Moguls with Ben Chapman

Famous mogul skier Glen Plake once said, if you want to find the best skis on the mountain, go look in the bumps. So today's podcast episode on the Big Picture Skiing podcast centers around mogul skiing, and to help me out with this, my guest today is Ben Chapman. Now Ben coaches mogul skiing and freeride skiing in both Whistler, Canada and Perisher, Australia at the moment. So he gives us some great insights into coaching, especially around junior athletes. There's some great takeaways in this episode around equipment, ski boots, as well as setting up your own mogul course and the different styles and lines that you can choose and work on in your mogul skiing. I think if you're a ski instructor, there's going to be some great takeaways and advice here to help you go train. If you're just into getting better at moguls, there's also going to be some great insights. And if you're a parent of a junior athlete, this will also be some something really helpful. Speaking of help, if you're into getting insights into ski technique, whether that's carving, mogul skiing, equipment, anything to do with skiing, that's what I built Big Picture Skiing to do. It's a resource, it's a library of videos covering everything that you need to know to get better at skiing. There is a 7-day free trial, so you can check it out, make sure it's something right for you. But there's a ton of information on there, and people are getting better every single day by using this great resource. Now I hope you enjoy this episode today with Ben Chapman on mogul skiing. Let's get into it right now. Hey Ben, in your experience skiing around with, you know, a lot of people trying to train for the Level 3, Level 4, that they're sort of higher-end certificate of an instructor, what's like, uh, something you see that is missing very often in their training?

I think in all their training, but particularly bumps, it's the athleticism piece. Um, I can spot someone training for the Level 3 from about a kilometer away, uh, sitting inside the lodge eating lunch. They're trying to do the perfect turn, perfect rhythm, everything symmetrical. You see them like timing their pole plant, you know, trying to paint the picture they think the examiners want to see. So they get really good at doing that, and then when things change, you know, conditions change, variety changes, you know, but especially in the bumps, or they get out of balance yeah, then they don't know what to do. Particularly in the bumps, you know, where we're training this perfect turn all the time, and in the bumps, you— they're 3, 4 meters apart, you know, you just need to be able to move quickly, you'll be able to adapt, be able to get out of balance and pull it back in. And if we don't train that, we can't do it.

Yeah. So like, for example, have you had some people, friends or friends of friends, this season where you've suggested what they should go and do to train that athleticism in the bumps, specifically the bumps?

I mean, I think the first thing is training a short, short turn out of the bumps. You know, when we're training our carve short turn for an exam, you know, your apex from turn to turn, it's probably 10 to 12 meters, right? In the bumps, you're in a man— in a man-made course. So where we often examine our Level 3, Level 4, the bumps are 3.5 meters apart. So you have to do, you know, turns 3 times quicker than you normally would. If you can't do that on the flats, you know, there's no way in hell you're going to manage to achieve that in the bumps when you also have to deal with absorption and all these other things. So it's going to somewhere flat and just practicing quick feet, short turns. You know, you need to be balanced to move your legs quickly, right? But not, you know, not worrying about, oh yeah, I heel pushed that one, or I skidded that one. Like, just move the feet on the flats, get it moving, get the tempo. It doesn't have to be a high speed speed down the hill, but increase that tempo of turn, okay? And then go and do that in the bump, but take the easiest, flattest bumps and just try and move the feet. You're not worried about speed control, you're not scared, you know, like even like not even even green run, you know, like the flattest, smallest bumps possible, you know. So you're not worried, you're not— there's no fear, right? And you can just pin it and blow out and not be worried about that.

Yeah, that's great advice. I mean, you know, were you in Australia last season?

Yeah.

Yeah, well, you know how bad the season was, sort of warm temps all the time and not tons of snow. I sort of took it on myself to make it that, that year to work on like getting like a triple turn, like a double turn in the bumps. And so every time I was coming down to like the the Crackenback chairlift or whatever, and it was flat, I would just practice those like fast, fast, fast, fast, as fast as I could, even though I knew I looked silly. And sometimes like my feet went apart and I lost my balance. But, you know, 1,000 turns later, I can start getting closer to, to like, to, to doing it. I can. And it's just, yeah, yeah, that athleticism and tempo change. Absolutely. Yeah, massive thing that I think a lot of people overlook.

I think in skiing, like, it is a series of linked recoveries, you know. And so every time your feet, you know, do split or you throw a beer can out the window, uh, you're learning to recover and regain balance from that situation. You know, I'll use like Whistler as an example. You know, level 3 bumps might be on something like Whistler Bowl, and it's quite, you know, it's quite steep and it's quite challenging. So if people are kind of newer to that level 3 process, um, you know, they're not able to send it down those bumps. So they're never, you know, they're never pushing, you know, that, that limit if they're always training on what they perceive to be that exam pitch. Um, so that when, you know, when they do get out of balance, they're not used to recovering from that.

Hey, now to give the audience like a bit of context, and even myself, like we— the first time I remember officially meeting you is in Sun Peaks. And I know we sort of know of each other, we hear each other's names from the, the ski coaching world. But yeah, can you give us a bit of a background? What's your, what's your ski background, Ben?

So I did a little bit of the interschools competitions in Australia, but only at a very recreational level. You never competed overseas, you never competed FIS, never trained in an official club. But from when I was 14, 15, was like, I want to be a ski instructor. So you did a gap year, you're doing that in Banff, Parachute, before university. And then since university, what, 10 years on the trot just between Parrishire and Whistler. So just been moving back and forth, um, in Parrishire coaching full-time with the Parrishire Mogul team, um, and doing a little bit of APSI examining. And then in Canada, kind of a bit more on the freeride sort of side of things now.

