "Stemm Christiana" will lead to linked parallel turns. The video is probably an accurate overview of what was considered modern ski technique in the 1930s.

Of course, in the action skiing sequence in the last 2/3rds of the clip, the skiers are clearly lifting their inside skis to make turns and not twisting their shoulders that much. People naturally figured out how to ski despite the really bad and misleading teaching methods of the era. The reason stem christies stopped being taught as part of a parallel skiing progression is not because of "modern skis," it's because it was always a bad teaching methodology (something that Georges Joubert points out in Teach Yourself To Ski in 1970: "Throughout the history of ski instruction, there have always been impassioned partisans of teaching either through the use of a stem, or directly through a parallel stance" and he is clearly for the latter). But that does not mean stem turns by themselves are bad or "outdated."

[Lhartley]

Can someone simplify A and B turn Tele? I see all this content, and I really want to be interested.

[fisheater]

When I last taught skiing in a PSIA certified ski school in 2002, the Stem Christie was most certainly part of the progession. Quite frankly if you have a better way of progressing into parallel turns by all means you should do it. However the stem turn is not outdated.

[tkarhu]

Can someone simplify A and B turn Tele? I see all this content, and I really want to be interested.

Read CIMA's earlier posts in this thread, and watch his reference videos and photos.

His definition of A tele and B tele is on page 1. On page 5, there is a long post with the visual references.

[Lhartley]

Thank you that helped, I should have read the 70 pages on all 3 forums. Along with a comment somewhere about focusing on his technique in moguls, it really minimizes it, like the video of him demonstrating on the stairs

[CIMA]

I don't see much value in sideslipping down the mountain. Are these just "skills exercises" for learning?

I see them as drills, too. On the video below, his skis are not for my liking, but still more like my skis than my wool socks.

"I'm just going straight downhill, spinning and braking repeatedly."
https://www.otr.pxc.jp/~mahoroba/english.htm

Stopping between turn gives you time to digest the new sensory input that you have just got, when trying out b-tele turns. That is useful for learning. When moving on from indoors drills, side slipping gives you that time on skis.

After reviewing Telehiro's writings on B-tele again, I seem to find what he is trying to tell his students. He appears to have reorganized his past curriculum, made it more useful for the students, and differentiated it from other ski schools where traditional A-tele methods are taught.

Please note that the following are my interpretations and do not reflect the contents of his lessons taught on-site.

The most fundamental skill of B-tele may be "braking" or "controlling the speed down to where the skiers feel comfortable." Have you ever seen ski beginners run on almost flat slopes with a fearful look and fall on their backs soon? The reason why they behave like that is that they cannot control the speed. In addition, even for experienced telemark skiers like you in this thread, have you ever felt scared because skis accelerated to an uncontrollable speed? The confidence in controlling speed will give the skiers a feeling of security. It will protect themselves and reduce the risks of collisions with objects and other people skiing on the same slopes as you. As some may recall from the news on the cases of Michael Schumacher or Gwyneth Paltrow, the issue of ski collisions has become severe. So, the skill of controlling speed comes first.

In his recent writings, he said that making telemark turn on an icy slope of 40 degrees would be a disaster. This would infer that we should choose the proper technique according to the situation. So, he may have said that there is no close relationship between braking and turning.

In the first part of the video, he demonstrates parallel skidding, both straight and diagonally, which will be applicable as it is when escaping from a steep, icy area of snow. I often used those techniques on my backcountry tours. Also, you can use those practices to build your senses of control speed during the last half of each turn.

After you've mastered the parallel skidding, you may move on to add an alpine or telemark turn. Those techniques will also be helpful when skiing downhill on a steep, shallow area such as a crique and couloir. The senses you have built in those practices, of course, will apply to B-tele turns you have already seen on YouTube.