interesting old 3-pin Telemark instructional video

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Lo-Fi
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Re: interesting old 3-pin Telemark instructional video

Post by Lo-Fi » Tue Dec 26, 2017 11:06 am

lilcliffy wrote: ...is the degree of heel lift on the rear foot...

(I am well aware that the conventional wisdom is to keep a compact stance, and reduce heel lift on the uphill/trailing foot.)

One of the typical reasons to poo-poo system bindings for telemark skiing is the notion that the toe-bar attachment encourages too much heel lift, and resultant lack of weight and control on the rear ski.

My personal experience is that without a heel cable, I cannot consistently keep my heel low on my rear foot, and I feel a very significant loss of downward force, when my heel is high. (When I don't need that power and control, it doesn't matter- but, when it does- boy does it matter!).

Well- here is a beautiful and very skilled Telemark skier, skiing with just 3-pins, and I see all kinds of heel lift...

Perhaps heel lift has very little to do with a toe bar vs. duckbill?

I’d suggest it’s all about pressure on the rear ski - being able to mash your ball of foot on to the rear ski and bring a large amount of your weight to bear down on the rear ski. “Stance” is critical, but only in combination with the boot flex at the ball of the foot and weighting. Heel lift is a function of all of this and how deep a turn you need or want.

You need a compact stance, as you and Al mention, in the sense that your back foot isn’t flailing around behind you - it should be under you. The rear foot should be vertically in line with your hips. If you were to compress completely, you would end up “sitting” with your butt cheek on the back spine of your boot. In that case, your front foot has slid forward as to be flat footed, with a sort of 90d at the knee and angle. The heuristic is to imagine dropping back on to your rear foot in a turn(emphasizes rear foot pressure) rather than stepping/sliding forward into a turn(which emphasizes front foot pressure).

The next thing you need is a boot/binging combination that lets you flex the boot in such a way that you can bear your weight down and mash the ball of your foot into the ski when you want that ski to flex, bite and turn.

A floppy to moderate stiff leather duck-billed boot allows you to do this, as the flex really only happens over the ball of your foot, and the the duck-bill, whether held by the three pins or cable, gives you the end-of-foot leverage to flex the boot properly, mashing your ball of foot under your weight, onto the ski.

With plastic boots it gets more complicated because the flex is so engineered. In a soft excursion/t4 with the duck-bill the flex is perfect when weighted, and even the binding doesn’t matter so much. As boots get stiffer in the sole flex, the more vertical terrain and aggressive skiing requires/delivers even more weight bearing down to flex and mash the ball of foot and pressure the rear ski, (a more active binding helps keep the ball of foot down too with stiff boots, but you still have to weight them).

NTN guarantees the ball of foot is stuck on the ski. The real secret though, is fighting for that rear-foot-under-you stance, and bearing your weight down on that ball of foot. NTN gives the impression of ball of foot pressure, but it really depends on whether you are bearing down on it or not, for good technique.

With NNN-BC, the problem is the relatively free pivot in combination with the often funky round flex of the molded sole - I find they lack that over the ball of the foot pivot point. It’s often not conducive to ball of foot pressure, particularly because there is no end of foot duck-bill to leverage. Heel lift can be pronounced without the benefit of ball-of-foot-pressure. It’s easy feel like your are on your toes. It’s for this reason that I still struggle with NNN-BC as a turning system.

Finally, with the proper stance and boot/binding flex, and weighting, the amount of heel lift will depend on how deep you want to turn. Heel lift without weighting & mashing your ball of foot into the ski is bad. Lots of weight over the rear foot, and a lifting heel as you mash your foot into the ski is good. How low you go and how much your heel lifts depends on how deep and hard a turn you want. Imagine your legs are a compression spring, the more you compress them, the more energy is transferred into the turn. As Harris pointed out, on easy terrain an upright/low heel lift turn is fine, but in more aggressive skiing deeper turning pressure is called for.

This isn’t a great gif, but you might see some good heel lift with my back foot under a vertical line down my back, under my weight, as I go by.