Yeah, cool. And so this, this season, like, who have you been coaching in like, uh, specifically in, in Whistler? Like, you said you've been doing a bit of freeride and mogul coaching, is that right?

So actually, in, in winter, it's just with the freeride club on weekends. I work for a company, Extremely Canadian, it's like Steep's clinics. Um, we have a couple of sessions training instructors here. We build a zipline course called Chappie's Bumps. Um, but then when we get into spring, as we move the spring operations and some of the Australian athletes come out, and we'll be doing a lot more mogul stuff in spring.

Yeah, okay, cool. So then, like, personally, do you remember— speaking of getting better in bumps— do you remember a moment where you really, like, made a breakthrough with your own skiing, and what exactly that change was in your own mogul skiing?

I think the first— go way back— we were the stereotypical interschools you know, family, my brother and I were a team from Newcastle. We'd skied a few weeks, we made it to the state championships. Dad's like, you guys don't know how to do what you're doing. So we got a mogul private with Ken Moon, uh, and I remember stabbed the monster in the toes and punch him in the nose and the glass ceiling for absorption. Um, so I think I still remember that, that I think we had two 2-hour privates back in, what, 20 years ago, and I still remember those two tips. And that's, I think, what first gave me my love for skiing the bumps. So that, that's—

expand more for the, for the listener who doesn't know about the Monster one, because I think that is actually a really— for the pans and everything, is a really good kind of little cue or tip.

I think it's a really good one for instructors that are, I guess, looking to mogulify their technique to look a little bit more like a competition mogul skier. Instead of having a big sort of swinging pole plant, right, you want like a really kind of light delicate touch. So if you've got a little gremlin in front of you that's, you know, 4 foot high, you just want to stab them in the toes and punch them in the nose, right? I think Terry, instead of, you know, to use the punching analogy, instead of swinging big like haymakers or uppercuts, it's just a little, just a little jab.

Yes, yeah, because a lot of— I mean, a lot of people that just ski kind of free bumps, the pole plant tends to be made and then left behind, almost like they've stabbed, stabbed the dude in the toes, a little 4-foot dude, and then almost like pulled away like they don't want to get bitten kind of thing, instead of just—

yeah, keeps you centered, keeps you moving down the hill. Yeah, yeah.

And so in terms of like later on then, as you start to refine things, maybe looking at video of your own bump skiing, can you think of some other like more advanced breakthroughs that you made?

I think when I first started coaching, you know, with the Parrish Winter Sports Club team, it was super lucky to have, you know, some really like good coaches there, like Georgie Leal, Pete McNeil, who's now you know, coached a couple of Olympic gold medalists, uh, and Josh Himbry, who's the current president of the APSI. Uh, so a lot of it was working on like the turn shape, and so having more of a carve turn in the bumps as opposed to like pivoting down the course. Um, and then personally as well, the just the absorption range and timing and having access to like a roller tank to isolate those movements was probably like a key thing for me. And actually what I'm still, still working on in the bumps.

So like, can you break that down? How, like, what might it look like before you started working on this, like, I'm going to put inverted commas, carving the, the bumps? What did that look like versus, um, yeah, that versus before?

I think it's a good sort of segue into, I guess, maybe a misconception about competitive mogul skiing. You know, like, yeah, in, in the zipline course that we just pivot or slide through the bumps. I think at an elementary level, like, that's, you know, bricage is a really good way to stay in the course, you know. That's goal number one, is to get from the top of the line to the bottom, you know. Bricage kind of moves, you know, it controls your speed, keeps you in the line, keeps you in balance. But at the upper end, we're trying to carve the way through the course. I think, you know, more of an Australian definition of carving, which is where we have a lot of aim edge angle, but there is still some twisting of the ski, so it's not a purely locked-on edge. Yes. And you know, some analogies I think that for me that really help with that is like tip into the bump. You know, if your tip of your ski can impact the bump first, right, while it might be a more direct or more aggressive line, your timing of absorption is spread out over the whole length of the ski. So it actually makes it way smoother, as opposed to if you pivot and slide into the bump and the foot hits it first. All that impact comes on like instantaneously. Um, so taking like a more direct approach, you know, actually in the long run it takes a while to get the hang of it, but in the long run it's going to be smoother and you actually— yes, slow and smooth, smooth as fast.

Yeah, yeah, totally. So that's— that must be like a big thing you're coaching, especially in the Aussie season when you're doing more mogul stuff. And you mentioned the the roller tank. Um, I was recently in Japan, and a few of the places I went to, they had, they had that. And I think that's such a valuable sort of bit of terrain for people to, to learn on. Do you want to just talk about the, the roller tank, what it is exactly, and, you know, if people see one, what would be like 2 things they could go try on it?

Yeah, from like a competition sort of mobile setup, it will build a wave tank or roller tank where we kind of have, you know, maybe 6 to 8 kind of rolls just, you know, pushed up by the cat, probably 6 meters apart, so slightly more spaced than they are in the course. It just allows us to isolate that movement and just hike it, repeat a lot.

How flat or steep is it?

Uh, it depends what you're working on. Generally very flat. We often really isolate the movement where we're just going in a straight line and purely working on the absorption. Some places will build more of like a ski across your roller tank where they're a little bit larger rolls and a bit smoother, and so you can actually work on like the timing of edge change, uh, in the transition over the rolls as well. Without access to a roller tank, you know, spines like running along the edge of groomers, you go up and down the spine, it recreates the same feeling. Or coaching kids traversing a free bump mogul field at high speed, you know, or even at low speed and then building up the speed, you isolate those, you know, those— that same movement. In terms of the movement we're looking for is, I mean, two things I think, like range of movement. You know, a lot of us don't have enough range. Uh, I guess comes back to that athleticism piece, you know, we were talking about earlier. You think most mogul skiers are going to look at binding, um, you know, a bit crude, but I say try and jam your binding up your ass. That's how, you know, we want to unlock. And then secondly, and this is where I think a lot of instructors get a little caught, is trying to have most of the absorption coming from our ankle and knee. And keeping that kind of chest upright.

