Here's two of Cory's first runs. He's still wearing his own boots and using his Head Monster skis.
The first is a training exercise where the skier skis within a narrow lane doing a series of giant slalom-like turns. Note Cory's upper body movement - too much up and down at the waist is unnecessary use of energy, he needs to learn to put that energy into his knees so that the pressure gets down to his ski edges.
The second shows Cory skiing around "stubbies", short poles designed to get the skiers making slalom-like turns around a pole, but without a tall pole which gets in the way for those without much slalom experience. Here, Cory's pole planting is very late, occurring as he approaches each pole. This means he is starting his turns too late and skiing past the gate before completing his turn. He needs to learn to do his pole plants earlier so that he starts his turns earlier, thereby skiing right behind a gate towards the next gate, instead of past the first one before making his turn towards the next gate.
This next video shows two more training exercises. The first shows Cory making a series of turns while holding his poles horizontally in front of him. The idea is for the skier to keep his shoulders facing the bottom of the hill, using only his legs to make his turns. The more a racer can keep his shoulders pointed towards the bottom of the run rather than across it as he makes his turns, the faster he will ski. Cory does a pretty good job here, he does keep his shoulders facing the bottom of the hill quite well.
The second exercise shows Cory making a series of turns while dragging his poles behind him. The idea here is for the racer to keep his poles in contact with the snow, forcing him to keep his upper body low and in an "athlete's stance", rather than bobbing up and down. Cory does a better job when turning left than he does when turning right, and he does need to work on keeping his upper body in a lower position, with less bobbing up and down.
Now onto Day Two, with Cory demo-ing Atomic boots and Fischer GS race skis - the first time he's ever used race equipment. This is still a Giant Slalom course, this time with stubbies about half way between each gate. This is to train the racer to begin making a turn as the racer skis past the stubby. Cory is still too late on his pole plants and beginning his turns too late, thereby skiing down past each gate before completing his turn.
More of the same here, still a GS course, Cory still working on timing his pole plants better, but the best part of the video is a boarder crashing in the background at the end! Any boarder crash is a good crash LOL!! (if you're a skier, you'll know what I mean)
Ok, starting to see some improvement here, pole plants are a bit earlier, especially at the top of the run...they get a bit late again mid-way through to the end.
Here, there's some real improvement - pole plants are happening when they should and skiing more aggressively between gates.
Here, Cory continues to be more aggressive and timing his pole plants better, but he is faced with a delay panel just before he reaches the camera position and skis behind it instead of infront of it.
And even more improvement here, and Cory skis the delay gate properly.
Here, the skier makes a series of short slalom-like turns within a narrow lane defined by short poles. Cory mistakenly skied around the first pole as if it were a gate, but stayed between the poles after that.
Here, Bob has set up a small slalom course using short poles and brushes. The brushes force a skier to take a "higher line" - making a turn above the pole rather than at the pole. This allows the skier to make the turn immediately behind the pole in order to attack the next pole. Cory still needs to learn to use the inside edge of this "downhill" ski (the ski furthest down the hill as a turn is made) in order to make cleaner, more direct turns. On a few of his turns, you can see the skis sliding sideways down the hill, rather than cutting on an edge into the snow and maintaining direction towards the next gate. The sliding moves the skier towards the bottom of the hill - down the fall line - rather than towards the next gate - and it really slows him down.
Here, Cory really starts to put it all together - good pole plants, skiing smoothly, more aggressively, little skidding, keeping his ski tips together - really starting to show improvement.
This looks pretty good too, fairly smooth transitions and he's initiating his turns with his pole plants at the right time.
We're still on Day Four at Hurricane on Mount Hood, first day of slalom. Cory is still in his Atomic RT 100 boots and on Atomic SL 12 skis. Training is on a variety of courses and on this one you can see that Cory needs to become more aggressive on his starts, but he has learned a lot in 4 days.
Here, skidding a bit on the turns at the top, but better towards the bottom:
This one looks pretty good - Cory needs to work on bending his wrists in order to move his poles rather than raising his arms, and perhaps his poles are a bit too long for slalom.
Back to the stubby course, and Cory's looking pretty good here.
And now onto the final day. Cory's still in his Atomic RT Ti 100s, now demo-ing Volkl Racetiger SL 155s. These are the skis he would buy the next day.
This is really his first look at a full slalom course with flushes and hairpins on a mountain that was full of full-size poles. My earlier post described this session in a lot of detail, and this was a moment-of-a-lifetime for me as Cory's dad. He was very confused about this course, and he was very much afraid of missing a gate. But he attacked the course and nailed it, first time!
Here's Cory's second run down the course, looking a bit more comfortable, but trying too hard to knock down the poles with his hands. This is common with new racers, he will eventually learn to ski through the poles, using his body (hands, arms, legs, shoulders) to knock the poles down as he skis through them, rather than reaching for them as you see here. Towards the end of the course, he is so focused on knocking down the poles with his hands rather than being focused on his skis, that he makes a poor turn, skids away from the course, and really slows down.
Improvement here, not reaching quite as much for the poles.
And here's Cory's final run of the week, a lot of improvement from the first video. That's what good coaching and lots of practice can do.
(Please let us know what you think of our blog - leave a comment below.)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)