Russ Wood Interview

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 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.

Okay, so these podcasts are going to start getting a little bit more casual. I'm not going to do my introduction, but today I'm speaking with Russ Wood from Whistler, Canada. Russ, can you say hi?

Hey Tom, how's it going? Good to talk to you.

Yeah, yeah, it was really good to see you back in, um, February, wasn't it, when I came over to Whistler? And, um, so we got to spend a bit of time and do some stuff together. But for the people that don't know you out there in podcast land, um, can you just say who you are? So I guess, you know, what you do in the ski industry.

Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, I'm born and raised in British Columbia, Canada, so I've been skiing here all my life. I started off skiing in a small little hill up in northern BC, you know, one T-bar to the top, and I guess there wasn't a whole lot to do up there other than go around gates, so I did that for a while and kind of got good enough to make it out of my region, but only just good enough to make it out of the region competing in ski races because then I'd get smoked when I went to a provincial level race. But anyway, just ski raced in high school, came down to Vancouver, to the Big Smoke, to go to school and did a degree in kinesiology and kind of thought I was going to go in the direction of kind of a physical trainer kind of angle to life.

Yep.

But then I started teaching skiing, I guess, when I was around 20, and been doing that ever since. You know, done tons of different roles within the snow school and been Whistler in the last— I was the training manager for about 5 or 6 years, and then the last almost 10 years I've been the general manager of all the private lessons we do there.

And your role within the CSIA?

Yeah, yeah, that's where I was going to go. Yeah, so I mean, I teach courses for the CSIA. Do all the courses. I mainly, mainly do the course conductor training and the Level 4 course these days. I don't have— just don't have enough time to do much more with the CSA, but I love doing the courses and the exams. And I've been lucky enough to make 3 interski teams, so be heading off to Bulgaria here in a little while.

Yeah, exciting. Yeah, so you guys were just at some training Is that right?

Yeah, that's right. We just did a 2-day training camp in Sunshine at the end of April, which was awesome. Blue sky, good hard snow, and it was the first time we had the whole team together.

Yeah, how'd that go?

Yeah, it was great. You know, I'd skied with, you know, JF and I go back a few years, so it was good to ski with him again. And Sunny, I'd skied with Sunny and I were on the same team in Korea way back. Yeah, that was great, you know, and good just to ski with different people and ski hard for 2 days. We really did give her, so I left those 2 days of skiing, I was sore by the end of 2 days.

Yeah, that's a good sign. So, I mean, the first thing I was going to ask is, since you've been in the ski industry for so long, what aspect of skiing do you think has kept you interested for such a long time? like what is it? Is it the lifestyle? Is it part of skiing, technical side? What is it, do you think, that's kept you in the game for so long?

Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure what it was, but I know what it is now. It's that I got nothing else. I don't know how to do anything else, so I'm a leisure. Yeah, you know, I think I— I mean, like I said, I started off doing a degree in human kinetics or kinesiology, so I always had a, I guess, some sort of drive to understand how mechanics works in sports. And so yeah, I mean, I think that's probably been the driving force that's kept me going. And I, you know, not that I really am interested in methodology and more of the how, to what we teach, but I guess as time has gone on and I actually have less and less time myself on the hill, probably what keeps me motivated and keeps me engaged is more just the what we're teaching out there. And, you know, I guess there's just only so much time in the day to still focus on all the different aspects of skiing and teaching skiing. So that's, yeah, I would say, you know, just why we do what we do. You know, I really, you know, as you know, I'm super interested in what you're doing and Riley and JF and all the guys. I think, you know, people kind of pushing it and trying to ski better and try different things is really, really interesting to me.

Yeah, cool. So what are you, what have you been playing with this winter, like for your own skiing?

Yeah, you know, I think that's, I mean probably as you interview more and more people over 40, they just start talking about their boots and their body because you just start to fall apart. But I would say for sure, you know, I've just— I never used to have any body issues in my late 20s and through my 30s. And now, I mean, I don't, I don't have large ones, but I would say I have asymmetries in my skiing that I'm trying to work out that I think are are body-related and/or boot-related, so I'm always trying to work on that and play with my boots and just play with how I stand on the skis. But then I would say the other thing I've been working on aside from that is, this is going to sound kind of weird, but I spend a fair amount of time looking at tracks on the snow. So I'll do a turn, whether it be skidded or carved or some blended version, and just try to, yeah, really identify what's actually happening, you know, between the ski and the snow to, I guess, to try to justify certain thoughts or to break things down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting because that's what you, part of what you sort of presented when you were doing the teaching component of the Demo Team Triad, is that right?