Yes. Yeah. And so working on that in those— in the roller tank, on the, on the flatter terrain, just takes away a lot of the elements that people find, uh, sort of intimidating. Like, is that what you— is that what you find when you get people to say, zipline, hey, let's step away from that, we're going to work just on maybe the range piece? Is that— would you, if you had a roller tank, is that what you would go and do as a progression to help that?

100%. There's so much going on in a bump field, you know, it's all happening, you know, quickly, and there might be fear elements in there as well. So yeah, having a wave tank or just traversing singular moguls allows you to isolate that movement without having to worry about everything else that's going on.

Yeah, yeah, okay, cool. And do you, do you use the roller tank as well for sort of teaching the carving, sort of like that piece?

With our program, like in Parisia, we typically like don't. We build sort of sharper rollers, you know, purely for the absorption.

Um, ah, cool. Yeah, so you actually build rather than like really kind of smooth ones? Yeah, it's more like triangle almost.

Triangles.

Yeah, I can see how that would be way more like a real mogul course feeling.

Yeah, yeah. And we, we primarily use it, you know, predominantly, yeah, for that absorption piece, where some other programs, you know, build more wavy, you know, rolling tanks to work on that edge change. We work on that more on the flats, you know, on the groomers.

Got it. Okay. Yeah, cool. Nice. Yeah, so maybe do you want to speak to like a little bit of background? You know, we both were trained, uh, APSI sort of certified, and the APSI Australian system, the pathways you get better at moguls, it does steer you towards a technique that is more similar to competition moguls. Would you agree?

Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

And so like, do you see then other countries or people training from other associations maybe not having— like, what do you see? What do you see given that training background, given your coaching? And you know, if you— it's just— this is just advice and stuff out there to people, um, working on their mogul skiing, maybe from other associations, other countries?

Yeah, I mean, I think having a pretty unique blend, I guess, of that zipline, you know, uh, coaching, but then skiing a lot of free bumps, you know, in Canada, um, you had to do free bumps for my exam piece, Level 4, um, here. And I think watching Richie Burger, um, his videos, you know, imagination is, is one Specifically, where you watch him ski the free bumps, and he actually applies quite a lot of kind of competition mogul, I guess, approaches to how he skis the free bumps. I think to elaborate on that, I guess the first is sort of line choice. Instead of, you know, crossing over the top of a bump and going like really loopy across the hill, as much as I can, you know, I'm trying to ski almost what I call the inside wall. Of the bump. And so staying in kind of that zipper, even in free bus, obviously as it gets steeper, that gets trickier. And that's where training that, you know, athleticism piece is definitely something, you know, I go early season, I just hammer, you know, shales like Whistler Bowl, um, in Whistler. And, you know, I'll be— I'll throw every third turn, I'll throw a beer can out the window, teaching to recover from that. So when we're skiing a free bump mogul field, what we typically find in North America, you know, Canada, and we have the rhythm change, you know, so you've got bump, bump, bump, bump, and then a big space to another bump. We often choose a drawn-out longer turn, and I think that often allows— like, it slows down the rhythm, but it also can put us into a skid, uh, you know, can, you know, disrupt us, put us out of balance. It slows down the rhythm. And I've kind of stole this— stolen this analogy from Guy Hetherington, so I guess credit to him and sort of Bill Tunnett, but I like to think of skiing bumps a bit like a dance with the mountain, you know. Now a waltz, you know, a ballroom waltz, it is elegant, you know, and it's smooth and it is beautiful to watch. But with my own skiing, I'm trying to be, I guess, as exciting as possible, so I'm kind of aiming up for more like a tango or even like a salsa, you know. And so when we have that, that disruption of rhythm, if I can do 2 quick turns on one bump so I can actually up the tempo instead of slowing the tempo down, I think that's going to make, you know, my skiing like more exciting. And so that might mean, you know, you have one 5-meter-long bump, you've got to do 2 turns on it. And so, you know, you've got to use a lot of ankle knee angulation. You can't get your hip inside of the turn, you're going to I don't have enough time, right? Or you can even use a dolphin turn move to air it, you know. So instead of doing one drawn-out turn that's going to lead me into a skid, maybe push me into the back seat, push me inside, slow down that tempo— if I can do a dolphin turn or a double turn on one bump, you know, that's my— I think of, you know, the tango where you let your partner down to the floor and, you know, pull them back up. That's that sort of pizzazz moment that have people watching. Like, you know, that's exciting skiing that I want to watch.

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I've been thinking about this because, you know, as you, you and I are not competing, but, um, you know, there's still an element to our skiing that we try and work on where it's not just we can ski down this black mogul run, you know. There's a point where it's actually enjoyable to work on the things you're talking about, like excitement style you'd even, you know, call it. Like, you know, you must look at your own video and you kind of go, oh, I wish— I want to change this about it, or that doesn't appeal to me just visually. Like, sure, you're still getting from A to B, you're in control, you know, all those sorts of things. But, um, yeah, do you want to speak to that? Because that's certainly something I enjoy about skiing, is it's not it's not just about being completely functional. I do like style, and I think that's why, you know, you get drawn to certain skiers like Richie Berger and Ryuji, uh, that Kuwabara from, from Japan, because they have these authent— these styles that really like showcase their kind of personality and the way they interact. Do you want to speak to that in terms of your thoughts on, on that, if you're trying to yeah, have a style, or, or you— how much you appreciate that, or—

