just my observations on my recent interest in using only inclination (very little or no hip or knee angulation) to make turns.

I became interested in this just for the fun feeling of it (i can pretend to be a snowboarder) but also because of the excellent articles on this by Greg Gurshman here:
Inclination As Integral Part of Modern Giant Slalom Technique

and here
Inclined To Win

you may have noticed over the past three ski days at Liberty i tried all day to make only inclined turns and cut out the last turn phase of dialing in hip angulation. as i suspected (and desired) yesterday i put back in the last phase just a little tiny bit and notice my ability to make a very high edge angle while still holding on fairly firm surfaces worked.

i guestimate now i can pull 50+ degrees and the result of such a high edge angle is a very sick 12-14 meter-ish purely carved turns with both feet. my Volkl 6 stars are 161 cm.

these turns took practice but are very fun feeling. they are challenging because you really have to move up and over into the next turn or else you will be on your tails completely at the end of the next turn - which happened a lot to me at the beginning. it is nearly impossible to do them on ice it will not support enough load to allow you to drop your center of mass in so much.

i also focused on really pulling my inside foot back and raising my knee/foot high to put my inside ski boot next to my outside leg's knee, which is necessary to make such turns.

you can really load the ski and lay very tight trenches, and i was *very* pleased with the way my tracks looked, with *two* thin c-shaped arcs pretty far apart at the *end* of the turn. i think my weight distribution was about 75%/35% at the end.

on occasion, i would loose pressure on the outside ski due to bumps, hard snow/ice, etc but this is to be expected and should be dealt with if you use the technique. i either would complete the turn on the inside ski or if it slid out too just put my hand down on the snow for a little support and huck my torso up and forward in to the next turn.

even though this is a tricky turn, i would encourage you all to try it on a nice day - they are fun (they actually make me laugh when i do them) and you will see that when you go back to using your hip and knee angulation you will be able to carry a higher edge angle than before. it also helps you to initiate a medium to long radius turn very nicely and efficiently.

have fun with it, and tell me if you try it out i am curious about other people's experiences with them.

I think you miss read both those articles.

Inclination is used to delay counter balance and counter action. You still angulate at the end of the turn. Its stop edge lock which is slow on steep sections of the course but desirable on flatter section so the turns are still pure carved. Its a tactic/technique that is used more in SG, DH and skier cross than in GS races.

the turn raduis your talking about should never be inclinated but always angulated. 12-14 meters is slightly longer than SL raduis, you will never see a WC racer use inclination in a SL race.

this is the same race between bode and ted. notice how both use some inclination before the turns this help directions change prior to the fall line, allows stivots, and also prevents edge lock. Both of them use angulation in the fall line to the finish. they arent inclinating all the ways though and niether should you.

- sigh -
" ... and you will see that when you go back to using your hip and knee angulation you will be able to carry a higher edge angle than before. ..."

also I wanted to add that site is pretty crap those guys dont have a clue.

If they had a clue they would be coaching racing, not posting about it on a website. They are trying to make WC skiing make sense in their model and not adapt their teaching to what WC skiers are actually doing.

if you want I can put you in touch with nyman or lightey while your in utah. I am 100 percent sure they will agree with me on how crap that site is.

sorry I did miss that and yes that does make you more right.

I dont think inclination has a place in SL or Gs skiing locally everything is to flat. and the majority of people will misunderstand why or how its being done.

your good enough to know why at least judging by that missed sentence. so disregard my comments at least you know what your doing. For the average recerational skiing banking(aka inclination) should be treated as a deadly sin, they simply dont ski fast enough to make it work.

I still dont like the site, there is alot of misinformation on it.

- cool - yes i was not clear about my intent ... i was interested in the *sensation* of inclination and i am one of those sorts that only can do one thing at a time so i figured spending a few days just doing that would help - thus the "experimental" part of it all.

in fact on harder snow conditions or when ice would come i would have to very quickly put back in hip angulation. - but my feet/legs stayed in more or less the same position so that was good.

and no you can't use this for slalom much it takes way too much time to go from turn to turn and you'd probably fall down anyways.

Stivots???

Steered Pivots