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Great job Demelza!

Spring ego snow at Silver Star 🎉

That was brilliant!!! I can't wait for the next podcast, hopefully with the two of you. thanks!

Fischer is the best! 😍

What you guys are refering to as lumpy waves is a beginner pump track, and lots of resorts have one here in the east coast. Its the first step to a ski cross course. But true ski cross tracks are uncommon.

Thanks for all your input Tom. My skiing has improved so much technically. I remember chatting with you on Blanchys when you were doing a clip on Carv, which i hadn't heard of. It has helped me a lot understanding the biomechanics of skiing and repackaging it for my participants in DWA. I have pretty well eliminated my A framing and working on my edge similarity and higher edge angles. Just a pity I'm in my mid 60s and not my 20s LOL. Love your passion mate. Thanks

1) IIUC, Tom prefers minimal footbeds over traditional ("posted") custom orthotics because he finds the latter restrict mobility. But not all posted orthotics do this. It depends on your feet and the kind of orthotics you have made for them. I have rigid, supinated feet, and thus my orthotics are posted on their lateral sides, which makes it easier for my feet to roll inward (i.e., pronate), thus *facilitating* their mobility. So the equation is not as simple as posted orthotics = less mobility. It's sometimes posted orthotics = more mobility. Tom and Brent also talk about how posted orthotics "rein you in" and are thus good up to about 30*. But applying an online protractor to screengrabs of my ski videos indicates my angles go up to 60*. I don't feel my orthotics are limiting me. 2) I agree an overprecise boot can hinder intermediate skiers. But it should be noted that even if you get a boot that fits great, and has the appropriate flex, it could still have entirely the wrong geometry for you. And it's not just about fwd lean. It's also about, e.g., whether the cuff tracks forward, in, or out as you flex. Consider also the Fisher Somatech design (not sure if they're still made), which put you in an abducted stance; that works great for some, and terribly for others. Finding the boot with the right geometry for you is the trickiest thing of all. IMO it's harder than getting the footbeds right, and harder than getting the canting right.

I started to explore skiing in a more technical manner later on in life to improve and its great to see an Aussie that's willing to share his passion, art and findings in this beautiful sport and lifestyle. Thank you Tom for your invaluable contribution 🙏 👏👍

You mean Ryu Takeda? Will you guys meet in Australia?

I love the discussion about short turns and mogul skiing when conditions aren’t great for carving. I grew up following my dad around on a small mountain making short turns on the sides of trails and I thought that was the coolest way to ski because no one else was skiing that way. It would be interesting to see your thoughts on what principles from short turns and mogul’s tend to make a skier, more well-rounded and able to carve better. After years of skiing moguls and short turns, I eventually figured out how to rip GS turns and now I feel like that is my bread and butter. Which is funny because I never really trained it with my ski school or my dad or anyone else. It’s interesting how being forced to ski athletically makes you adopt super important movements that translate to longer turns and higher speeds-overall mechanics shift a little bit but that fine tuning from the feet up always remains number one in my experience. Love the podcast!

Great interview :) PLEASE PLEASE petition the Aussie resorts for mogul parks!!! Lots of short turns this coming week in late June and watching Tom's videos at night!

It was perfect to have listened to your talk on the 1st day of summer. Winter can’t come soon enough!

This is what I wrote in another video comments when people talk about you: You really can't hate on Tom Gellie. He has gradually become one of the most important ski educators out there and the glue that is holding the ski world together, connecting different generations, disciplines, and cultures without hate or putting each other down. He is so amicable and respected that he is able to collaborate with coaches, racers, bootfitters, snowboarders, RUclipsrs, from the late Ron LeMaster to even lone-wolf Harald Harb. Tom did not come from a racing background and he learned as an adult, so his perspective is going to be quite different from your usual suspect, but his background in biomechanics/structural integration really shows in his approach to skiing. He respects tradition but challenges conventional teaching and does have his own quirks/wacky ideas, but he is constantly learning, absorbing new ideas, and improving his own teaching. I really believe he will go down in history as one of the greats.

Ski poles

I am thinking about moving up a size in boots and use the packing technique. They feel pretty good and are very warm. Got to change bindings. It is more weight though. Weight is an issue to hear about. I have reservations about increasing my weight; but, some of the good skis are heavy. Now I add even more weight to my gear? Expensive light weight bindings.....

Tom, when does registration for 2025 bps camps open. I missed 2024, want to get in before they are sold out for 2025.