Yeah, yeah, kind of. I used, I mean, I basically just, you know, did an old turn in front of people, but instead of doing a turn in front of people and saying, hey, look at how I move or the way I look, my body looks at a certain part of the turn, that wasn't the point of the demonstration. The point of the demonstration was to lay a track in the snow and then look at the track in the snow and, you know, decide what's happening with edge angle. Certain times and, yeah, um, you know, how, how we actually try, how we actually go around an arc.

Yeah, because that sort of— you wanting to present that idea has sort of come from, I guess, you, well, training with, with people coming through going for their high-end Level 4 certification and other trainers and high-end skiers from the CSIA. And I guess this idea that We talked about it like there's this magic that happens at the top of the turn, and so everyone's like, top of the turn, top of the turn, and you're like, well, actually, you know, a lot really needs to happen at the bottom because that's the bit that's going to push you across. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know for sure. I mean, I, I, I do think we've had an infatuation with the top part of the turn for I don't know, I actually think at least in Canada here we're kind of coming out of it, but it seemed to me for a long time that if you were, if you talked about actually putting effort into edging after the fall line, it was a bit of a failure. If you hadn't just like figured it all out above the fall line, then you weren't really skiing very well. And that never really made sense to me. So I spent a fair amount of time just, I guess, trying to debunk or just trying to— not debunk, maybe that's the wrong word, but just try to understand exactly what happens. And yeah, I mean, top of the turn is important, but really the whole turn is important.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because Ron LeMaster mentioned something in his book about, I think that you talked about, to do with edging and the end of the turn, that just naturally being on a slope as you start coming out of the fall line, edge angle is increasing anyway. So have you kind of tried to, I guess, get this point across with people you ski with or in how you train people? Um, because I know this has come up before when we've chatted.

Yeah, yeah, you know, like, I, um I mean, what I had seen, and I know we've talked about this lots, and maybe just to back up a step, I mean, it's not that I don't— I think I definitely try to go out there and get sensations in my skiing, but I think something that at least I try to be very careful of as a kind of teacher of teachers is, so, you know, when I train people, not that the feeling that they get isn't important, it totally is, but I I always want to make sure that people understand what is actually happening in their skiing because sometimes feelings can be misleading.

Yes.

And, you know, one of my examples of that is the— and I think it comes from this idea, and there's been lots of pictures drawn of, you know, that the force and the turn at the fall line points straight across the hill, and so that must be the perfect moment in time to press hard and go trampolining across the fall line. And I think there is actually somewhat of a feeling of a trampoline effect in skiing, but what I've observed, especially at least in Canada, as we were talking about that a lot, is I just continually saw, you know, pretty good skiers, ski instructors, good skiers, kind of get to the fall line and then just stop putting any effort into edging. They would actually start to turn. You know, if they were turning to the right and they were at the fall line on their left foot, they'd get to the fall line and all of a sudden they would just turn their body to the right expecting that they were magically just going to go across the hill, which of course they weren't, and they would just lose their outside ski and go straight down the hill. So, So yeah, I've spent a fair amount of time, and in that Interski demonstration, what I tried to do is, aside from a few things, just actually looking at the track in the snow, you know, really what you can see is that the edge angle probably doesn't diminish until, I don't know, I mean, if you could split the turn into 10 segments, it might not diminish until the until the 9th segment of a turn.

Yep.

Uh, it's, it's really quite late. Uh, I mean, I think the, you know, and it may be that the actual effort of edging, uh, diminishes earlier than that, but as you say, because as you go across the slope, uh, edge is going to increase naturally because of that slope. Um, it's just not the case that, uh, the edges are flattening sometime just after the fall line, at least, at least if you want to get more than a cat track across. If you're trying to get, you know, kind of a nice big turn, 3 or 4 cat tracks on a decently steep blue run, um, yeah, the turn goes way deeper than that, and I think that's not a bad thing.

Yeah, yep, yeah, definitely. And so have you been able to get this across clearly to people, like for instance this season?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's always interesting when I do these demos because I mean, people have, you know, heard certain things and may have their understanding, but I mean, you can't argue with what the track is showing you in the snow. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, I'm not trying to do anything different. And, you know, one of the analogies I've used, I mean, just speaking about direction as an example, is, and yeah, and that this idea of a trampoline or a catapult or something where It kind of gives the idea that we bounce, you know, like a trampoline, you bounce off a trampoline, or the word deflection, a puck deflects off of the boards and, you know, playing hockey. Again, they're really nice terms, and actually one of the things I think sometimes we fight, you know, people who are trying to describe things accurately fight is sometimes describing describing things accurately doesn't sound quite as rock star as describing things through sensation. Yeah. Deflection and trampoline and all these things sound awesome, but one of the ways I've just been really looking at it is I think we ski more like a luge or a bobsled goes around a corner.

Yeah.