Image

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lilcliffy
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Re: interesting old 3-pin Telemark instructional video

Post by lilcliffy » Tue Dec 26, 2017 11:12 am

Harris- you should see my 1990 High School grad photo- we could easily be brothers- I was sporting the same long locks- your facial hair was more impressive than mine though! (Though I have no trouble growing hair now- it just keeps appearing- EVERYWHERE.)

Woods- that video was absolutely hilarious- thank you!
Cross-country AND down-hill skiing in the backcountry.
Unashamed to be a "cross-country type" and love skiing down-hill.



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lilcliffy
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Re: interesting old 3-pin Telemark instructional video

Post by lilcliffy » Tue Dec 26, 2017 11:27 am

Lo-Fi- awesome shot- thank you!

Yeah- sitting on that back foot is critical.

And going low = power and control- and it greatly increases the ability weight and unweight skis.

I think that part of this- for me- greatly depends on what kit I am using...

My distance-oriented kits- with soft XC boots- require- at least me- to use very different techniques that I use with my true downhill-Telemark-oriented kits with 75mm boots-bindings.

With very long XC skis in the backcountry, I find I use a lot of step, jump and striding turns- that are not really telemarks at all- the basics of all of these turns being modified diagonal strides- striding into the turn- as opposed to squatting down onto the rear foot in a true telemark.
Cross-country AND down-hill skiing in the backcountry.
Unashamed to be a "cross-country type" and love skiing down-hill.



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STG
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Re: interesting old 3-pin Telemark instructional video

Post by STG » Tue Dec 26, 2017 11:37 am

Great video and thoughtful comments!

As a light-weight small XX person I will never be able to ski like Harris or probably most of the guys on this forum. Experience has taught me that I must do the following if I want to execute a telemark turn and not end up doing a face or butt plant: tight stance with knee tucked in close and minimal amount of lift of rear foot with maximum pressure (big-toe/little-toe mantra). Having come from an Alpine tradition, I probably have a fusion style and do some weird turns but saying afloat in the powder is always pure pleasure.



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Re: interesting old 3-pin Telemark instructional video

Post by fisheater » Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:46 pm

This thread has diverged from the original video posted, and I tend to agree for the most part which has been posted about how to execute the telemark turn. However my take on the video was a little different. I couldn't help but think the skier was an accomplished telemark skier. He was just too centered when executing static lead translations, and too light and centered on his feet to not be an accomplished skier. I looked at the stem turns as a tutorial, more of an introduction to the telemark turn. My assumption was that further into the student's progression proper weighting of the rear foot would be given emphasis.
I look at guys like Johnny and LoFi on short snippets of video and even calling you know you are watching a skilled skier. The skier doing transitions seemed to to be a solid skier, that is why I believe the rear foot rudder to be instructional.



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lilcliffy
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Re: interesting old 3-pin Telemark instructional video

Post by lilcliffy » Tue Dec 26, 2017 6:50 pm

Bob- this was my interpretation of this video as well.
I loved it.
Cross-country AND down-hill skiing in the backcountry.
Unashamed to be a "cross-country type" and love skiing down-hill.



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Lo-Fi
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Re: interesting old 3-pin Telemark instructional video

Post by Lo-Fi » Tue Dec 26, 2017 7:14 pm

fisheater wrote:... I couldn't help but think the skier was an accomplished telemark skier...
Yep, I agree that he is a skilled skier and there’s a lot worth observing in the video. I like his turns best at 11:48 where he’s skiing holding his poles like a tray(or like a “two-four”, which is a case of 24 beer up here in Canada, eh?). He tucks his back leg a little more under him and you can see more of the pressure and angulation on it.



