johndesco

Jack send me a message and I'd be glad to discuss with you. I'm the guy that builds and installs them.

My dumbest ski injury was an accumulation of several things this summer. Two weeks prior I had been pushing my wife to practice jump one evening. She had already slalomed once that morning and had just finished her best slalom set ever, and I convinced her she should go jump. She finally gets ready goes out with zero energy and on her 3rd plop and 3rd fall in row she has a funny twist and fractures a bone in her foot. Fast forward 2 weeks, the Dr says she wont make it any worse go at our own pain threshold. So I order her a reflex for slalom and trick, because she can't get her foot in a rubber binding and because I feel really guilty. So about 11:30 that night I'm getting everything setup and I decide to trim the back of the reflex boot so it doesn't catch when the upper part rotates back. I've got the box knife out carving away and I realize where my left hand is that is holding the boot, and before I can stop I slice my wrist open. I was back home by 1:30 that night with 6 stitches and by 6pm that evening I ran my 32mph/15 pass for the first time, picking up a couple buoys. If I recall the wife had told me not to ski that evening, she now says it looks like I can't take the pressure of skiing when she see my wrist and something about Karma.

@Tkas395 I will send you a PM I live on Mystic Lakes.

@sunvalleylaw I have a medium rear T-Factor that is 2 years old and in great shape I will sell, can ship tomorrow. Message me if interested. I switched to a RTP about a month ago.

@escmanaze each block was about 1.5Lbs of aluminum. I ended up moving these blocks to a set of larger skis that older kids use to learn on and replaced them with some painted steel plates that were about half that much and a little bit less awkward and they still worked to keep the skis down. I did see someone at Regionals over the weekend that had screwed 3 hockey pucks to each of his kids skis, so that would be just over a pound per ski. The nice thing about that was they had a little bit of a rubber coating to them and more rounded edges if the kid was to get hit by the ski. A pack of 4 is 11 bucks on Amazon.

Here is what the ones I made the other day looked like

For my 4 year old I put 1.5lbs on the back of each of her HO trainers. It works perfectly she can float out there all day long with the skis straight up and down. She is now at the point after about two days she can thread the rope between them when the boat brings it by better than some adults we teach. Once the slack comes out the skis will angle forward and away she goes. Best modification we've made for little kids.

The wakes are really tough at the 15.5 and 17.4 speeds but once he gets to 19.2 & 21.1 it gets easier for them. I would also really work on his gate timing/pull out width and turning early at the ball. One of us in the boat can quite often be heard yelling turn when he's 10-15' away from the ball or tapping the rope just to drive the behavior. This will help him pick up 20 plus feet of down the course drift and help keep him away from the second pull. We're also making sure his hardest pass is about 4 deep in his set and making him earn a crack at it vs going straight to it. He isn't always impressed with that but it drives consistency and gives him time to practice his gates and adjust for wind prior to needing to be at his best. Needless to say we've got access to some good coaches on our lakes that love working with kids. If only I could do half of what I preach I wouldn't be looking at my 9yr old passing me by in the course.

@bojans Sorry for the long post below but I'll share what I've learned so far with my son. He just turned 9 in April and has been in the course for about a year now. He is still running Long Line and his best is 2@28.6 mph, and is just now getting to where he runs his 23.0 mph 100% of the time, the 24.9 mph 90% of the time and is now running the 26.7 mph pass about 30-40% of the time. We have played around with 15 off and he can run the 23.0 mph pass but it drives him into exactly what you are describing and he breaks at the waist when crossing the wakes. Its just a little bit faster and causes him to panic more and forget the fundamentals of body position. I would guess he has already ran over 250 passes this year since late March so he gets plenty of practice to where you would think body position would be automatic. As far as trying to get his hips forward the best piece of advice I've gotten is to squeeze your butt cheeks together as you finish the turn and are skiing back to the handle and keep your knees soft/bent when hitting the wakes and don't look at the wakes just let your body position do its job and keep the ski on edge. My overall suggestion based on what we are doing is to stay at LL until he can run his max speed. It gives them a little bit more time and continues to develop the fundamentals. I've debated it with myself quite a bit, but what I've seen is if my son is fighting slack with LL which seems to be the reason people chop to 15 off its because he is double pulling to make up for getting bad angle out of the turn and it just cycles with him turning later and later until he then panics to get to the next ball and forgets the fundamentals and lets his hips fall back. The key piece that usually starts the cycle is a bad gate/late 1 ball. He gets tired of hearing it but we tell him every set it is to get 15' wide of 2/4/6 before he starts his pull to 1 ball and then start his turn 10' before he gets to 1 ball. If he does this he can run the pass and everything just falls into place for him. He does do a 1 arm turn its not that he needs the extension, but it helps him with turning the ski properly and not on the tail and bringing his hips around and to the handle and getting in proper position. The last piece of advice is get him an outside coach to work with on occasion. My son listens to me most of the time, but when it comes from an outside person interested in what he is doing it just makes a bigger impact on them. Good luck, there isn't anything much more fun than watching a young kid running the course.

It's another sandpit with a separate owner, so its not part of the Mystic Lakes development.

@aupatking I live on Mystic and would be glad to give you a pull sometime this spring once it warms up as well.