In that really what we do is You know, we create all the things we do with our body. What that does is that sets our ski at some sort of angle against the snow, and then the ski actually digs into the snow to a certain degree, and that creates a wall in the snow that pushes on us, just like the wall of a bobsled track pushes on the bobsled.

Yep.

And that's really, you know, that's how we actually go around an arc.

Yeah.

All the movements are what we do in order to make that happen, but One of the guys I've talked to a lot over the years, a guy named Martin Olson, I think I've mentioned to you, he has a great quote which is, "Don't push on the snow, make the snow push on you." And there's a lot of people out there I find trying to bounce or push or deflect that are really trying to— they're trying to make a turn instead of just creating angles with the ski against the snow and making the snow push them around, around, around arcs.

Yes, yep, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I, I must say this, uh, last trip to Canada, that was probably the main, uh, idea, main goal I was trying to achieve in my turns was I was actually thinking about it in a similar way, creating a, a wall or a platform, whatever you want for in the snow. But then, because I'm so interested in the body, is timing of when I stiffen my body or create tension so that I get a better, uh, kind of the snow pushes against me more in a more solid way. So, um, yes, I think, you know, technique has been you know, across the country has been kind of figured out. You know, we know we need to angulate, we know there's going to be this sort of separation between the joints and, and that sort of stuff. But, um, I don't know if there's much other than, you know, these sensations. Oh, it's like jumping on a trampoline, or it's like, you know, this kind of deflection feeling. Um, there hasn't been a lot of talk about tension or timing of when things are stiff or loose.

Yeah, I would even say, I would even say like to your point, and it's actually something that again never made sense to me, but I probably didn't speak up for too long. But I mean, yeah, you'll hear a lot of great coaches talk about skiing loose, which I mean, I guess there may be certain muscles in the body that are loose, but I mean, at the end of the day, if you're at a GS race course on hard snow, going 60 kilometers an hour, if your outside leg is loose or any part of the body that is taking the forces is loose, you're hooted. I mean, loose is not an accurate term, I don't think. I agree, there's probably various levels of tension in different parts of the body, but there's tension everywhere, probably.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Otherwise, like you said, we'd be completely floppy. But yeah, I think that's a— it's definitely a tricky thing to get across to people because tension can be kind of thought of in a negative kind of term as well. As well as you get on a steep slope and people tend to tense up. Perhaps in a way that's not going to achieve this deflection that you're after. So it is, it is quite a tricky concept to get across, and that's probably where people are, you know, they may have felt a sensation of the, the snow kind of pushing on them, and, and maybe them pushing back at it is them trying to tense. But I guess the real magic in, in someone like Marcel Hirscher, or just anyone on the World Cup really, has to have have that ability is them finding the right amount of effort to resist collapsing against the force, against, um, the centrifugal force, I guess, trying to pull them outside the turn. So then the ski bends and continues to turn them across.

Yeah, no, yeah, for sure. I mean, that's— I think that's the game, is, is matching, matching what the ski gives you, matching the amount of tension in the body to the amount of force exerted on you so that you don't crumble. You don't need any more than that, and that's probably, you're right, that's probably where tension becomes inhibiting is where there's more tension in the body than is actually needed. That's for sure fair enough, I think.

Yeah, like there's a swimming coach I follow, He's got an online site called— what's it called? His name's Terry Loughlin. Anyway, he talks a lot about tension and sort of timing of tension for swimming. So keeping the spine long and under tension as opposed to gripped and the core held. And then the arms being tense at certain times and loose at others.

Right.

So you're sort of pulling, not pulling yourself through the water, almost kind of like passing your arms. As you put the arm in the water, your body continues to go past it as opposed to you pulling on the water, which is what most people try and do. But yeah, if people are interested, he's got some really cool concepts out there about tension and timing and the amount of tension needed to, I guess, get the job done. So, you know, after the presentation to some of the ski pros at Whistler, did you notice any of your instructors or people you went with playing with some of the ideas that I presented?

Yeah, you know, I mean, I was That was awesome, Tom. And you know, I think I would say we noticed two things. One, what we noticed was, we just noticed people talking about ski mechanics or ski technique or whatever you want to call it. People were engaged and thinking about it and trying different things, which, you know, for us was probably goal number one, was just to get people thinking about it and trying new things and being engaged. Yeah, so that was awesome. And then, yeah, I don't know, I would say if I had to talk about one thing that maybe really got people talking was, you know, in Canada, we really, if we talk about separation, we really, in a rotational sense, we really only talk about it in the hip joint. So when you were talking about it in the, you know, lower down than that or upper or higher up, but especially lower down, like in the tibia fibula or the foot, and in actually making turning efforts down there. I would say that probably, you know, was an area that got people really thinking and trying stuff out.

Yeah, cool, because I remember you've played around with the foot thing. Have you played any more with the foot supination?