I mean, it's actually gonna be easier for me to take that to my big mountain skiing or the freeride skiing, which I do a lot of here. And so you see, you know, some of the Freeride Club coaches or some of the pro skiers, you know, around, they might have, you know, super chargey style, you know, they ski everything like super fast, super full line, you know, they're skating you know, through all the bumps, you know, as they're skiing down. And sometimes I like to do that. But a lot of the times, I'm trying to be like more flowy, you know, and so smoother and trying to like use the terrain to my advantage rather than like fighting against it or, you know, like holding on for dear life through the bumps. That's something I'm definitely, I guess, trying to add my style into my like freeride and big mountain skiing. For sure. And then, you know, in the bumps, uh, if one of our sort of criteria in the CSAA level 4 is you maintain snow contact at will, and so I'm sort of trying to look to get airborne as much as I can as it suits the terrain, you know, and the rhythm. You know, I've got caught out where I've tried to force an air where the bumps, you know, didn't work, and I'm slamming into the upside of a mogul. But, you know, wherever it works, you know, I can do 3, 4 like dolphin turns to change lines in advance. Like, I think that's—

This episode is sponsored by Carv, the digital ski coach, and one of the updates I've really enjoyed this season is the addition of separate SkiIQs for moguls and short turns. In the past, Carv scoring was mainly built around carving metrics, which meant everything was viewed through that lens. But Carv have gone deep on that research and completely separated what makes a great short a short turn or mogul turn different from a carved turn. To give you an idea of how accurate it's become, the person at the top of the Carv Leaderboard right now isn't a carving specialist, it's Olympic mogul skier Matt Graham. So the best SkiIQ in the world at the moment is coming from someone who lives and breathes bumps, and to be honest, my own highest SkiIQ is also in the moguls, which makes sense because that's my favorite type of skiing. What's really exciting this year is the addition of turn tempo, so basically your turns per minute. It's such a simple external output that's incredibly fun to play with. So good skiing isn't just about edge similarity or parallel skis, it's about how you interact with the terrain and whether you can change your tempo on demand. So seeing numbers like my quickest tempo of 117 turns per minute in the bumps gives you something concrete to compare, refine, and work toward. I've been working with Carv since 2020, and every year I'm genuinely impressed with how much the product evolves. They keep expanding what you can measure, and they're covering more and more of the turn types that skiers actually use all over the mountain. So if you're interested in tracking not just your carving but every turn you make on the snow, check out Carv. And a big thanks to the team for supporting this episode.

Looks awesome.

If I wanted to build my own mogul course, what have I got to consider? What have I got to do?

So two methods, right? We've got, you know, all like sort of World Cup courses are built with the Snowcat, you know, what we call pushing or like a cat build. Um, but how we build most of our like development lines is just what we call skiing it in or flagging it. Um, some clubs in some countries, you know, use stubbies. We use garden marker flags. So you can buy, you know, 100 garden markers for $30 off Bunnings. Um, we set ours, you know, 3.5 meters down the hill from bump to bump, and we go between 1.5 and 1.75 meters wide. Okay, we typically just use a mogul ski, you know. So, you know, my mogul ski is 172 centimeters, the girls' skis are 166. We just normally use that. Um, so yeah, we just run a tape measure down the hill, um, you know, so every 7 meters in the same row will be a flag, and then every 3.5 meters there'll be a flag one ski length to the side.

Cool.

Yeah, yeah, once it's flagged, you know, your coaches and your athletes, you just do hockey stops down the course. So you do a— our kind of cue is toe piece all the way to the flag. Depending how soft the snow is and how steep the pitch is, you know, with 30 people, you know, maybe 4 or 5 passes through, you've kind of already got your bumps. So then you kind of progress from hockey stops, uh, to, you know, kind of hockey slides or like a moving brocage, you know, and you still ski a much slower, you round the turn until the bumps are kind of, you know, formed. At some point you're going to have these big slush piles that are you know, almost triangles. So, you know, once they get to a kind of critical, a critical mass of size, you'll do a bit of a step which will like kind of smooth it out, you know, round them from kind of triangles to sort of mounds. Um, and you're going to do this yourself, I think the two— I guess the key thing is picking the right sort of snow conditions and day, you know. If you, if you have the ability to request like a late groom. You know, if the cat can get off at 7 AM and you can flag it at 8, you know, it doesn't set up too much and will be really— it'd be really soft. Here in Whistler, we often don't have that luxury, so we try and pick a day where it's, you know, snowed. It had snowed the last 3 days, the snow's really soft, and then it pushes up, you know, really, really quick.

Yeah, cool. And then Do, uh, what about pitch recommendations? Because I know I was saying I'd love to do a Threadbow on a— I would just love a beginner mogul run. Like, can you put them on a— like, what's the lowest angle green run you'd recommend?

Yeah, I mean, we build one on the Blue Car Race Lanes for anyone who knows Perisher. I think as it gets flat, this— the bumps build up a lot slower. So you actually might need to use a bit of a rake or a shovel to help push up the bumps. You know, obviously when it's steep, you know, steep and soft snow, you know, a few hockey stops and, you know, you're done. Like, we've done it just, uh, on exams at Parrishaw, uh, on International T-Bar. We've had, what, 40 people follow a coach, and one lap through, if it's slushy, and you've already got a bump bike. Um, but yeah, if it's too flat, you might need to use a bit more rakes and shovels. I think pitch like Chamoir at Mount Buller, I think, is 19 degrees, and that's a really good kind of learning, learning pitch.

What's Mogul Mats at Perisher? What, what angle is that at about?

