I suck at moguls the first run or two every year. Then it comes back. Gotta ski em to get good at em
I suck at moguls the first run or two every year. Then it comes back. Gotta ski em to get good at em
The Doug DiPiro book is pretty damn good if you want to ski the zipperline/shock absorber style. I'll admit I never put much effort into learning proper mogul technique until last season and his book helped tremendously. Before that, I had relied mostly on the "short radius turn around the mogul" PSIA-style technique, which is fine, but obviously not as cool.
Find your line, use your poles, ski on your tips, the more forward the better.
Yes, bumps teach you to weight/unweight which is exactly what you need to in breakable crust. Sidecut is great, but rolling the knees only works in good conditions. Until you learn all the ways to start a turn, you will always suffer badly in less than ideal conditions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hohes
And well, I can't imagine a worse ski for bumps than the skis that are currently popular for powder skiing...
Moguls: how to tell who grew up skiing the east coast.
Personally, I love them. If there's no new snow, moguls are about the only thing to really challenge your ability.
I don't suck as bad as some.
I suck at them so badly, I don't even know where they put them on the mountain anymore. Or where they store them in the summer.
I love moguls and do ok with the right ski but my knees hate them. sucking at moguls is the greatest source of laughter anyone can enjoy. whistler on an icy day is just a pissfest. people who have no business being on them make a shitty condition day so enjoyable.
To the OP. Take the lesson/clinic. It will help. All of the tips in the world can only help so much as you read them. If someone is telling them to you WHILE you are on the hill to apply them, you will get better.
I love to ski moguls, and I don't suck too bad. Grew up skiing MJ and following the US team around. After a while, you figure it out, or you get help, or you quit. I still enjoy 'em. But they are MUCH easier on 185, 85mm waisted skis than my 194 112 waisted skis. The big sticks see more GS style turning. I take the small ones out for dedicated bump days. BUT, they were my everything ski...once.
Upper Exhibition @ Jiminy Peak - All day long in the spring
Cascade - downdraft @ Killington All day long til it was mud
MRG - anywhere
Love skiing bumps, but that time has come and gone. Knock on wood my knees have never been apart.
As my dad used to opine, " the human knees have a finite # of moguls they are able to ski".
I seem to be closer to the end than the beginning as evidenced by the way my knees click and pop when I bend down....
Fucking love bumps. Nothing better than flowing a line.
That's true. I was never good at them, but I used to enjoy fucking around on bumps runs when the snow wasn't great. These days, at least on my home hill, things get choppy but nothing even approaches a real bump run. Now I totally suck at them due to lack of practice.Quote:
Originally Posted by Blurred
I got called out as a bum wiggler when I started skiing again a couple years ago. eastern 80's style!Quote:
Originally Posted by PappaG
I've been learning gs style. A friend gave me a lesson the other week and it's been so helpful. It's a completely different way of looking at the line. Look at the tops, not the troughs. They are like trees. Way easier on the body than old school style.
I like small to medium sized moguls, they are fun.
I suck at them when I'm on my Big Dumps, xxl's, or Shoots. I took my Mantras out the other day and realized I'm not too bad on bumps with a little smaller not so stiff ski. Made a huge difference. Still not to the point I can try the GS turns. Working on it.
Rule #1 folks:
1. Ski the goddamn falline. Always.
Bumps, or any snow surface for that matter, is much easier if you commit to falline skiing.
yes falling down the line is the preferred method for quick completion of that stubborn bump run.
+1
I suck at bumps compared to other types of skiing because I don't go on them very much ("hey look - knee deep powder in the trees. Nah, fuck that, I'm going to go hit the bump run over there!"), but this is very good advice. I've found they're actually much easier if you're being aggressive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mofro261
That's about where I'm at.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aldo
Every so often it all comes together for a few turns and everything's groovy.
+1 for a good book. I've been working on my bump technique since things are super dry here in the Sierras.Quote:
Originally Posted by mikefut
wtf are moguls?
Maybe, but who cares? Imagine how fun and adventurous skiing would be.Quote:
If ski resorts were never invented, would we all be much worse skiers for never having skied bumps?
I have a story about him. I was watching an Olympic opening ceremony some years back, and they were having a parade of all the competitors in the morning. Girardelli was on the Luxembourg team (though he is Austrian), and the commentators said that he was the only member of the Luxembourg team, but he wasn't there. Instead they had a stand-in marching for him. The reason given was that with the condition of his knees and the number of surgeries he had had on them, he couldn't walk in the morning.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shredhead
pretty sure they slayed the bumps tooQuote:
Originally Posted by ak_powder_monkey
http://indeclaration.files.wordpress...berbarons1.jpg
Outstanding quote. Never heard it before, but it's dead on.Quote:
Originally Posted by CarveMan
A plea to the kids: join your local freestyle team, learn how to ski bumps...and then rip the shit out of the mountain - in style.
It's the same fundamentals: hands, commitment, and fall line, as mentioned earlier. Turn the bumps and turning in pow is nothing.
Same fall line - pow and then bumps. Same technique. (Not the top skier on the freestyle team - still young - but the top bump skiers on the team are undoubtedly some of the very best freeskiers on the whole mountain!)
