Tom Henderson

Wow good work guys, you broke the 100 rule. I didnt know that you could factor in wind speed, but with it you made it over the mark. Barely!!

Im interested in seeing what HO comes out with, but Im pretty sure I will be sticking with the E Series. Simplicity and function, can you ever bet that?

Chris I picked up the E series last summer and I must say they are the best bindings I have ever owned. I think the combination of safety and performance is unmatched by any other binding out there right now. May last set of bindings were the Quattro Double 6 and I feel that these are a much more simpler release mechanism and with that they are a bit safer overall. Plus they are a lot lighter than the Double 6. I would suggest getting the "pro build" as that gives you an extra buckle on the front boot and shims in both the front and the rear to stiffen the bindings up a bit. Overall I would recommend them to everyone. Love life!

Wade I wanna play with it, you skiing looks sic on your site. Im stoked for the summer. See you soon

I swear to god that there are paragraphs in there when I clicked "add your comments"

So this topic hasn't been brought up in a while, so i thought I would give it a go. All I want is a GPS tracking device to put on my ski right in front of my front boot. Im not all concerned with roll axis, but just being able to know where I am at (or actually where I was at) in the coarse I think could be a great learning tool. Just imagine being able to take a set, one 35 was very hard, and then the next 35 was the easiest you have ever run. Now you head back to the dock, plug the GPS unit into your computer and wala you can see the data on your computer that on the easier pass you were making S's where on the harder pass you were making Z's. There has been a lot of talk about leading your turns with your hips CoM, but less emphasis has been put on where you are actually going. To be the most efficient in the slalom course we always need to ski a sustainable line, if not we will be fighting the boat all the way down the lake. Any ideas where to get an accurate waterproof tracking device, if we can get boats to get actual times using GPS Im sure that we can get an accurate account to our line in the course. I want one. Love life. (3 weeks to go till the start of the season)

Try sticking one of your arms through the arm hole and down by your side. Then try pulling up and over your head. With out taking one arm out of the vest I agree it is a pain in the butt to get it off. I know last years vests actually had instructions on how to remove the vest. Besides initially getting them off they are pretty dope vests. Plus the designs are very sick this year.

I skied with my palm down up until last summer, where I finally changed it. With that said I had the most efficient onside turns of my life last year, and they ended up being a lot more fun for myself and for my body. For me, the early season training is where to change some of your bad habits and implement some of the new ideas that have been rushing through your head throughout the winter. I usually ski the best technically in the early season, but once the tournament come along Im always trying to get around that next stupid buoy. Enjoy the skiing guys. I officially have two months to get into the best shape of my life, let the count down begin.

"The first thing you have to understand what is happening with the body before you can make a long term, habit breaking change on the water." - Adam I certainly see both sides of the situation here. If you are efficiently leading your turns with your CoM with your palm is turned down and it is incredibly awkward for you to turn your palm up, then I wouldn't really suggest turning your palm up. (at least for the time being) But I have witnessed many of times simply turning their palm up brings a whole bunch of other things into alignment and has significantly, no vastly improved their turns. Try this little drill. Imagine for a second that you are at 45 off ( yea the rope is going to stop 7.5' inside of the buoy). Since the rope is such a short length you are going to have to be fully extended. Now stand up in your slalom stance in front of a mirror, stand up tall and reach as high as you can so you are fully extended (you are now standing on a vertical plan, but imagine yourself on the water parallel to the water) and start to play with palm up, or palm down. Palm down would be facing away from you and palm up would be with your palm facing towards you. With your palm facing away from you, or "down" you can see this creating some rotation (translates into your CoM falling back, ie not leading through your turn). While with your palm facing towards you or "up" you can see the start of counter rotation (translating to your inside hip coming forward). Obviously this is an extreme example, as I think it is physically impossible for me to get around a buoy at 45 off, but you can start to see the biomechanics of both of these handle placements. If placing your handle up is a major set back there may be something else going on in the equation. Try getting some video of yourself so you can actually see what is going on on your body, or try visiting a ski school where pros can watch you piece each piece of the puzzle in for you. One week skiing with a pro can help your skiing more than an entire season of chasing buoys. Adam - Im bottling my Imperial Stout today, so you should stop drinking your PRB crap, hop onto a plane and come check out the SLC. Next on the list is a double IPA. Love beer, love skiing, Love Life - Tom

Adam Here is my thoughts on all of this: First off when I think of handle control I think of a skier maintaining control of the handle through the edge change(just needed my own definition there). This allows the ski to travel through and underneath the skier onto its new turning edge. (see pic of Cale) This allows the ski to continue on an outbound path while maintaining your speed and momentum, while also not creating excess down course speed. Obviously the shorter the line gets the more important it is to get the ski to the other side of your body. When a skier lets the handle get away from them the pull from the boat goes directly to their shoulders and it is easier for the boat to pull them out of position (the boat has more leverage on them). This leads to the boat pulling the skier over the ski and onto the new turning edge as opposed to the ski traveling underneath and through the skier. This is not an edge change just a flop from one side of the ski to the other and does not take any real ski or athletic abilities. Here it is the skier is just coming in toward the boat and not the ski continuing to move outbound. (see third pic in the article) Now the skier has just lost all of the hard work they accomplished on the way into the wakes because they are under the boats control and have lost outbound direction and outbound momentum. There now heading right at the buoy at Mach 3 and all they can to is cross their fingers, crank a turn around the ball and hope they can hold on to try to do the same thing again(not a good chain of events if you ask me). As for the flat ski, you can really see this exaggerated with a beginner coarse skier. They come across the wakes with very little momentum and energy, they let the handle get away from them (probably because they have never had real control over it in the first place) and they come up to a flat ski. With a better skier it is harder to see this because they do have more energy and momentum so their ski gets a little further from underneath them even though they are completely under control of the boat. The end result is the same for both skiers, they have excess down course speed and not enough outbound direction. As for anything in our sport there is a lot more going into this than I have touched on here, but here I think I hit some of the aspects of an efficient edge change. Thank you Bruce for posting this article and thanks to the rest of you for having some real conversation about skiing on skiing forums. I think it is rather pointless to argue whether or not basketball is a real sport for 2 weeks(which it is by the way) You have to let a yoyo go down before it will come back up, and you also have to let your ski go out before it will come in. Its almost that simple.... Love life Tom www.balancelongboards.com