I think the overall course is about 23. But the top, you know, the top sort of part is, you know, closer, you know, to 28. And the top part of Mobile Mats is, is too steep, you know, for, for a learning course. Um, yeah, yeah, it's, it's quite challenging, those top 6 bumps, like really challenging. So yeah, Mobile Mats, for those who have skied at Perisher, is, I'd say, really, you know, is a little bit too steep for a kind of real development learning line.

Yeah, actually, it threat— you know how sometimes they put at the top of High Noon, a thread bow on the right there. That's quite a good spot, isn't it? That's a good angle.

Like, yeah, I think that's about— yeah, it's about 20, 22. Yeah, roughly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd love to put like one in, one in though, like a little flatter again, like this, this guy Ryuji we were talking about, where he's got his— must be like 13, 14 or something. And it's just like, just for that less intimidation factor, like the athleticism, like just go really fast through it kind of thing. So yeah, such a unique— yeah, you just don't find that anywhere. Like low angle bumps is like the thing, I guess, because they just don't form, you know. People aren't like doing hockey stop short turns in low angle terrain, so bumps don't form.

Well, I think actually the process of building a course you know, for like people in a ski school, you know, you can just ski one in, you know, on the edge of a groomer where you know it's not getting groomed. And the process of skiing in, you can actually get so much benefit, you know, because you're learning to just the rhythm, you know, the timing of movements. Um, you know, if you're coaching athletes, you know, essentially, you know, after your first lap of hockey stops, you're just doing picards through the course. So it's really good for working on your leg turning, body position, your hand position. And all that, all that time you're not really having to, uh, think about absorption because there's no bumps yet. And absorption is like the, the hardest thing with bump skiing. So, you know, and as you go throughout the day, every run bumps are slowly getting, you know, 5% bigger, 5% bigger. Um, so it's a super good process if you're just struggling to get through a course. Being involved in building one from the ground up, you know, is— yes, can't, can't Yeah, awesome.

Hey, so switching gears, you were telling me before we started recording about how often you ski with a group of kids, and there's probably a couple of kids in that group you've, you've never skied with before or seen skiing, and you notice something with, with kids' boots. Do you want to speak, speak to that?

Yeah, and look, all, all skiing comes down to how we stand in our skis. You know, I'd love to do a blind study of following a group down a cat track and telling a coach, you know, guessing from, from that, from watching a group ski down the cat track, who's the best skier in the group. And I think any sort of good instructor or good coach could probably, you know, pick that out with like 90% success rate because you can see who can stand well on their skis. In terms of boots, your ankle flexors you know, being able to like engage your ankle is like, you know, the difference between a good skier and a great skier. Um, I think so many kids are in boots that, you know, I mean, we always talk about people in boots that are too big, and that's the easy one. Even when people are sometimes fitted, they're in boots that are too stiff. Um, so if you can't actually flex the boot, or, you know, we were talking earlier, we sometimes see kids that they might be able to bend, you know, bend their ankles, their shins moving, but it's moving inside the boot. The actual plastic of the shell is, is not moving with them. It's going to make it really hard to stand in your skis. And if you can't stand balance in your skis, you can't really do anything else to a super high degree of precision.

You were saying though, like, almost, you know, you often get given a new group of kids. You said nearly every time there's someone in that group that you're like, hey, at lunchtime, James, I want to look at your boots, because you've seen this, this issue like straight away, is that right?

Yeah, we talk about, we talk about stance and talk about flexing the ankle, getting knees over toes, and you know, nothing happens. And so yeah, almost every time I ski with a new group of, of kids and even adults, it's I'm checking someone's boots at lunch. And not so much the fit, but more like, can they actually flex it? And can they get their knees over their toes? Because I think a lot are in boots that are too stiff. I think some reasons for that, and I'm not an expert boot fitter, but we've been getting boot fitters in with our coaching team. And I think every club even from, you know, working with like low-level, you know, 6-year-olds. Yeah, I think getting fitted in to upskill the coaches on, on how to, you know, do boot checks and what are some of the simple adjustments, or how do you just recognize that one, you know, that someone should go see a fitter. Um, you know, but some things I've seen is you might have a 14— one of our 13-year-old girls last year, she was in the same size boot as me me. You know, I'm not a massive guy, but, you know, I weigh 72 kilos, 5 foot 9. You know, she would be like 3 inches shorter than me and probably weighs half as much. Um, but, you know, her foot has grown, but she's still, you know, a little human. And so if she's in an adult boot, her cuff comes up, you know, almost to her knee. Uh, and so just doesn't have the, the weight and the strength to flex it. And also, you know, they have really small calf muscles. So you think your calf acts like a natural spoiler, especially in moguls where we're trying to get forwards, you know, have a lot more ankle flex than, you know, in a conventional skier. So if you don't have that sort of natural spoiler, you're going to be naturally, you know, much more upright in the boot.

Totally. Yeah. And so what you, you mentioned you do some stuff to your boots that, that sort of mogulifies them a little bit, you could say. Yeah, do you want to just talk to those couple of things you do?

Yeah, so in Australia I have two pairs of boots. Um, they're the same boot, but I've got an older pair, uh, and a newer pair. And so all I've done to mogulify, you know, my— I'm in a 4-buckle race boot, um, and I've taken out the, the two bolts in the back. Actually, I've got— oh, actually, I've picked up my housemate's boot and it's a touring boot with Walk Mode, so I can't, I can't show what I was hoping. But yeah, you take out the two bolts at the back, softens it. You can always just take out the top bolt first, you know, if you want to try just a little bit, take the top bolt out first. And I've just put— I've got some spoilers here Um, I put a spoiler, you know, in the back of my boot in between my liner and my cuff and the shell, just to, you know, to give me more, you know, forward lean or ankle flex. Um, so that makes my boot, you know, softer and naturally more forward lean so that I can— yeah, get more ankle flex to get that more range of absorption without getting back seat.

