What's that special thing that Joel Howley does?

[jipster43]

“ My goal is to stay close to the handle curled up in a ball so that load I have generated is transferred into the rope and not wasted by bleeding speed at the end of a fast edge change when the ski slams onto the inside edge. I want to swing the handle high up on the boat. My release comes late. It feels like I sacrifice width and allow myself to be pulled narrow still staying close to the handle because I know there is no point reaching if the handle has not swung high enough.”@AdamCord @adamhcaldwell This sounds pretty close to the philosophy behind GUT, but I’m a dyslexic with ADHD, so I could be way off!

[JoelHowley]

@jipster43 Adam Caldwell is the only reason I have this understanding of my edge change. I was turning with a tight line and edge changing without much load in comparison to what I do now when I first met @adamhcaldwell

[Horton]

@scoke yea I am struggling wrap my head around this. I understand that I need load in the rope but at the same time I am trying to get out of my lean as early as possible.

"generally very few skiers are even attempting to maintain full load through their edge change. Most have started to decrease their lean relative to the water well before the second wake and they have very little load to play with when edge changing."

[brettmainer]

@Horton, don’t over complicate it. You should pull 10’ longer.

[Horton]

@brettmainer pretty sure that is wrong

[JoelHowley]

@Horton at the risk of getting into semantics "early as possible" has me concerned as there is a middle zone for everything we do in the course. If you deviate too far either side of whatever you are working on something that was helping when done too much or too early will become detrimental.

In comparison to skiers running 39 Horton you do have less line tension off the second wake. Stay down, give nothing to the boat then soften your knees after the second wake, keep the handle close and hold the handle longer. Ride the line through your edge change not your ski. Should feel like a swing. If you do it well you will get red marks on your forearms from sliding them over your jacket. Forearms are the first thing to wear out on my wetsuits.

When learning this on your easy passes it can help to do a slow and reluctant release of the handle then turn the ball with a bent elbow. If the handle can stay close to you as you turn you must be swinging it up on the boat higher than you normally do.

Not easy but most people never learn it and you can be a very good skier without edge changing like I do... especially if you have better turns that I do.

[brettmainer]

@JoelHowley, please don’t give @Horton such good coaching. Just tell him to pull longer.

[Skoot1123]

@JoelHowley - in my humble opinion I just believe you made the “BOS Post of the Year”.

@Horton - if you never had a Post of the Year Award, well, I think you should.

New saying for me next year, a variation on the “Chad Powers” tryout - “Think like Joel, Ski like Joel”

[AdamCord]

Just to piggyback a bit on what @JoelHowley mentioned about high load through the 2nd wake and edge change...

The path the handle takes from the back side of the turn all the way to the next preturn has a unique shape to it. It's not a straight line, and it's not a constant curve either. It has a distinct "corner" coming off the 2nd wake up into the preturn. This has to do with the acceleration into the wakes and then the radial speed the handle has around the pylon coming through the 2nd wake.

This transition is where the handle goes from more "across the lake" to more "down the lake". If you're not in position to ride this corner transition and keep your body connected to the handle while it's happening, you get separated and take a shallow path to the buoy. Put yourself in position to stay connected through the corner and you're on a path to be wide and early to the ball. If you're connected the rope load will max out through that transition. As Joel said slowing the edge change down will facilitate this as it keeps the bulk of your mass between your shoulders and the pylon. If you let the ski and your hips go away from the boat too soon you'll get completed separated here.

[LK_skier]

One thing he does - he grunts like a pig before he skis... seems to work so I might try it

[Horton]

@JoelHowley to clarify my thinking ( and to expose myself to ridicule ) ....

There is a maximum amount of manageable load that any individual skier can manage off the second wake. Leaving the second wake, the more load the better up to the point where the load is unmanageable.

As soon as the handle passes the centerline the handle path changes ( as @AdamCord says above) so if the ski is still on its away edge and the skier is still trying to maintain the same path as before the first wake then the load will spike beyond what the skier can manage leading to separation.

[Horton]

@AdamCord where the hell did you find that super old image of @ColeGiacopuzzi ?!?!?!?!

[Mastercrafter]

I have what I think is a somewhat relevant / related question.