I haven't played any more with it to the degree that you're talking about. About it. But I am, I did, you know, just to go down that path for a sec, I mean, I would say the other thing I've been really working on or thinking about a lot lately is just, like I say, I mean, how do we use our pieces of equipment to actually do what they're supposed to do? I've actually in the last 10 years probably spent as much time mountain biking as I have skiing. And when you, and, but but coming at it from a relatively novice level. And so it's great being on that learning curve again. Yes. But what is really interesting on a bike, and I'm sure lots of other sports, is that compared to the way I looked at my skis, I really look, and especially the last few years as I started to get better, I really looked at my bike as a piece of sports equipment that I needed to manipulate in certain ways to get certain outcomes. And so I'm actually, you know, as technical-minded as I am in skiing, I'm not at all in biking. But I really, I bike with almost an outer body vision of what I'm trying to do. And really it's not about what my body's trying to do, it's about how far over I need to tip the bike, how much I need to turn the steering wheel, all those factors to go around corners. And so same idea for skiing. I mean, I've actually the last, I'd say a couple years, really just tried to think more not about how I need to move, but what do I need, what angle do I need my skis, like edge angle do I need my skis, and then what edge or what kind of steering angle against my line of momentum do I need my skis. But further to that, I mean, I think this is what you're getting to with the lower leg is our skis as a piece of equipment are actually designed to spin around themselves. That's why they're not center-mounted. They're mounted back of center with a wider shovel than a tail because that creates an imbalance in the torques that are active around the pivot point of your boot. And because of that, if you let it, your tip will always want to spin up and your tail will always want to spin out, you know, kind of the bow tie effect that some people call it. And so something I've worked on a lot, or not, I wouldn't even say worked on, but just really played with, is creating, you know, what we would call like an intermediate parallel turn, or, you know, a turn where the ski's track is maybe 6 inches wide, maybe a foot wide, but getting the track to be that wide not through actively turning the leg, but by actually controlling how much I edge it. And if you actually just control the amount of effort in your ankle, if you have a lot of— what I find is if you have a lot of tension in the ankle, that will hold the ski on its track and therefore carve. If you give in to some of that tension in the ankle and kind of let the foot supinate a little bit, then the ski will want to twist on itself and create a width of track. And so you can really play with the width of your track that you leave, not just by actively turning your legs, but more the activity in your lower leg to control how the ski twists on itself.

Yeah, I think you just put that really well. I believe that not enough people allow— I guess once the snow pushes on you, allows that force to move the equipment or move the snow— let's move the ski, sorry. And so then it comes down to you, yeah, not actively doing things, more controlled letting things in your body move. Yeah, which is really kind of flips most people's probably effortful skiing on its head. Um, but I totally agree, that's what I feel when I'm skiing really well, especially in the moguls. Um, yeah, I really feel that, and I feel like moguls is an area that I probably feel better in than even piste snow because I like that feeling of the terrain sort of making things happen in your body, you know, pushing you into a separated position, pushing you into an absorbed position.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I think I mentioned in the talk that letting things, letting forces push on your body, that force or load through the muscles is an eccentric load to to the muscular system, which is a much stronger and efficient way to use your muscles. So yeah, it really kind of, I guess, can be backed up with a bit of science and reasoning why that would be a good way to go in your skiing.

Yeah, and you know, I mean, what's interesting as well, I mean, you know, most countries, I would say in Canada for sure, you know, we put an emphasis on separation between lower and upper body. Lots of people come through the higher, you know, level 3 and level 4 and they rotate and they rotate and they're told not to rotate and they're told to turn their legs, turn your legs, turn your legs, and the more they try to turn their legs, the more they rotate and it's frustrating. I've actually had good success with "rotators" by actually having them put less effort into exactly what you're talking about, less effort into actively turning their legs and more effort into just creating a tiny bit through an active move probably early in the turn, especially if you're going slower or you need to, but then just managing it and just balancing against it. And yeah, it's kind of crazy when you see those people who are just, they're trying so hard to turn their legs, but it's, I mean really once the ski has as you and I know, once the ski is on edge to any decent amount, the actual turning of the femur is just going to drive the tip into the snow. It's not going to twist the ski on its axis.

Yep.

So, um, it's not the answer at that point, really.

Yeah, yep. I know, uh, one of, one of the people that's had a really good influence on me, one of my trainers, Andy Ray, um, the head of the APSI, he will in a Level 3 course, he'll do a drill um, where he gets people a big wide open greenish-blue slope, and you initiate a parallel turn by just sort of going in a traverse and trying to almost do nothing. You just let the ski tips start pulling you into a turn and just feel, you know, that would be the most littlest effort put in to make it happen. And so it gets people that sensation of trying to, yeah, let the forces come to them a little bit more rather than needing to be so active in it. And, um, yeah, once you feel that, I guess you can start playing with bringing up the level of active turning. And, um, yeah, and like you said, using more edging to get the ski to kind of turn, turn your body.