Yeah, I, I do some— I do some slightly different things, but with the same goal of trying to get my boot more— better flexing. So I leave the bolts in the back of my race boot, but where the, um, the top part like wraps around, and that part usually buckle up meets the kind of the lower clog area, like showing my hands here, that top part hitting the bottom, I'll take a Dremel and grind a few millimeters away from that so the top cuff can actually slide a little further down before it hits hard against the top, like, of your foot and gets a hard stop. Like, that's one thing I do. And I know you can even inside on, like, the ankle bone areas, like, there's usually a bit of a V cutout, and you can actually deepen, uh, that a little further so that the whole shell actually kind of distorts a little bit. And even I've found, you know, like, the interesting thing is liners. I found a lot of tongues in ski boot liners, the intersection where your ankle flexes, that is actually— it's two things. It's quite stiff, but second, it actually blocks up the ankle. So it'd be something interesting, maybe you could give me some feedback on checking with kids as well, especially in kids' boots. When the ankle flexes, it doesn't just hinge forward, it glides on top of— like, uh, so that the tibia glides forward on the talus bone. And so if the, if the tibia is sliding forward even a little bit, like, there's got to be some space for it to be able to move forward. And typically, the stiff liner tongue folds up and actually pushes back into the joint and stops you right down at that, at that pivot point. And so cutting out more of, like, more of the material that's across that intersection, like, that's a huge one I've found that gives people better ankle flexibility. Because then you don't need to change, like, the shells kind of— you're out of containment. But inside, you think about, you know, sometimes even like a centimeter of thickness there If you can like take it out of that intersection. Yeah, it's been about like every single boot until I got Zipit liners, I would, I would cut that bit out. I would just get, get rid of that. Um, yeah, and their liners even have this cutout type section. Some do. But anyway, digress there.

That's just getting, getting, getting into the weeds here.

Yeah, but I just think it's like, I think you're so right. And as you see it with all like every group, why one or two kids like every week that you haven't met, you're like, hey, can I check, can you flex your boots? Can you flex your ankle in your boots? Such an important thing. You're not really going to go far if you can't do that.

Well, I think just to touch back on, you know, for those listening, I've got a ski boot here on the video, um, but yeah, what you were just touching base on, and this is why I think a lot of competition mogul skiers are in a 3-buckle, um, you know, a lot are actually in a 4-buckle boot as well. But you were talking about this, uh, between the third and the second buckle, actually you're hitting the plastic, and so it's stopping you from being able to flex your ankle. Um, something I only just recently found out is, you know, while boots go up in every, every size, the upper, um, the upper calf part of your shell only goes up— it only changes every two sizes.

There you go. That's something I didn't know, but that makes a lot of sense as to why, like, sometimes it's more— yeah, wow, super interesting.

So I can't remember, you know, which way is which, but say for example, if a 25.5 and a 26.5 boot both have the same, you know, upper cuff, yeah, then, you know, your 25.5, your upper cuff might be hitting when you flex, and that's where you can cut out plastic, um, you know, like just below, you know, on your sort of third buckle kind of plastic strap.

Um, totally.

I've explained that really badly, but yeah, that's something.

No, no, that's really, really— it's like the proportion between the upper and lower doesn't change proportionally. Yeah, yeah. And so then you get too much thickness, that second, third buckle interaction point, like it's gonna, it's gonna hit and block up. So yeah, I mean, I just, I just think As you can hear, Ben and I both just modify stuff. And some of the things, you don't need to go see a boot fitter. I think it's great, like, go, they'll have some great ideas and can quickly do it. But if you've got some tools at home, some of that stuff you can experiment with yourself.

I think anyone coaching kids, you know, for the first weekend of your season, I think, you know, having a backpack with a bunch of, you know, spoilers in your backpack, it almost any boot shop you can go and they can, you know, give you a handful.

Um, yeah, better than going in the garbage bin.

Yeah, and they can work wonders. And we were mentioning earlier, you have to be careful with some of these things because if you pitch someone too far forward, it might have, you know, a negative effect where they, you know, point their toes. They feel like they're gonna, you know, fall forward out of their bindings, so they actually point their toes and can You know, by pushing them more forwards, you can actually get them more back. Yeah. So something to be, you know, aware of. But yeah, definitely, yeah, you can put a slower in at lunch and take it out at the end of the day.

Yeah, I know I've been doing some reading on constraints-based learning, which Sascha Rierich, this guy, former US ski team coach, he put me on to. But anyway, a big thing they talk about in that approach to coaching is like going the wrong way, like doing things. So, so I think even if you do push someone too far forward, there's a huge learning experience in that, that like, oh, I've never felt that before. But at least you have like, you have, you've got a reference point, you know. Like, you, you would have felt it when you have like a pair of skis that are tuned poorly, or you have a pair of boots that are, you know, it helps you really solidify what you like and what works even more so when you've when you experience the range. So yeah, I think don't be afraid of, you know, oh, what if it is, you know, push them too far? Find that out. Just find it out, you know, and then pull it out if it's, if it's no good. But it's a great learning opportunity.

Yeah. And if it works, you know, then like if you're not using your ankle joint, then you, you're never going to ski to a high level.

Absolutely.

Sometimes, you know, simple modifications even getting a booster strap, you know, to limit, you know, the kids with those really small calf muscles moving around inside the upper part of their boot, um, you know, because their foot grows before all the rest of their bodies. Their foot might be an adult size, but their calf is, you know, tiny. Um, so, you know, booster strap has helped us with something with that too.