In Spraymakers podcasts, Rossi and Trent repeatedly use the term "edge change at centerline" and unless I've misunderstood, they state how important this early edge change at centerline is to allow the ski to follow the handle path. Watching almost any skier, especially pros, I see them on their cutting edge about to the edge of the whitewater.

Am i taking "centerline" too literally? Do Rossi and Trent ski differently than most others?

[Dano]

I think if you watch the spray coming off the ski of pro skiers you will see that the spray coming off their cutting edge does not continue past CL. An early edge change does not mean they are on the turning edge by CL. It just means they are no longer pressuring that edge and have begun to roll the ski out of angle. If you create enough speed into CL you no longer need to create, so you can un weight the ski as you become the weight swinging on the end of the rope. It is your weight and centrifugal force that is pulling the rope around the pylon from the wakes to the ball. I hope i have that right. It's how I think of it anyhow.

[AdamCord]

@Horton I have lots of pictures of @ColeGiacopuzzi, that's totally normal right?

@Horton also to your previous post - Managing the load in the "corner" is a two step process. Step 1 is to get the ski off the cutting edge before the corner. Step 2 is to position yourself to handle the centripetal force that will come through the rope when you hit the corner.

If you've completed Step 1, then you can't "add" load at Step 2 anymore than a weight on a string can add load when swinging like a pendulum. The load is a function of your speed, the line length, and your weight. What you CAN do is put yourself in position to hold that load without the handle getting pulled off your body, which back to the original point of this thread, is what @JoelHowley is so good at.

@Dano yes I think you have that about right as far as the physics involved. As the rope gets shorter you will typically see top level skiers on edge longer though, not because they are trying to hold the edge longer but because it becomes harder to generate enough speed to edge change that early when the rope is super short. I would get caught up less on whether the edge change is exactly centerline or not, and more on what their ski path is coming off the 2nd wake and what their body position is that lets them stay connected. My goal is to take as little angle off the 2nd wake as possible, so that my path can match the handle path more closely, this reducing the centripetal load and making staying connected easier.

[Dano]

another angle, Dane, loaded after the wakes with next to no weight on ski. I think you can also see how the ski has begun to point more down course than across course while his upper body has remained still/calm. I think he's working extremely hard at this point to contain the ski under neath him and not allowing his alignment/connection to break even a little bit .

[prk]

Joel whats your plans for 2023 are we going to see you taking stabs at 43 next year

[JoelHowley]

Dano and Cord are on the money with those last few posts.

@Horton Please see ridicule below...

--- "There is a maximum amount of manageable load that any individual skier can manage off the second wake"Agreed however that maximum amount of manageable load changes depending on how well you are doing the things mentioned in that edge change video of mine you posted.

--- "Leaving the second wake, the more load the better up to the point where the load is unmanageable"Nope… There is a correct amount of load regardless of your ability to manage it. If you are loading harder than Fred at 41 when trying to run 35 it is probably too much.

--- "As soon as the handle passes the centreline the handle path changes"Path of the ski changes as a result of the edge change. Handle arc does not exactly have a corner. See link to vid for my thoughts.

--- "So if the ski is still on its away edge and the skier is still trying to maintain the same path as before the first wake then the load will spike beyond what the skier can manage leading to separation"If the skier does not have the ability to control load, speed and angle individually there is a risk of separation.To run 39 the direct correlation between load, speed, angle needs to uncouple.Skiers who run 39 manage load, speed and angle as three separate things.I keep my load through the edge change while allowing my ski to gradually point more at the ball and my speed to reduce.Note peak load is still exiting the ball.

[Dano]

@JoelHowley you mention peak load is at exit of ball, are you thinking of reducing load just a little into CL or are you more just trying to maintain what you created thru CL?

[Horton]

@JoelHowley I need you to remake that video again. Those drawings are not good enough.

[JoelHowley]

@Dano I am trying to maintain it however if you measured the load it would be reducing.

@Horton Yep... Drawings are not my best work.

[Horton]

[chaloux]

@Horton - well now I am thinking about both.

[Horton]

@Bruce_Butterfield comments on the above video??

[Horton]

@BufordDanger's version

[Mateo_Vargas]

Smart, compensating for the curvature of the earth

[Bruce_Butterfield]

@Horton , first, my wife knows I would never think about buying a Prostar and I certainly don’t lay awake at night thinking slalom geek stuff – at least not anymore.