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greatgt
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Re: interesting old 3-pin Telemark instructional video

Post by greatgt » Wed Dec 27, 2017 7:52 am

Couple of thingers here boys....Ski area tele and bush tele are different paradigms.....Modern equipment and olde tyme tele are different worlds....Sometime while in the gonz and heading them down see how the thing kinda works...Fore ski breaks and forms a trough or in nautical forms a wake....Inside that vortex rests the back ski which becomes the rider while the fore ski continues to break and set the direction....In this kind of telemark you want to be inside the wake of the fore ski because it has far less resistance....Modern (Apine) tele doesn't do this because the stance is so far apart...Different kind of tele at the least....and probable much closer to downhill tele....Take your pick.... Also on stand up tele in the bush it's a good position to view all that's coming....Dropping now and then into low ball tele usually is for power...One would do that more at a ski area than the bush where your ready position is mostly stand up tele....Thinl of it this way....Heading into a dip, natural mogul, you want options...and if your on different equipment the more options the better....gtt



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Re: interesting old 3-pin Telemark instructional video

Post by connyro » Wed Dec 27, 2017 12:41 pm

greatgt wrote:Couple of thingers here boys....Ski area tele and bush tele are different paradigms.....Modern equipment and olde tyme tele are different worlds....Sometime while in the gonz and heading them down see how the thing kinda works...Fore ski breaks and forms a trough or in nautical forms a wake....Inside that vortex rests the back ski which becomes the rider while the fore ski continues to break and set the direction....In this kind of telemark you want to be inside the wake of the fore ski because it has far less resistance....Modern (Apine) tele doesn't do this because the stance is so far apart...Different kind of tele at the least....and probable much closer to downhill tele....Take your pick.... Also on stand up tele in the bush it's a good position to view all that's coming....Dropping now and then into low ball tele usually is for power...One would do that more at a ski area than the bush where your ready position is mostly stand up tele....Thinl of it this way....Heading into a dip, natural mogul, you want options...and if your on different equipment the more options the better....gtt
This is a load of crap IMO. I ski 99% of the time in the 'gonz' or ''bush' (also called 'the woods') nowhere near a 'ski area'. I ski 'modern alpine tele' based on your definition (plastic boots, wide, rockered skis), AND I ski what you call 'old tyme tele' (leathers, skinnies) and technique used between the two is not really any different from each other. In fact, skiing on groomed snow is basically the same technique as well IF you have good technique. You may consider trying out some more modern gear to complement your old gear and you may find you that can expand the terrain you feel comfortable skiing. I'm pretty sure you never will TM, but maybe it helps someone else see through your BiaS.



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lowangle al
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Re: interesting old 3-pin Telemark instructional video

Post by lowangle al » Wed Dec 27, 2017 1:37 pm

connyro wrote:
greatgt wrote:Couple of thingers here boys....Ski area tele and bush tele are different paradigms.....Modern equipment and olde tyme tele are different worlds....Sometime while in the gonz and heading them down see how the thing kinda works...Fore ski breaks and forms a trough or in nautical forms a wake....Inside that vortex rests the back ski which becomes the rider while the fore ski continues to break and set the direction....In this kind of telemark you want to be inside the wake of the fore ski because it has far less resistance....Modern (Apine) tele doesn't do this because the stance is so far apart...Different kind of tele at the least....and probable much closer to downhill tele....Take your pick.... Also on stand up tele in the bush it's a good position to view all that's coming....Dropping now and then into low ball tele usually is for power...One would do that more at a ski area than the bush where your ready position is mostly stand up tele....Thinl of it this way....Heading into a dip, natural mogul, you want options...and if your on different equipment the more options the better....gtt
This is a load of crap IMO. I ski 99% of the time in the 'gonz' or ''bush' (also called 'the woods') nowhere near a 'ski area'. I ski 'modern alpine tele' based on your definition (plastic boots, wide, rockered skis), AND I ski what you call 'old tyme tele' (leathers, skinnies) and technique used between the two is not really any different from each other. In fact, skiing on groomed snow is basically the same technique as well IF you have good technique. You may consider trying out some more modern gear to complement your old gear and you may find you that can expand the terrain you feel comfortable skiing. I'm pretty sure you never will TM, but maybe it helps someone else see through your BiaS.
That's been my experience and that's pretty much what I've been saying. Different gear, resort or bc you use the same technique. You will need a bigger bag of tricks on light gear when conditions aren't optimal.



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