Yeah. Hey, maybe a couple more questions, Ben. One would be With the athletes you get to spend more time with, so in Australia, you do dryland training with them as well, yes?

Yeah.

Yes. Do you find you notice when you work on form dryland, like say, you know, absorbing with a straight, straight back and, and increasing the range in good form, do you find that has a really good correlation with increasing how fast they get better on snow?

Huge. And I think— and I do this even, even when I don't have access to specific dryland training. Uh, at lunchtime, you know, I get teased for doing static demos, you know, or showing people how to do things at lunch. But you think, uh, I'll use a trampoline for an example. You know, in 2 minutes you can bounce, you know, 100 times on a trampoline. And, you know, try 50 spread eagle star jumps. If you're going to go out on snow, you know, you might do a lap through a terrain park, you know, which might have 5 jumps, and a lap through a park might take you, you know, if you're skiing with 8 kids, that's going to take you maybe half an hour. So, you know, you can get infinitely more practice time. You're doing things inside. You can also see more what's going on, you know, if you have people that, you know, in joggers and exercise clothes, you know, you can see what's happening. Whereas, you know, if you're in skis, ski boots, you know, you're talking about minute changes, you know, very precise changes in your ankle joint or, you know, switching on muscles. It can be really hard to see that when you've got a 14-year-old teenager in a triple XL hoodie and a triple XL pants, you know, it's much harder to see. So, yeah, I think, you know, dryland gym training, but doesn't have to be, you know, it could be 10 minutes at the end of your day, you know, indoor session. It doesn't have to be exclusive to those who are in high-performance programs with access to trampolines and gymnastics and formal gyms. You can actually do this indoors, you know, instructor training, you know, all that stuff as well.

Yeah, nice. Yeah, I totally agree with that. Sometimes those days where it— in Australia, when it starts raining and you're going for like a bit of a break, sometimes those are the moments people remember most because you go, well, may as well use this time, take ski boots off, check people get what I'm talking about, you know. Yeah, without being on snow. Yeah, cool. And then the— so the other thing I was going to ask about was, we talked about boots, uh, you know, not telling people to go out if they want to get better at mogul skiing and buy a mogul ski, but are there some things you tend to like or would recommend if someone was, say, next, next season they want to work more on their mogul skiing? What sort of skis would you suggest they get?

Yeah, I think for your recreational, you know, skier, like someone, you know, who's super interested, you're in it, like to buy a, you know, an ID1 specific mogul ski is, you know, $1,100, you know, plus bindings. Some simple alternatives, I think often people think of a slalom ski because it's short, especially we're talking about the zipline bumps. The slalom ski has you're way too much radius, so you're gonna like hook up and shoot across the hill. So the best is an old Giant Silent ski, and so not a FIS GS, like a recreational master's GS, you know, that 20-21 meter radius, pretty, you know, straight and skinny, so pretty similar to a mogul ski. I'm not sure I'll ever possible on all skis, but I used to have a pair that I mounted flat as well, so it took off a race plate. Um, and so, and yeah, an old GS ski without a race plate is essentially a mogul ski.

Yeah, sweet. So, and if people are going to be, you know, say, speaking to North Americans and, you know, they want an all-mountainy type ski, you just say take that idea, you know, you know, they're like, look, I want to get 80 plus underfoot or something. Same idea, right? Just straighter is the idea. Like, too much sidecut, and this idea that a short ski is going to be easier to ski in the moguls— do you want to maybe like help people understand why actually maybe not so short and turny is not good, and a little bit straighter and longer is going to help you?

Yeah, I guess to clarify, we're talking a little bit you're now a bit more targeted towards sort of your, your zipline moguls, you know, competition style moguls. Um, yeah, but the ideal is to ski quite carved and direct, so you're not twisting the ski, you know, across the hill. Um, so, you know, the less you twist the ski, you know, the— it's, it's if you're just starting out and you have a lot of twists and a lot of pivot down the course, that's where, you know, a long ski is, is gonna you're going to find tricky. But yeah, as we get to the more advanced level and you're skiing a more straighter, direct line, um, you know, it's, it's more about like the skinniness of the ski, um, so you can roll from edge to edge really quickly. Uh, you know, World Cup, kind of the, the men are roughly skiing 2.5 to 3 bumps a second. So, you know, to edge change from edge to edge to edge 3 times in a second, it's going to be pretty tricky if your ski is 100mm underfoot.

And what about— can you speak to why you would take the riser off of a race ski and, and ski it flat on the deck? What do you feel that you like about being flatter on the deck?

I mean, for me, the biggest thing is just the weight. The ski's way lighter, you know. I'm not sure the exact— I'd say, you know, my GS skis would be, you know, double, uh, you know, double the weight of my other skis. And part of that is, you know, a heavier construction, but a lot of that comes, you know, from, from your race plates. So the main thing is, is weight, you know. Again, we're going to do 3 turns in a second. Yeah, a lighter ski is, is going to be um, it's gonna be easier, more nimble to achieve that. Yeah. And you're also just closer to the ground, you've got more responsiveness.

Yeah, cool. Awesome. Well, I really appreciate the, the time. Uh, by the way, people call you— call Ben Chappie. So, so thanks for coming along on the podcast, Chappie. If people want to find out, you know, more, uh, about yourself, and, you know, maybe their kids are into joining a program in Australia, in Parrishaw, or over in Whistler, is there any way they can get in touch with you?

Yeah, uh, happychappicoaching@outlook.com. Uh, super, super original there, is probably the easiest. Or happychappi200 on Instagram.

Perfect.

Awesome.