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 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.

Into that separated position. So yeah, it's quite a confusing one, isn't it? Because all right, I mean, that's probably especially between the APSI, the CSIA, the PSIA, we all, you know, it's like, turn your legs, turn your legs. It's, you know, it's like a dogma, you know.

Yeah, and I, I mean, I mean, I would say, I mean, I mean, you and I both love to ski bumps and love to do short turns. I mean, I, I by no means, I mean, I, I'm a full believer in, in that you need the ability to turn the leg and hip socket. I mean, that's, yeah, you know, I believe that. And, and there's definitely a time when that happens to a decent degree, you know, maybe you're in the air, you're doing a very, very short turn on some very, very steep terrain where you're right above the line, you know, those are definitely times where the ski's not pushing on you, so you're going to have to make something happen, and you've got to land with a decent steering angle to control speed. I mean, those are all very legitimate uses for it. Absolutely. You know, one of the— I mean, I know people in the Southern Hemisphere are going to start skiing again here soon, but kind of like what Andy's talking about, a drill I've had my people do, and it usually, well, I usually confuse them at first, but it definitely makes sense later on, is to start a turn carved, so, you know, whatever, like you say, like going relatively quickly on a green or easy blue, start the turn carved, and then somewhere around the fall line, and the way I describe it to them is to, I try not to use the word make because that infers doing something active. I usually use the word get, so try to get the ski to make a width of track, so to brake, and then hold it broke for a little bit, let it brake, and then bring it back on to its line to carve. So it'll be a carve turn and then a turn with some width of track and then carved again all within one arc. And just kind of think to yourself, what are the moves that you make, or what are the— or how, I mean, in my opinion, how do you manipulate tension to allow the ski to twist on itself, and then how do you manipulate tension to put the ski back on its track again. At least in my experience, it's not a femur and hip socket move that does that. It's more of a lower leg controlled effort. So, anyway, it's an interesting drill to just go play around with.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I was rereading Ron LeMaster's book. I just visited my mom and that's where I'd kept the book and I brought it home now. But yeah, it was just good to go back over some of his concepts, even him breaking down the three planes of motion, sagittal and frontal plane, transverse plane. Plane, what's— what exactly is going on when these good skiers come around, come around a corner. Um, yeah, and so much of it is happening in that frontal or lateral plane, um, that I think, uh, yeah, is one of the planes of motion that people get stuck with, uh, the most. Especially since when, you know, as humans, we don't really move laterally very much. We're kind of back and forward, you know, we stay on top of our feet, we turn around and twist, but we never really need to go side to side very much. It's a very unique kind of thing in the sport of skiing compared to most other sports, I guess, how much lateral motion and balance is there. Like the fore and aft is, you're not actually really, you're only moving fore and aft with your feet kind of relatively still. So, um, yeah, it's one area that's sort of, I guess, is, is a trickier thing to, to start training in your body to, to bring about, is that control in that frontal lateral plane. Would you agree with that, or—

yeah, no, for sure. I mean, yeah, no, I mean, everyday life does not prepare us very well for sliding on sticks, that's for sure. Yeah, but, um Yeah, I know, I agree. I mean, I think the other thing that Ron, I mean, I've been the same, I'm lucky I've got a good relationship with Ron, we go back and forth, and I was thumbing through his book and he has the concept of platform angle he talks about, which is really the angle of, I'm probably going to mess this up, I think it's between the ledge that your ski makes in the snow and your center of mass. —and if that is less than 90 degrees, so acute, the ski will hold, and if it's more than 90 degrees, the ski will slide. And I mean, you can feel that really just by side slipping on the hill and, you know, kind of just using a little knee angulation or whatever it is so that your center of mass really isn't moving into the hill, but you increase edge angle, and of course, you know, the ski's grab and then you kind of roll the knees and the ankles to the outside and the ski slides. And I think that when I go back to that turn that I'm talking about, the carved, skidded, carved turn, I think that's actually what you're playing with is you're playing with your platform angle as you go through the arc and you're either adjusting it so that it grips and arcs or you're adjusting it so that it slips on itself and then the ski spins. and you're just— that's— yeah, but it's a concept that, um, yeah, I really don't think a lot of people, uh, understand, but it's kind of fundamental. Yeah, yeah.