Great video, I like the difference in your own methods of teaching things.

Really interesting discussions like this with fresh perspective from athletes who understand the nuances of their sport is always hugely valuable- keep up the great work guys!

Be interesting to see how some of this crosses over to Carv performance metrics. Seeing how Joe is affiliated, etc. too......

30 years ago Italian Olympic champion Alberto Tomba kind of set the whole form thing on fire with what I would consider a really poor (for then) style of turn initiation. But who am I to argue. He was successful during his time. I spent the 80’s as a ski instructor at a major ski resort on the east coast. It was constantly drummed into our heads that we needed to ski exactly like the ski school director/ PSIA way. I learned a lot as a lifelong skier in my 20’s at the time. A lot of what is taught by the PSIA is relevant. But biomechanically we are all a little different which will make us revert to what works for us. Great video.

What matters is a clean ski when it is significantly pressured. The steeper the pitch, the later in the turn the pressure builds. Futile to try to pressure above the fall line on a steep pitch.

Awesome discussion. I agree that different techniques may work better for different individuals. If we all ski'd the exact same techniques we would look like a bunch of robots on the hill. I love noticing the different types of "Steez" other skiers have. On the topic about steepness on camera, I really wish there was a way to show how steep a slope actually is, it might change the perception some of the keyboard warriors have when viewing ski videos, but I'm sure the trolls would still find something wrong, lol.

Omg, Tom, you are truly the glue that holds the skiing community together. You can literally collaborate with anyone and everyone.

Wow, talk to me once you ski some legit black diamond trails. 😂

This was exactly breakthrough idea that my Attitash instructor introduced me to - “open your inside knee”. Start turn from specific movement of the inside knee and engaging inside ski. Everything else the same. Thank you for good advice.

I like your videos Tom. It occurred to me to ask you or anyone else here if there is any analogy between carving high speed turns in skiing with the high speed motorcycle racing turns.. There seems to be something similar about the inside knee, hip, and foot position. Maybe it doesn't even matter to me since I don't race motorcycles, but I'm simply wondering if watching those motorcycle videos might give me some additional insight into carving turns or whether it's a useless exercise.

Great points, but I don't buy the tuning opinion. Tuning is important, but the difference between hand tuning and machine tuning is psychological at best. The difference between a "serrated and a polished" edge is negligible. Look at the science. The gravitational and other forces far out weigh and edge finish effect. I do use 200, 400, 600, 1,000 diamond stones and an Arkansas stone to hone the edge. A tuned ski makes a big difference over an untuned ski. Not buying the machine versus hand though. Interesting points about the detuning. I stopped detuning when I went to shaped skis. Maybe I will give it a try, and see the difference.

Wow great video. I think I do the same, more out of necessity than plan. I have been trying to "fix" the high portion of the turn, but have been unsuccessful on steeps. Now I know why.

LOL. I love it, The ski patrol instructors are like the comments. They miss the whole dynamic of skiing, and harp on hand position and similar cliches. Most are intermediate level skiers, but have perfect hand position.

Jump and there isn't any edge early. Got to be in good shape.

What a great video. Thank you Joe for your time. I totally agree with you on the hips forward, what the heck. That is all I was taught as a racer. I coached that for five years mid 90s to 2000.

So, full disclosure, I'm an instructor. But one of the things that has been an absolute mystery is the fundamental around fore/aft balance. It says something really vague about controlling pressure along the length of the ski. And for six years, I've been trying to understand what we are trying to do fore/aft at initiation. My working understanding up to this point is that you're trying to bend the soft tip of the ski at initiation. Why? Answer: to be able to ski a tighter arc and to use that force of bending the ski to control speed as you enter the fall line on steep terrain. What I'm hearing you guys say here is, there's another option. That other option uses rotation over edging to steer the skis quicker at the top of the turn to point them where you intend to go. Then you can "sting", transferring that energy into the ski, bending it, and finishing clean. Is that correct?

On the East (Ice) Coast I spend much of my time on skis on boiler plate ice and wonder “is there a way to look good on this?” While the answer may well be “no!” It’s a good way to allow permission to experiment into how I can ski it better. And whenever I get on actual snow it’s just effortless joy. But imo everyone needs to have multiple tools in their skiing/boarding to shed speed just for safety’s sake. I’ve never understood the ‘speed without turns (or control’ thing. I don’t care how they achieve it, just don’t hit me. Have fun out there, appreciate you and your guests Tommo.

