Feb 2 - 3, 2001 N.A.T.O. Telemark Clinic with Dickie Hall Wildcat Mt. and Mt. Washington ========================================== Overview ======== The first day was spent at Wildcat working on technique and turns. The focus of the clinic was to drive home 3 major points: 1) To telemark better, parallel more 2) Be aware of what is happening with your upper body 3) Make friends with your back foot The two biggest hits for me, and several others I spoke with, were skiing without poles (we skied most of the day with no poles) and the goofy-foot (a.k.a. the reverse-telemark). Dickie also shared with us the secret for skiing better in nearly every condition. The second day was spent skiing up the Sherburne, exploring the area around Hojos and skiing the Sherburne back out. The instructional emphasis was on: 1) Using wax instead of skins for climbing 2) Traversing to conserve energy 3) The step and jump tele 4) Finding powder shot in the woods Day 1 ===== After introductions and all that, we took a couple of free runs on one of the beginner chairs. There were about 20 of us and we broke apart into 2 groups; one skiing with Dickie and the other skiing with Jamie, a NATO instructor who is also doing a guiding gig up in Maine. Parallel Turns -------------- Dickie told us that one of the best things we could do for our telemark turn is make parallel turns 50% of the time, especially if we come from a parallel background. Skiing parallel allows us to leverage all of the experience, muscle memory and instinct we have garnered over the years. Instead of making one run parallel and one run telemark, he encouraged us to switch back and forth every couple of turns on every run. Eventually, the goal is to allow the right turn to happen at the right time as conditions dictate, with little consious thought on our part. We made a run or two making both telemark and parallel turns. Next we spent some time working on the freeheel parallel turn and discussing some of the differences between freeheel and locked heel. The biggest issue here was the need for more exaggerated up and down motion. Dickie mentioned one of my favorite memory cues / focal points; driving the outside hand through the turn. After rising up and into the fall line, finish the turn by (thinking about) driving the outside hand down and forward through the turn. The actual amount of "driving" the hand is minimal, almost non-existant. The trick is more of a focal point and less of a movement. Driving the outside hand down is a way of focusing energy and weight to the outside ski and is a memory trick to remember to drop down into the turn. Going into the next turn, "lift" your hands with your legs by standing up into the fall line again. We also talked about the difference in flexing our knees and ankles on free heel gear. On alpine (in the old days) we were taught to drive our shins into our boot tongues to make the turn. Dickie pointed out that we simply couldn't do this on free heel gear so our flexing had to be more straight down onto the whole foot; more centered. My focal point for this is to think about pulling my toes up as I sink down. Dickie also talked about need to be able to make "greasy" (a.k.a. skidded) turns in parallel mode. We talked about using less edging, instead of more, and using this to scrub speed. We did this in conjuction with working on an exagerated up and down motion. Telemark Turns and Body Position -------------------------------- Next we began to focus more on the telemark turn and our body position. Again, all of this time was spent without poles. The first part of the discussion was spent discussing the some of the differences between the old-school, low tele stance and the new-school, higher tele stance. Among other things, Dickie pointed out that the higher stance was less tiring and it allowed for more effective edging. The comments on edging gave me the opportunity to ask a question on tele anticipation, a subject that has long confused me. I noted that in a NATO clinic several years ago, I was told that in tele, the hips rotated through the turn. In Paul Parker's book, he refers to this as "punching the hip through the turn". Dickie quipped that the instructor who told me this no longer works for him! More importantly, the idea is an old-school, low tele idea. With a taller stance with the rear foot tucked in close to the lead foot, the hips can be square to the fall line, in a manner similar to alpine anticipation -- or at least more so. The advantage here is that it is possible to use some degree of hip angulation when the hip is not rotated; something that is much more difficult, if not impossible, with the hip rotated. We spent several runs playing with counter-rotation. Dickie noted that counter-rotation has to be a more consious actitivity for tele skiers compared to alpine. He expressed it as keeping your coat zipper facing the fall line. I found it more helpful to key on driving my INSIDE hand through the turn. I imagined a chord attaching my inside hand with my inside (uphill) hip. As I drove my inside hand across my body and down the hill, I imagined the cord pulling my inside hip forward (square to the fall line) and up (angulation). Summarizing the work on body position in the tele and parallel turns: For parallel, drive the outside hand through the turn. For tele, drive the inside hand through the turn. Make Friends With Your Back Foot -------------------------------- The focus of the last part of the day was on getting weight to back foot. Dickie noted that former alpine skiers want to put their weight on the downhill foot, which means the rear foot gets litte to weight. And former xc skiers want to stride out into a tele, again putting weight on the front ski instead of the rear one. To get the point across we worked with 2 different drills: the goofy-foot and the short-swing transition. The goofy-foot is a reverse telemark. I've also heard this called a kramelet. It looks somewhat similar to a parallel turn in that at the end of the turn, the inside (uphill) ski is forward and the outside (downhill) ski is back. The difference is that the outside (downhill) heel is up in a tele-like position. Dickie introduced us to this by having us do a telemark to one side and a goofy-foot to the other, so that we didn't need to make a lead change from turn to turn. The feeling is very bizzare at first, especially if you are doing it with no poles. The sensation is not entirely different from learning the Royal Christey, if you are familiar with that. The secret is to ski almost entirely off of the rear foot; essentially you are skiing on one foot, or at least it feels that way at first. While we all howled in protest at first, the effects were immediate and obvious. People with low-slung, knee dragging low tele stances stood up and immediately got their rear foot up under their butts. Ex-alpiner, front foot skiing fake-amarkers got onto their back feet. We made several runs playing with goofy-foot (still with out poles). [Side note, Dickie showed us how to sweep on hand back and forth in front of us as we made goofy-foot turns (with no lead change). "Look! I'm a snowboarder!" Great fun except that after we tried it, we all had the urge to sit in the snow and bum cigarettes from eachother.] A personal note, I am very much still a front footed skier so getting on the rear foot made me feel like Crumb's Keep on Truckin' character. After we got the hang of the goofy-foot, we moved on to the goofy-foot with a lead change. And after that, the reverse goofy-foot with a lead change (a.k.a. the telemark). By common agreement, this drill was THE plateau buster of the day. Overheard in the lift line, "This blows my mind!" Dickie's admonision in wrapping up was to ski 50% parallel, 50% telemark and 50% goofy-foot. The point was well taken. The last drill of the day was related to working off of the back foot with an eye towards short radius turns. The first part of the progression was to stand in place and quickly and smoothly drop in to a tele stance, first on one foot then on the other. The idea was to bunch and land down on the rear foot with each shuffle. The next step in the progression was to do the same tele shuffle in a moving straight run. This is best done on a very slight slope on which you have no desire or need to turn. Again, the focus was to bounce slightly with each shuffle and to land predominantly on the back foot. Having attempted and failed at this drill before, I think it also easier to get a hang of this without poles, as you are free to concentrate on the foot work without worrying about the pole plant which can be added in later. Finally, the next step was to do the shuffle at the same pace on slightly steeper run making only a fraction of a turn with each shuffle/bounce. This only works for me if you land on the rear ski. So there it is, the foundations for a tele short-swing. Summary ======= 1) Mix up my turns: parallel, tele and goofy. 2) Focus on the outer hand in parallel (exagerated up and down) Focus on the inner hand in tele (counter-rotate and angulate) 3) Use flats to practice the tele shuffle. Copyright 2003 by David Mann