And so, I mean, in— and that's why I guess when you say it's really a lower leg and foot movement, I mean, the thing that's going to really change that, uh, platform angle is down at those joints, because if you don't change that lower leg and foot, movements made in the upper body either are not going to affect down there what your leg is doing, or it's going to be so far from it, it's going to have a minute sort of effect. Um, yeah, so it definitely would be something coming from that, that lower area. And then again, comes down to if the person's boots allow them to, or set themselves up with easiest sort of access to that 90-degree platform angle to begin with. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, it's a bit— it's just like you, you know, we've talked about it before, but how many times you muck around with your boots in a season, it can just make you think you're going a little bit loopy to get that perfect feeling. Because, and you know what, it's probably because halfway through the season some of the, you know, your muscles are tired in certain areas, and so you've changed the alignment or the ability to, for that platform angle to be where it was in December, and now you're tight, and so you're like, oh God, now I need 2 degrees cant, and then you, you know, you take a bit of time off and you come back skiing at the very end of the season, and now that 2-degree cant's too much, you need 1.5. Yeah, it's kind of tricky. I'd never thought about that, but, but I guess that's probably possibly what's going on when with people that are constantly mucking around with their boots is their body's kind of changing. So that platform angle that they're creating, I guess, aligning the center of mass with the, with that perpendicular kind of base, yeah, is, is a little bit of a moving target at times. It's always changing.

Yeah, I mean, I think you're right too. I mean, you think about it, you think of all the aches and pains you have, especially if you're skiing full-time and you're skiing 100, 120 days a year and your back hurts, your knee hurts, or you wrenched your something or other when you're skiing the bumps. I mean, it would actually be really almost impossible to go through a season with the same body alignment. Yeah. You know, I think it would be less likely that that would actually happen than it would stay the same. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess it makes sense that the, you know, it's a good plug for boot fitters. Yes, you know, keep breaking it in. That's right, that's right.

I couldn't believe one, one, uh, in the last week when I was skiing at Sun Peaks, I had a new pair of liners, um, just from a newer Fischer boot, and I changed it just because I wanted a different tongue. Anyway, put them in my same shell, these liners that I hadn't played around with, and I went out and I actually couldn't ski. I was— yeah, all I'd changed, the liner was narrower in the forefoot and the tongue was stiffer. And right, yeah, I did a run. And you know, when you're swapping, you know, the afternoon, you've got 3 hours to ski because your wife's looking after the baby and you looked after the baby in the morning. You treasure every single minute. So I was kind reversing going, why did I muck around with that? I should have just, you know, kept it. But it was, it was just good to realize how much that equipment, no matter how much control I have over my body and whatever, if it's not right down there, it just makes it so hard because that platform angle is just mucked up, I guess.

So, well, and I think that's something I've thought about before and, you know, it's too bad I don't, I think it's not on more courses, but I think most ski instructors need to get up to some sort of Level 3, APSI, PSI level. I mean, just to spend a day and not to try to figure out what the right canting is for yourself, but just to figure out the consequences of when you adjust things. To go out there and just start with cuffs straight and no nothing under your boots, no shim under your boots, and do a run. And then crank your cuffs out, go ski. What does that feel like? Crank your cuffs in, you know, just change one variable at a time. Yeah, come in, what does that feel like? Put it back to neutral, do a 1-degree fat side in, leave them at neutral, 1-degree fat side out. Like, just go through however many, you know, options at 10 to 15 options there are there, and, um it's amazing. It really is amazing the difference it'll make and the different sensations it'll give you.

But yeah, I'd highly recommend that too. Yeah, it's a very good experiment, if not only for yourself, but to realize what possibly, if you're an instructor, what your clients are going through. And when you're trying to teach them to do something and they cannot, and you're struggling to get that across, that Yeah, could be coming from something else.

So, well, or even just, you know, yeah, I mean, I agree. I mean, you look at your everyday skier and the, you know, you look at the, the angle of the boot, like the upper cuff of the boot is, or the whole boot is way more vertical than like their thigh, you know, like the whole lower leg is just straight up and down compared to the rest of their butt is in and their thighs are in. And you're looking at that going, what is No way that ski's gonna hold. Yeah, it's just not in a million years. I mean, you know, there's got 2 inches of slop around the top of your boot. It's just not gonna happen. So yeah, um, yep.

Anyway, exactly. Um, Russ, was there any other things, any other topics you wanted to bring up, um, thought would be worth talking about before we kind of wrap it up?