I totally agree with this even though I haven't raced since I was thirteen, 55 years ago. I love to get on my edge early and ride it all the way through the turn. It's a groovy feeling. And I think every good skier should be able to do it on green or blue terrain. But coming from a backcountry perspective, there are lots of conditions where that isn't optimal. I have never been able to grok the language about moving your hips downhill. Joe's description of the force needing to be directed to the outside of the turn. On steep terrain, making only pure carved turns from the top generates too much speed and you need to be able to slide into the turn and engage your edges at a point where you can finish the turn in control and not constantly be fighting to get out of the pattern of always being late. I do think there are two ways to be late in the end of the turn. One is as I said, carrying too much speed when you have to make a specific turn either to be fast through gates or skiing a steep tight line where you can't miss the next turn. No-fall zones are when I don't want that much speed. The other is when intermediate skiers don't know how to get on their edges until after they have crossed the fall line. Then the turns are always finished by skidding and it's late because everything is late due to a very slow edge change. Those skiers need to learn how to get on their edge earlier and ride it. But that's not what Joe is talking about. Great conversation and I love Joe's videos!

YES!! I’ve been waiting for this interview! My two favorite channels unite! 🤣⛷️🔥🤙

This is the only video you need for pole plant.

I love this idea and the story behind it. Thanks Tom for sharing it. I think it will help me be more open in my thinking to new or different ideas. Actually it reminds me a little bit of the recent podcast you did with Ski Dad - which was awesome by the way - where he explains how he slides his tails when initiating craved turns on steep terrain. That's something I am definitely going to experiment with next season.

Sticktion can also be minimized by just loosening the tightness of your cuff buckles. I honestly don't know why, with a pair of boots that fit reasonably well, you need to cinch down your cuff buckles unless the entire point is to increase stiffness.

@4:39 Brent's description of the "bounce" on that Fischer boot is reminiscent of Eric Schlopy saying Fischer's vacuum plastic was far too reactive for him? I wonder how Eric's impressions of Fischer boots might change if Brent U-modified one for him. Or are the plastics' physical properties too correlated to the subtle behavior of boot flex to be modified at all?

Vraiment top enfin une méthode progressive en plusieurs étapes, évidemment il va falloir rester humble et patient mais quel plaisir d'avoir compris le principe du jeu...

I think I understand what you mean by “upper body rotation.” Many years ago, we were testing different ways to do short turns, and I think I discovered this technique back then. When I showed it to a friend, he thought, “Wow, that looks really good.”

nice trick with the phone. excellent video. thanks.

In the old days of straight skis, you would move your COG throughout the turn . You would move forward at the beginning of the turn to engage the tips, then to the center for the middle of the turn, then back to finish the turn and which unloaded the energy in the bent ski. Fun to play with even on shaped skis.

This is great for a physics class. However, a skier is not going through a calculus equation to determine their balance. It is an intuitive reaction and flow through the turn.

Great video Tom. George Joubert’s book was my skiing bible in the 80s. Glissement.

What you say here is good and useful, however there is one more very important property, that you forget to tal about. This is the place of your COM over your skis. The COM should move backwards over your ski during the whole turn. It should be over your ski-tips and load your ski-tips when the turn starts and in an optimal carving turn the COM should move backwards and when you finish the turn the COM should be over the ski-tales and load the ski-tales. You use the whole edge of your skis from tip to tale. This means that you must move your COM from the tales to the tips, before you start a new turn of your skis. You do this during the cross over of your skis. You prepare this during the transition and then when you edge your skis you must really cross över your skis over your ski-tales and move your COM first so that your COM takes over your skis and the COM ends up close to your ski-tips on the inside of your skis. I think, that this forward-backward COM movement over your skis is more important than your angle change to the slope. skiingtechnique.wordpress.com/

Beautiful way to dig in

Great video, particularly as I knew about the virtual bump but never twigged that this is why we are always trying to "be centered in the future by changing our positioning now". Question: I understand now why we want to "get forward" at the top of the turn, so that we are centered by the middle of the turn (apex, fall line, etc). But why is it that being on our heels makes turn initations so hard in the first place? Is it related to the virtual bump, or something else - perhaps because parts of the ski (i.e. the front half) isn't fully engaged, or maybe biomechanics making it harder to shift balance to the big-toe edge, etc?

super helpful phone and pole demo !

Great info Tom ! I had never heard about the virtual bump . . . .very interesting !!