Yeah, and any parting words, you know, because I think part of this podcast was directed a bit at you know, we're both around a lot of people doing their instructing levels and maybe passing on a bit of advice there. Any, any final bits of advice for, for people listening that are instructors and moguls is where they want to improve their skiing? Yeah, any final words there?

Get out there and have, have fun with it. I mean, it sounds, uh, you know, it's, it's easy, it's easy to say, but I think it's easy to get stuck you're in a rut training for, especially field training for Level 3, you're in Level 4 where you, every run we're worried about, this is what, you know, my examiners want to see, or this is what the standard is. Go around, find bumps that aren't your exam bumps. You know, it might be a zipline course, it might be, you know, flatter bumps than normal. And get out there and play, you know, see how much variety you can have, see, see how many different dances your with the mountain you can have and how spicy, you know, can you make that tempo down the hill. You know, for where like newer to it, you know, that it doesn't have to be high speed down the hill, it's just increasing that tempo. You know, can you be, you know, when can you make those quick feet changes. So yeah, you can make easy flat bumps look exciting. And that's going to make it fun for you as well.

Yeah, I totally would agree that. I would say I'm just gonna have one more thing that resonated from a student I was coaching online this season who's really wanted to improve their bumps. And he mentioned, he was like, there's nothing like— you have to spend more time in the bumps. Like, it's just like such an obvious thing, but I think if people are honest with themselves and think about, okay, how much time do I spend training groomer-style skiing, short turns, long turns? So easy to rack up time there. But like, you probably see it too, so many people don't actually spend the same amount of hours, not even close to it. Like, 2 bump runs and like, oh, I'm done, instead of, you know, like 15, you know, mogul runs. Like, I think people just need to spend way more time in it. With what you suggested— being athletic, not overthinking it like technique-wise, just try and get your reactions and predictability of seeing certain shaped bumps and blah blah blah. And like, like the human brain and the body is pretty amazing at kind of figuring out a lot of stuff on its own. You just have to give it a chance.

Terrain-based learning.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So my, my piece of advice is be honest with yourself. Start counting how many mogul runs you actually do if you go out training, and compare with how many, like, paced type runs you would do. And you want to get closer towards, like, how much you would, uh, you would spend there. There's no substitute for that.

So last takeaway, actually, uh, some videos— maybe we can link these in the show notes. Yeah, but yeah, Ricky Berger's Imagination, we referenced earlier. Um, Guy Haslington has, uh, from All Tracks Academy, has a 3-part series on bumps. I think particularly part 3, he talks about line choice and has some really good visual representations of kind of different line options and why those options are good in, in different situations. And probably the best kind of video on that that I've seen. Um, and then last one is a guy just follow on Instagram is, uh, Ryuji Karabara. I think hopefully I haven't butchered that too much. Um, someone we both—

I'll put it— yeah, no, same. He's, he's incredible. He's got really cool style. I'll put, I'll put his Instagram handle in. Um, I met him very briefly in, in Japan. He's the one I was saying when I was talking about the, the Mogul, uh, tank. Like, he goes and builds— he builds— he's got this mogul tank he builds. He builds like a green run zipline course, a like greeny-blue zipline course, and a blue run course, and they're all off one lift. So people can go through, and it's the most amazing like mogul setup I think I've ever seen for just people wanting to get better at fall line style mogul skiing. So yeah, I would back up and say that guy's definitely worth following.

He's an ex-competitive mogul skier as well as technical demonstrator, so I guess has that merge between the two different, uh, the two different disciplines.

So quick story, do you know, not this season but last season, he was the number one technical bump skier, like the technical Japanese competitions, he won it.

Oh sick, I did not know that.

Yeah, and so the year before was his first time entering it because he'd finished doing the competitive, like, circuit and decided to do technical skiing. Did it, found out what the judges were looking for, trained the following winter, adapted his style, and then, you know, everyone's now— look, or last season anyway, I don't know who won it, uh, moguls this year, but yeah, he's, he's, he's awesome in the bumps.

Cool, thanks Tom. Great, great chatting, mate. Love talking about moguls anytime. And yeah, have fun getting in that team.

Thanks very much. Yeah, see you, chappy. This episode is brought to you by Carv, the digital ski coach. Now, one of the features I've had the most fun with all time is simply the fact that Carv tracks every single turn you make. I treat it a bit like Strava, so at the end of the day it tells me exactly how many turns I've done, and those numbers keep adding up across the season. So last season in Australia, I had a few days where I was doing nearly 2,500 1,000 turns, and my legs were tired, but it was really cool to try and have that number there motivating me. And I'm quietly working my way towards my 1 millionth turn with Carv. So the other metrics I've been diving into lately, and these are new for this season, are very unique, and these are turn corridor and turn radius. And I don't see many skiers using them, but they tell you a lot about the shape and flow of your skiing. So the turn corridor shows you how far you're traveling across the hill, or the time almost between apex to apex, and how long you're taking to transition. While the turn radius measures the actual arc you create once you start the turn. So these can be different. You can have like a very wide corridor, say 18 meters, but a lower turn radius, or the other way around. So when you compare the two, it opens up a whole world of experimentation, and it would be a bit like a race coach will set different types of race courses to influence a racer or skier to change the timing and mix it up. So I encourage you to look into this if you've got Carv and play with it and see if you can manipulate it, because it's only going to improve your versatility. So I keep my Carv on my boots every single day because you never know quite know when like a change in technique or a new ski resort or skis will show up in the numbers. And it's great at the end of the day being able to check that, or even after the fact. And I'm really looking forward to the day I open the app and I see turn number 1 million. So if you want to explore your skiing in a completely different way, check out Carv, the digital ski coach. And thank you, team, for sponsoring this episode.