Uh, yeah, I don't know. Um, I mean, I think you brought up a good point there about— we were talking about rotational alignment and ability to turn the legs. I think I've mentioned to you once, and I remember one of my very first years as a Level 4, which is going back like 20 years, watching Norm Kreutz come down a blue run doing intermediate parallel, and Norm used to preach separation and turning your legs. If you didn't do that, you were in hot water. You weren't getting courses. But I remember watching him come down here and I thought, "The guy's lying. He's not doing what he's preaching." Because I watched him come down and he actually didn't show a ton of separation. I mean, he wasn't rotating, of course, but he didn't show a ton of separation. It took me probably until the last 7 or 8 years to reflect back on that and just go, No, you know, the legs were, you know, the legs started or the skis turned initially slightly faster than the upper body, but then really, you know, this is something you asked me about, I'm kind of working on, or, you know, turns to me that feel right are, you know, especially slightly larger turns are ones where, you know, you kind of set your angles up early in the turn, rotationally, and then I get the sensation that the ski— I try to get the skis and the outside of my body to travel around the arc at the same rate. I don't want one or— I mean, as long as I'm just in the arc, if I want to change the arc, like get off it or tighten it, then that might have to change. But, you know, really just trying to have the outside of my body travel around the arc at the same rate as my skis. I don't want it to go faster because I'm going to pull myself in a rotation. I don't want it to go slower. 'cause I'm going to open up and probably get back and inside. So yeah, I just think that's a good cue for people to just think about is think about how quickly they have one half of their brain on their skis, one half of their brain on the outside of their body, and try to understand the relationship to the two. Because if they're, you know, I don't know, I just get the sense that when I watch most good skiers, I use a very layman term of slightly separated. I see most good skiers stand on their skis with slight separation, and that gives them enough, you know, facing to the outside to angulate when they want to. But that's it. You don't need any more than that. And actually, sorry, this does just remind me of back to my kind of making tracks on the snow. I was out there one day and people probably thought I was nuts because I was taking pictures of my ski tracks on fresh groom, but I did a bunch of intermediate parallel turns and then I walked back up with my skis on and put my skis into the track and then I, you know, the track was maybe 6, 8, 10 inches wide, somewhere in there, and then I just moved my tip if you can imagine like a width of track, and I actually only did it on my outside ski so the inside ski track didn't get in the way. Yeah. And then I just took the tip of my ski and moved it to the inside of the track, and then therefore the tail of my ski moved to the outside of the track. Yeah. And then I moved it back to be in the middle, and then I moved it back so the tip touched the inside and the tail the outside. And it was probably, And this was actually quite a— I mean, I did it in all speeds, but I did a lot going quite slow, so a very steered turn where you would really traditionally go, "Wow, you must have really turned your legs a lot." And I would estimate it was about 5 degrees, the amount that my ski had actually twisted against the surface of the snow. It was— It's not much. It was not much at all. It was really not much at all. So, you know, back to your question about, you know, what I've been trying to work on with some students is just to work on the precision and accuracy and timing of turning your legs, not the amount that you can turn your legs. Because you don't actually need to turn them a ton, but you need to turn them precisely and with control and at the right time of the turn.

And would you say that effort or focused moving the tip and the tail was coming from a particular area, upper part of your leg, lower part of your leg, the whole leg?

Well, when I was— what I— when I'm not— it's hard to describe, but what I would actually do is I just do one turn and then I'd skate back up. So when I'm describing moving my tip to the inside, I'm actually stationary. Oh, standing there. Yep. I'm standing, I'm standing there and just doing it to try to get a sense of how much my ski actually twisted on the surface of the snow. Yep. So there it's not, it wasn't really about, about how.

Yeah. Okay. But I guess you, there would have been from where if you, so the first one was your single edge kind of. Yeah. In the snow. And then if you, if you start with your ski, you walk back up and you place your ski in that track, then you have to lift it up and change it. Correct. So how did you reckon you did that? What do you think?

Well, that, yeah, I mean, I think that was more in the traditional, you know, upper femur kind of, kind of move. But what was, but again, it wasn't, I wasn't actually skiing. I was just trying to figure out how much I actually moved the ski. But when you do, I mean, and like I say, if other people want to geek out and do this, I highly recommend it. But when I went up and looked at the track, there's another misconception, I think. Another big misconception out there is that you continue to turn your legs through a turn, or at least I think that's a misconception in Canada. And what I observe when I look at my track in the snow is that the width of track goes from, you know, if you're only on one ski, if I'm making a turn to the left, so I'm on my right ski, you can see the ski be flat. The ski creates its width of track quite quickly, and so I do think that is probably a traditional, you know, turning the leg and hip socket kind of move. And then, so the track gets to kind of its full width within no more than 2 ski lengths. Like, I'd probably say within 1 ski length, the the width has been set, and then that width stays the same all the way through the turn. And so that's something where I was kind of battling with this thing of, do we really keep on turning our legs? If we did keep on turning our legs throughout the turn, I would think that the track width would get wider, but it doesn't. Unless you're a J-turn, like a J-short turn, it does a bit, but I'm talking about a kind of an even radius turn. And so, yeah, I mean, the width of the track is very minimal and it stays consistent. My belief of where the— I do think it's kind of, you know, maybe this might bring us full circle. I think it comes back to the feeling. I do believe that the feeling of turning your legs grows as you go through a turn, even like especially a skidded arc. You know, if you think of doing like a high-edge skidded arc, so what we would call an advanced parallel in Canada, but like, you know, not carved, almost carved, but high-edge angle. You know, as you go past the fall line and as you go deeper into the turn, edge angle gets larger, and if you have the more edge angle increases with a ski that's turned slightly against your line of momentum, it takes more and more effort in your legs just to hold the ski at its same angle. So I think people feel an increase in effort as they go through a turn, and they equate that to actually turning a leg more. Yes. But really, in order to match, like you were saying before, in order to match the snow as you go deeper in the arc, it takes more effort. But you're not turning your legs more, you're just You're just matching what the snow is giving you. Yep, yep.

Yeah, and you can just feel that, you know, I was just there, I stood up and I put my feet parallel and I turned myself into a slightly separated position. And to stay there requires effort. My body doesn't want to stay there. It wants to uncoil and go straight again where the muscles are kind of neutral-ish, or the tension is even all around. But yeah, definitely. So, so that feeling of turning your legs through the arc kind of constantly is— yeah, like you said, could be equated to that effort to maintain that position, not let it kind of undo. Um, yeah, and I think commonly Yeah, or a common problem can be that effort is quite hard, and so the ski will break off through trying to hold that, hold that position, or this idea of continually set— holding separation or creating more separation through the turn. It definitely takes quite a bit of awareness, doesn't it, in your body to come to that feeling. Like you said, many, many, many years of doing it and doing it. And yeah, I remember Paul Lorenz said to me one day on the lift, we were doing some training, and he just said to me, he said, I wish I could just, you know, plug into you and give you a feeling. Because I could describe to you, you know, all these different ways, but for me, you know, him, he has this internal feeling. He said, I just wish I could plug that feeling into you so you could feel it. Because then I reckon you'd get it. And that's true. But yeah, people just got to put the effort, the time into to come across it themselves, I guess, which is part of why I guess we've all stayed doing it because it does feel awesome when you kind of get those feelings right. Yeah, no, no, totally. Yeah. Hey, so Russ, I was going to say that maybe the final thing Are you allowed to say or talk about what you guys, the CSIA, is presenting at Bulgaria?

Oh, that's a great question. You know what, actually, I don't think that's been decided. When we were in Sunshine there, somebody asked that, and Warren and John are, I guess, still going through that process of figuring out what we're presenting. So that's just as much a secret for me and I think they're working on it. So we were, like I say, we were more just working on skiing and trying to create some similarities and movement patterns and things like that.

Yeah, yeah. Had you skied with Luke before?

Luke Morin? Yeah, no, I've skied with Luke a decent amount. Actually, it was, you know, Luke hasn't been in the West that long, but I got to know him fairly quickly. He actually shadowed me last year when the Level 4 course was in Sunshine, so we skied together for a couple a couple days and I shouldn't say this but I actually didn't really know Luke Kaina very well and then he was shadowing in my session and I'm like, holy crap, this guy's a good skier. So yeah, so now I've been lucky enough to ski with Luke a decent amount for sure. I think he's skiing super well.

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting when I think about the people on the team. There's definitely some different body shapes, you know, tall and lean and wider and shorter and like it's— like yeah, it's interesting. So that would be, as with any kind of team, that's kind of challenging to get everyone to create a similar picture when you've got a different makeup.

Yeah, yeah, I think so. Although I mean, yeah, I guess it's definitely a factor. At the same time, yeah, I don't know, I mean, actually, Luke and I had a couple of passes there when we were there, when we were doing, you know, in-sync short radius within, you know, 3 or 4 feet of each other, just side by each, and actually found it really pretty easy. So, yeah, I guess size, but mechanics, I think, is ultimately, I mean, if you move the same way in the same sequence, I think it's, It's, that's always the easiest, you know, so. Yep, yep.

Excellent. All right. So it's a, to summarize, it's, it's, it's in the works what's going to be presented. Yeah. Yeah.

No, no, people have to show up and see. It's going to be, it's going to be amazing. Yeah, I bet.

All right. Well, I'm going to wrap it up. Yes. If there's anything else you wanted to to talk about. When do you get back on snow?

Oh, I won't be back on snow till November, late November probably.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lots, lots of, lots of time off. Lots of time. No plans to come south.

Yep, cool. Lots of biking, lots of—

try to get the body healed up again.

Yeah, healed up after the winter. Yeah, so, uh, great. Well, thanks very much for your time, Russ. Always good catching up, and yeah, look forward to chatting with you soon. I'm sure I'll hit you up with a few, you know, things I've been playing with when I get to New Zealand. Yeah, right on. Yeah, but yeah, thanks again for your time, and yeah, look forward to chatting again soon. Cool, thanks, Tom. Okay, see you, Russ. Bye. Goodbye.

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 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.