I think the ideas in your video are generally correct, but will do next to nothing to improve the majority of slalom skiers’ performances. Maybe improve basic understanding a little, but how does that come into play on the water? From my perspective, “path of the handle” is more of a rabbit hole than anything else. What we are really looking to understand is “path of the skier”.

More importantly, both you and Joel commented about maintaining “connection”. IMO, focusing on maintaining connection will result in far greater improvement than thinking about the path of the handle. If you maintain connection, the path of the handle, and skier, will take care of itself. HOW to achieve the connection is the key to getting a better path.

For clarification, the most obvious indication of “connection” is how close the handle is to the hips/body through the wakes all the way to the beginning of the reach. The connection is also what allows the skier to keep tension on the rope between the wake and buoy.

You also correctly mentioned that something is going to give and the handle will get pulled off your hips on the edge change. This is perhaps the most important thing to understand with today’s boats. With the 240Hp, 3 blade prop boats of yesteryear, you didn’t have to be wicked strong to maintain connection. With ZO and 400+Hp even if a skier is wicked strong, they will loose either connection or body position in some form. Maintaining connection is still the single most important key to shortline slalom.

One key nugget I picked up from Joel’s video was where he said to “loosen the tension on your legs” on the edge change. So while relaxing the legs will result in a loss of leverage, if something is going to give, sacrificing a little leverage in order to keep the handle close is a very worthwhile tradeoff.

Pulling too long is a common problem that you highlighted. While it may be true that the ultra short line guys need to pull long if they don’t start generating speed until closer to the wakes, the vast majority of skiers feel the need to pull long because they don’t have adequate connection to generate the speed/swing to get wide. This is common for 22 through 35 off range where the skier hasn’t learned to keep the handle close. So instead of “don’t pull so long”, the better coaching is “get and hold the handle closer”.

Bottom line is that if a skier has connection, which allows him to generate speed, it doesn’t matter if the edge change is at the first wake or 15 feet past the second wake.

It still boils down to Butterfield's first law of slalom from circa 2008:

"There is only one significant difference between the high end skiers and everyone else - how close the handle is to the body on the edge change."

[MDB1056]

@Bruce_Butterfield - One of the BEST posts in a long time. Well said sir.

[VONMAN]

OK, so reading all the posts so far I agree that that the line load and stack begins at the finish of the turn. But if you back off your edge going to center line two things can happen. First you lose angle and second you lose speed. My take is keep increasing progressively load to center line and stay on the handle with no load to keep building speed to the second wake.15, 22, and 28 off skiers will have to stay loaded longer. 32, 35 and 38 off skiers will be loaded a little shorter but stronger at center line. We all know how to make angle and load but it's the speed part of the equation that's so hard to control. It changes with every line length. You all know what I mean, like when you make a pass and it feels easy and in slow motion. And the next pass is a study in survival. My take be nice. @Bruce_Butterfield love your First law of slalom, have to make a T-shirt for that one.

[Horton]

@Bruce_Butterfield I think one of the valuable takeaways from talking about the path of the handle is understanding why pulling long is a bad thing. Seems like skiers who struggle with this often do not understand the negative implications. I think that dovetails into an understanding of why it is good to make speed from higher on the boat.

Further, it was not until @adamcord and I were talking about this that I realized that at very short lines skiers can not make speed as early because they finish the turn from a higher angle.

[MDB1056]

"I realized that at very short lines skiers can not make speed as early because they finish the turn from a higher angle." Also well said @Horton . This thread is getting better and better

[Mastercrafter]

Not that @Chris Rossi or Trent owe us anything else after another great season of spraymakers, but I'd be curious if they'd chime in here re: early edge change at centerline, which they preach so much.

[VONMAN]

@Horton I've been talking about when you exceed 45 degrees to the boat that the load off the ball wants to rip you 90 degrees to the boat, not in the direction the boat is moving. The way to understand it is if your a good 35 off skier is to free ski at 38,39.5 and 41 to understand the dynamics. Its a whole different world and yes you won't be going a wide as you would need to run the coarse. But you will get better with practice.