You didn't say that last Saturday :fmicon:Quote:
Originally Posted by Mofro261
Yeah, but that particular fall line ended with a 200ft air to RIP. I wasn't quite ready to commit to answering the question of whether there's an afterlife.Quote:
Originally Posted by PNWbrit
I'm so glad I know how... I don't seek them out by any means but if they are in the way I'm going to rip the shit out of them. Nothing beats airing it out with a big ol spraffy , few more turns into a groin busting spread eagle. Nothing says I'm a skier more than throwing spreads. Ripping zipper lines and skiing pow are very similar as has been stated in this thread. Most good mogul skiers have no problem with deep variable snow.
Even if you're good at moguls they take a toll on knees if you're old or injured (I'm perennially the latter). But I still ski moguls, just fewer, but still do it fast and hard because I grew up skiing moguls all the fucking time. If you can pick a direct line it can be like an indy car track, or you can have fucking shitty-ass nonsense moguls that are bigger than JJClit's mother. The variability in one run prepares those leg muscles to respond quickly skiing any conditions even when yo thigh's and quad's are dead fucking broke imo.
That said I know plenty of girls who are rad skiers (ex-ski racers) but who's mogul skiing could use a little improvement...
Moguls require strength, agility, and tight technique and skiing them is a much more physical task.
So... bros should ski moguls cuz A man who never learned to ski moguls never really learned to ski like a man, at least technique-wise.
Lots of great tips and advice in this thread...
I'm not an instructor, so take this with a grain of salt, but here are some of my suggestions for improving mogul technique:
Super quick turns are key to zipperlining moguls (or skiing tight trees) and balance, unweighting, and strong edging are key to turning quickly.
1. At home, place a shoebox or the like on the floor and jump side to side over the box. Imagine your body from the waist down is a pendulum, swinging side to side over the box while your upper body remains 'quiet' and is always directly over the box. Keep your hands out front for balance as if you are really skiing. Work up to 60-100 jumps a minute.
2. While jumping over the box side to side, pull your legs up over the box while keeping your upper body as still as possible. There will be a lot of up and down movement at your feet but your head (and upper body from the waist up) should have very little up and down movement.
3. While jumping over the box side to side, don't land flat footed, land with your knees angulated as if you are setting your ski edge. This edge bite is crucial for setting a proper platform for quickly jumping back in the other direction. Imagine your tips are nailed to the floor and swing your tails side to side as you jump over the box. So as you set your edges, your feet are pointing in the direction of the turn, but always keep your upper body pointing down the fall line.
When skiing moguls, I'm not actually carving turns but rather making quick jump turns. The tightest sidecut out there is still too big of an arc for carving turns in a mogul field. One must have strong edge sets and hop back and forth whether it's through the troughs or over the tops or whatever...
On the snow, imagine you're a boxer, focused, hands out front, on the balls of your feet, ready for action. And like a boxer, do not get back seat or you will be seriously FUCKED UP!
~~~~~~~~~~~
I believe line selection is of secondary importance to balance and the ability to turn quickly. But for starters, work on turning around a mogul (through the trough), and landing on the top (flatspot) of the next mogul to keep your speed in check. Kinda like jumping down a flight of stairs, one step at a time.
Practice, practice, practice and have fun!!!
The dood zipperlining under the lift, people watching with envy and whooping at him. <---------------- BE THAT GUY aka Old School Bump Fag
Truly sig worthly.Quote:
Originally Posted by jetski
I like to specialize in making the bumps look easy. As in causing someone to say "hey look that old fat bastard on a snowboard is flying through those bumps (breakable crust too) it must be easy/great/soft."
Then come to find out.....they are not any of the above. It's really fun.
When someone asks me the best way to learn to ski in preparation for the BC, with its variable snow, I always tell them to go to bump camp (Momentum in Whistler is my happy place, though I most often just do the park camp). Lapping bumps is better prep for skiing anything the mountain has to offer than doing one BC line in a day that has zipper crust at the bottom. Hohes, mentioned seeing a lot of ski instructors struggling with pow but I see those same low level instructors struggling with bumps in the resort every time I go.
Did i just log onto Epic by accident ?
Thank you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mofro261
mofro will i need to learn how to ski the bumps to ski like a man?
thank you for leaving me in the parking lot that morning.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mofro261
I'm pretty good at them, but I have a hard time teaching bump technique, but.
Stay forward, way way far forward.
Be aggressive. It sounds stupid but so many people become tentative and instead of committing to a turn and making it they hold back, get back seat, etc, then wonder why the moguls kicked their ass.
Take what is there. Sounds like it contradicts being aggressive, but it doesn't. Follow the path of least resistance, but be aggressive in following that path. Speed check on the top of moguls when necessary. When you get to a short section of shitty too tight moguls for your speed, air over them. When you to a spot where they all line up beautifully and no one has skied the tops off, bounce from top to top and take advantage of that soft snow on the crowns. When there is a perfect zipper line through the troughs, hit it.
Ski smoothly. If your upper body isn't calm, you're doing something wrong.
WTF iza Chinese Downhill ?Quote:
Originally Posted by ak_powder_monkey
When I'm skiing bumps, I'm focused on which bumps I can air off of and where there's a good landing. Skiing them 2 or 3 at a time is much easier on the knees, better for your edges (if you have a thin snowpack), and generally flowier.
When I joined TGR it seemed like every thread was filled with people rapping into couloirs, keeping an edge on boilerplate over cliffs, sport-fucking rich married women, slaying dragons and krakens on 7 continents. Or was it always this limp-dick and I am just looking back through rose-colored goggles?
Now it's threads where guys post advice on how to jump over boxes in your basement to improve your mogul skills.
Sigh. I'm going to go slap my wife and blame it on my wheat consumption.
Gluten free for life.Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeStrummer