Tim Cafe - ex Olympian and Alice Robinson’s former race coach

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.

Welcome back to another episode of the Global Skiing Podcast. Now this episode has been a long time coming. I've been wanting to interview Tim Caife after we worked together and lived together in Wanaka, New Zealand, and I really got to know this guy because he was living in the room next door to me and we traveled up the hill every day and we grew to become really good friends, which I'm really grateful for. But the thing that really intrigued me and made me decide this guy needs to have his voice heard on the podcast was after experiencing an adjustment to my bindings from what Tim did. And he was, you know, we worked together, he just sees my skis and he goes, hey, I think you need to adjust something with your binding. They're set for GS mode, not slalom mode. Do you want me to do that for you? And I said, yeah, sure. And anyway, you'll hear about that experience in this episode. But further than that, in that same season, he also adjusted the boss Garrett's skis for the Rookie Academy. So he changed his skis from being unskiable to a ski that he really enjoyed. And he also changed one of the other coaches, Marie-Claude, her Rossignol skis after seeing her sort of make some turns and, and do something that he thought wasn't a technical issue but a movement pattern caused by where her bindings were mounted. So I thought this guy knows something that most others don't, and so I wanted to interview him so then you, the listener, can, can have more information, and that's always useful to help you make your own decisions. Now to get you primed and ready, a few things about Tim. He's a world champion, a world championship ski racer, 2 times. I think you'll hear in there he finishes somewhere, highest is somewhere like 31st in the world, which is so impressive. He raced for New Zealand in the Vancouver Olympics, and he coached my favourite ski racer, Alice Robinson, since 10 years old. So some pretty serious accolades here. He now works in Aspen, and as well as coaching back in New Zealand. And you will hear about in this episode not only the bindings and how he talks about what you can do, and, and that it's, it's not a simple recipe, you should say. And it's, it's not just fore and aft placement like in episodes I've done with Lou Rosenfeld. He talks a little bit about binding delta, which is really helpful, as well as sort of what— how the binding is mounted to the ski. Here's some stories about him coaching Alice Robinson, and then we get into some of the dogma in the ski industry and things that are perhaps taken too much for granted and people don't think for themselves about. And we also finish up by talking, or, with some thoughts around ski technique and what Tim's working on himself this season. This is a great episode. I will warn you, he does swear a few times, but if you know the Kiwis, you know, they're a bit of a rough bunch. So, just you've got to take it as it comes. I really think you'll enjoy this episode. I always love talking with Tim. He's a great guy, seriously entertaining as well as informative, educated. And, um, and thoughtful in what, in what he does. So tune in, let's get into the episode.

You're back in Aspen, and, uh, how many days ski instructing have you already done? How many days work?

Well, I think we started on the day before Thanksgiving, so it's the 24th of November. So I've been working every day since then, so we're probably, what, 12 days in, something like that.

Okay, and how's the snow?

It's, uh, right now we're in a bit of a drought. Um, we've had probably, I don't know, 20 or 30 inches of natural snow, but it's very dry here. But this year is the first year that they've put snowmaking to the top of Aspen Mountain, and they've really done a good job. So it's quite cool actually, because I like to start my season on like predictable, firm, consistent conditions. Um, and that's what we've got, you know. We've got a lot of artificial snow and, uh, and it— I mean, yeah, so it's, it's basically grippy, it's hard, and, uh, yeah, it's all good.

Good, good feedback snow.

Exactly, good feedback snow. Yeah, perfect light, like sunny and like just very predictable, which, you know, that can really help you when you're doing your Back to Snow program, I think, is if you have consistency. So Yes.

So people might not know, uh, your background, but you know, Tim, Tim raced for New Zealand. But before we get into that, like, I'm saying that because at the beginning of the season I already had a quick sort of message with Tim and he said, hey Tom, you know, when are we gonna do this interview? Because I've been playing with some of my equipment and, and I wanted to do this interview with you because I'd experienced you changing some of my binding, um, stuff, changing the stiffness basically of the binding. And so I realize you have a heap of knowledge and you've really experimented and tried to understand lots about equipment. So let's get straight into that. What have you been doing with this perfect early season testing conditions?

Yeah, no, that's— I mean, it's a good place to start, right? And I think that, like, basically the way that I look at skiing, you've got your body, your inputs, and then you've got your ski, your outputs, and then you've got, you know, all the snow and the ski and how they work together. And you've got a few pieces of equipment between there. Um, you know, obviously I, I do enjoy playing with boot setup, and I think it's really important I really value at the beginning of the season spending time on a few different types of skis so you don't get complacent sticking to one thing. But I've always had this sort of feeling that the binding has been kind of ignored in the recent years. So if you go back, you know, maybe 20, 25 years, there was a big buzz on bindings. We used to use Derbyflex plates, which were, you know, an independently produced metal and plastic plate. And then you would choose your ski, you choose your boot and your binding. Nowadays, you choose a ski and it comes with a binding and it gives you very limited, you know, basically you get set up and you're very limited in what you can do with it. But when you get to high-end skiing, I think there's a lot more, you know, that you can achieve out of that. I mean, the first thing that I've been playing with this year, I've got a couple of new pairs of skis and the first thing I've been playing with is the mounting point. So they still— they're a race ski, but they come mounted with a piston plate. But the piston plate can, you know, you can choose where you are along the length of the ski in terms of fore-aft. And everybody's natural body types, they have an effect on where you should be. And so I've been playing with my new local GS skis that I've got, like some you know, it's— I've got 3, actually I've got 4 different lengths of them. I know I'm very spoiled. So, and all of them I'm figuring out, first of all, where do I need to be front to back? And then the next thing that I've been playing with essentially is the ramp angle, which is how high it is under the toe compared to the heel. And like, that just helps you— those 2 things, they help you stand naturally, and they help you basically think about it from the form of a tennis racket. Like, you want to find the sweet spot, and that's sort of what we're, what we're searching for.

Yeah. And, and so what have you found? Have you expanded with— because I think on that plate there's 3 different positions you can put it in, is that right?

Yeah, correct. There's 3 different positions you can put it in, um, and I mean, for me, basically, like, it depends on your body type. So I have— for those of you who don't know me, which I assume is most of you— I'm a short guy. I'm about 5 foot 8. I have a very long torso, um, and quite short femurs, and I have, like, very strong feet and ankles. So essentially, you've got a long torso, ability to flex your ankles— that puts you oftentimes too far forward. Now, most coaches will never tell you you're too far forward, which is a mistake. Sometimes you are, and naturally I am. So for me, what I figured out is that basically I need to be a little bit further back on the ski. And I think that, you know, one of the ways that I feel that is that at some point I feel like the ski sort of— either I overcamber the front of the ski and I get a reaction at the end of the turn, or if I'm trying to steer a turn or make a, you you know, a basic parallel turn, I feel like I'm pivoting it from the wrong point and it's kind of— it wants to oversteer, if that makes sense. So the first thing I learned this year, basically where I needed to be fore and aft, and for me personally, it's aft. Now I've also worked a little bit with, um, with a couple of other people who have different body types, um, and for example, a female, uh, trainer from New Zealand who has a long femur And she has had, um, the opposite experience essentially. Like, she's, she's essentially a centimeter in front of me on the ski in order to find that sweet spot. That's just sort of where she stands.

Yeah. And did you, did you test, uh, her in multiple spots?

Yes, yes.

Like to compare?

Yeah. Yeah, to compare him. Like, you've got, you've got a couple of different, different pieces of feedback there. Like, you start with anecdotal feedback, or what it feels like if you're testing yourself. Obviously you feel what it feels like yourself. Um, I think one of the most important, like, I, I really believe in testing, but you need to have a system in place for it. Um, and I think that you also, what I have also learned with a client this year who moved into a different pair of boots is like, you need to give enough time of consistency to be able to get the measure of that test. Like, one of the mistakes you can make is assume that by, you know, fixing something or changing something immediately, it's going to be better. But that isn't always the case because your brain needs to sort of recalculate where you are, and you need to give it enough time to be able to test it. So you've got that anecdotal feedback of how it feels, and you definitely need you know, to test that over a couple of days because, you know, there's, there's all sorts of things. There's environmental conditions, there's mood, there's how you slept, all these other things. And then, but most importantly, you want to somehow objectify it. Like, you can, you can ask questions that objectify it, but I think that video is really important when it comes to this. You video a couple of different turn types, and if you can do them you know, and be able to change the equipment one run to the next, then you have a pretty good test. And what I'm looking for essentially is that it doesn't look like the, the person is fighting the ski. It looks like the ski is reacting in a predictable way and the person is moving in a very efficient way. That makes sense?

Yes, yes. My personal experience of really testing this properly for the first time this season in Australia was on a pair of Volkl Kendo that were on a demo binding, so I had— I could move it.

Yeah, ridiculous. I love that.

Forward and back. Yeah, really, really neat.

So to go to the demo, but that's actually— I'm glad you brought that up because there are some upsides and some downsides to the integrated binding systems right now. A lot of recreational skis you'll buy these days they come with essentially a very high quality, good quality demo binding, which means that you can move it front to back along the length of the ski. There's a bit of a downside to that in that you don't have something that's drilled in and that's very trustworthy. However, as you said, it provides you the opportunity to move, like, move the binding. And where I learned this, I had a vocal deacon um, well, actually, I think it was— yeah, it was a Deacon. And like, everybody raved about this ski, and I just couldn't quite figure out why it was such a good ski. And what I realized was I put it next to another pair of skis that had no rocker. And rocker is a big part of this conversation, right? Yeah, because that rocker— rocker meaning essentially most of the time that's tip rocker. So that changes.

Yeah, save that, save that. I'm sure we'll get into that. Save that.

We will, right? So, but to that, to that conversation, I did the exact same thing with the Deacon, and I figured out that basically, like, I just moved it back a little bit, and it really helped me out a lot. And all of a sudden, it basically felt like a totally different ski. And that, to me, is, you know, that's all I needed to know, you know?

Yes, yes. Yeah, I, I, and I'm the opposite to you. This is why it's, it's what's so important to test. Because if I went, oh, I have a long torso, longer than my legs proportionally, I must be like Tim. I should move my bindings back. And, and Rylan McGlashan, like, same thing, he moves his bindings back. And I was speaking to him about it and I was like, oh, I must be the same. That's what I thought this season. And so I moved it back. And, um, what did you learn?

Tell me, I'm interested. What did you learn?

Yes, so I made some turns with a friend and this particular day we'd had not a lot of snow, a lot of man-made snow, so there was sections where it was very slick. So you go from kind of sugary snow to slick, and that's quite tricky because your ski is essentially kind of sliding as it comes onto icy snow, which makes it even harder to hold. Anyway, I had fairly sharp skis. It's a good test, very good test. And my bindings were mounted back on that same plate a centimeter. And, and I thought I liked some things about it. I could definitely feel on the ice, on the ice I felt a little more grippy through the end of the turn. So I was like, oh, this must be it, this must be it. And then a friend videoed me down a particular section, and I looked at the video and there's this A-frame showing up.

Yeah, totally. Exactly, tip lead. And, and that, like, were the skis facing the same direction, or were there times where they weren't?

Uh, no, times where they, where they weren't. And I went, that's not much.

What do you mean by weren't? Were they, were they, were they wedging, or were they diverging?

I'm trying to remember. The biggest thing, I think they were wedging. Yeah, I think they were wedging. Yeah, yeah. But the biggest thing was this tip lead, and because I come from telemark background, like, that never happens in my skiing. My outside foot never really goes behind my—

yeah, I've never seen— I've never seen you do that, actually. This is interesting. It's an interesting conversation. Yeah, for those of you who don't know, I've watched Tom skiing a lot. We skied together a lot.

Yeah, we have skied together a lot. Yeah, so I was also surprised because my friend, uh, Jim, he showed me the video and he goes, oh mate, I think you need to, you know, move that foot forward. And I was like, yeah, geez, I do. And you know, because the turns felt okay, I didn't feel like I was forward. And on reflection, I'm like, I wonder if I was doing that because I was put back on the ski and to get the feeling of getting the tip and the tail to work, like to be in the middle, I had to shift my feet like that to really— oh, that's how I was trying to leverage forward.

Yeah.

So, um, yeah, yeah. So then I took the, the, the— then it, then it got soft overnight and I took out the, the, um, the, uh, what was the vocal— not the mantra, the, um, the kendo, kendo with the demo binding. And shifted it like way forward. I was like, I'm just going to see what it's like, like 3 centimeters forward of where I'm meant to be. And in the middle of like, like super trail Threadbow, um, I had this sensation of being completely standing in the middle of a ski that is bent. So that, you know, the people talk about that analogy of like, it's like you're jumping from a trampoline to trampoline like this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which, which is mostly the end if you jump in the middle of a trampoline, you get a predictable up and down reaction, whereas you jump close to the edges, it throws you off. And I just really felt this sensation. I was like, I've been skiing these Kendo in the wrong position, and that's why— same as you, I was like, I don't really love these skis unless there's a shitload of snow. Um, they ski a bit like, like tanks, like— and then I put them in the middle, I was like, oh bam, feel I could move to the tip with, with the easiest amount of effort, to the tail, simple amount of effort. It was— I was bang in the middle.

Yeah, and that's— I mean, that's the exact example that, you know, that I'm looking for. Well, so I mean, here's my question there for you. Why do we mount— so if you, if you measured, you know, the length of a ski front to back, by and large the recommended mounting point, and I'm not saying that all recommended mounting points are at the right point. For example, Atomic has a bias to be too far back, Rossi has a bias to be too far forward. I know this through experience. But why is it that if we, if we divided a ski in half, why is the mount point back as opposed to being in the middle of the ski? What do you think about that?

Uh, because of how we— how the human— how humans use our feet. And so it's not, it's not necessarily back as well because, well, so that'd be one thing.

And then, well, I mean, geometrically, geometrically it is. Geometrically, the way it— like, literally, if you drew a ski on the ground on a piece of paper, it is back of the center of the tip and tail, right? It is. That's— that is what it is. But how does that relate to the— because I mean, I understand there's a reason for it. Like, you're a body person. What does that mean? Yeah, like, why?

Well, uh, for, for, you know, balance. Like, a lot of the time we balance a lot through the ball of our foot. And so when you put the ball, the foot, in what would be more the center of the running surface of the ski, then it does look back. Like, because your heel is behind, you're not putting the center of your arch on the center point of that ski. Um, you're putting more the ball of the foot, um, there.

And it—

because if you put— yes, is that right? Or is that—

I don't know. I mean, it's— I'm just— I'm super— I'm super curious about it. Like, I'm, you know, I'm sort of thinking about it. I'm wondering if it's just because that's the way it's always been done. However, But what I do think is that the way that our body moves, the way that our ankle joints move, and the way that our— particularly the upper part of our spine moves, I think that we're able to be more proactive if we're slightly in front of our center, as opposed to being in the back, where what feels like to me is if I'm a little bit forward, which would relate to being mounted slightly back, um, yeah, then I have a bit more control. Whereas if I was totally in the center, as soon as pressure moved to the tail of the ski and the tail of the ski started to react, I feel like the, the back chain or the posterior chain of my muscles is very reactive and everything happens like without that much control, I think.

I mean, yeah, I don't know, it's interesting because now you've got me thinking Yeah, because I mean, I've been thinking a lot about pivot fulcrum points and pivot points. And yeah, yeah, me too. Yeah, with the foot and ankle, like the ankle joint, so where the tibia meets the, the talus, like that, that ankle point, like you've got that as a fulcrum point for adjusting balance. But really where you get power, like as you move that, that doesn't really manipulate the tip and the tail as much. It's more through your whole mass kind of moving back and forth. But that's not really providing— that's no leverage through your foot. And so the leverage to get pressure—

the leverage from that— yeah, go ahead, sorry.

Yeah, like it has to come more through the boot.

And so yes, okay, good, I'm glad you said that. Yeah, yeah.

And but, but, but, you know, you and I have done plenty of skiing with boots totally undone.

Well, I mean, actually Ah, now here's an interesting thought. Here's an exercise that I've done with, uh, with skiers, which I think that is— I mean, you really need people who are at a high level or ski racers basically, but I've taken the top cuff off the boot and then developed like balance without the top cuff, just literally taking it off. So obviously you have no cuff alignment around this, but you're also not looking for high performance turns. I mean, are we trying to ski in leather boots? Kind of. Right? But if you can manage that situation and the amount you can learn out of that is something that I would— like, if you're a coach or someone who's dealing with really high-level skiers who have the, you know, have the guts to try this, go and do it because you will learn a lot. And even go do it for yourself. It's really cool.

Yeah, yeah. And that comes back— I mean, my background is growing up on Nordic skis, cross-country skis, and telemark skis. And because you're not— well, especially Nordic skis, you haven't got really any much use of transferring energy through the boot. You actually have to use more your, your, your bones and muscles to do it. And so I think I've had a tendency to try and feel for that all along, but if you don't have that, then I think, uh, one thing that could happen is, is is you become reliant, or that's the only way you think about transferring pressure. And a lot of people say that, like, use the lean in the cuff of the boot to move it. But when you actually think about it properly, that's— you're not really getting— you're losing the leverage that comes through, like, the forefoot. And, um, yeah, and so that—

look, look, I, I hear you, I hear you. Um, but what I will say this is that you know, when you deal with clients on a day-to-day basis of recreational skiers— I mean, my background comes from ski racing, and I'm very much a perfectionist. But when you, when you deal with people on a day-to-day basis, you teach them the best way to solve the issue they have at the time. And you really can do a lot by leaning on the side of the boot, and it depends on the person you have in front of you, right? Um, but anyway, yes, I mean, I think we've sort of digressed, and I think that's back to the Back to the binding thing. Yeah, well, actually, you know what? You know what? We don't need to go back there. Let me tell you what actually I've also learned through— we've done a few new things with training here in Aspen this winter. Are you with me, Tom? You there? Yep.

Can you hear me?

Yep. Yeah, I got you. So basically, we did this really cool training, and we had Wolf and Lathwaite who've got this amazing sort of Theory of Motor Skill Learning, and it's a lot of what they've been talking about is, you know, using external cues as opposed to internal. And I think that, you know, that's been super successful in terms of what we've been talking about. And a lot of the time, what I learned out of it is that I think that I can be personally as a coach a little bit too much of a perfectionist about what the body's doing. And not being like, look, you know, the, the actual outcome on the ski is exactly what we're looking for. There's no right and wrong here. It's, you know, it's about what you— what the outcome is, what you're trying to achieve.

Very good point. Yeah, that's a good point in relation to the, you know, purist me saying, oh, don't use the front of the boot. It's— yeah, and I guess I wasn't trying to say that, but I think that's great that you've brought it— brought the conversation back to re-emphasize that point that we shouldn't now be saying don't lean on the boot. And like you say, at the end of the day, make the ski work. That's the goal.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

So I mean, in terms of forward and back, that's kind of, you know— and as I said to you, and as you've kind of approached, I'm— I have to tell you, I'm quite surprised about your story about being forward on the ski and the way that it works for you. Um, I was like, I mean, yeah, yeah, you were right, you were surprised about it.

Yeah, very, very surprised. Yeah, but, but I, I tried it with the Kendo and the, and the 23-meter GS and the 13-meter slalom, all of them. And I, and I looked at videos, and that's how I based it on feeling. And I also got video, and I was like, I like it all better when I'm forward. And it was, and it was like, wow, yeah, that's cool.

Yeah, that's so— like, to, I mean, to use names, and I will use names now, like, so Emily, as you know, you know Emily Tate-Jameson. Yep. She is a trainer from New Zealand, and she had been told, um, by some other trainers who probably were at some point influenced by me that, you know, she should be back on her ski and that had then become gospel. And she, all of a sudden, I set her up on a ski the other day, a GS Gear 178, and put her a little bit forward, and, um, and it was really good, you know. And she was like, yeah, so like, that's exactly what I'm told I should be— sorry, that's against what, you know, I've been told I should be doing, but that's what I've always felt that was better. You know. And I was like, well, I mean, fuck what you've been told. Sorry, excuse my French. Like, don't, you know, forget what you've been told. Just, you know, test it, figure out what's good. Um, yeah, yeah.

And I think that's a problem with us humans, you know. We like— because I felt trapped to the same thing. I'm like, I went, well, all these other great skiers, and they seem to have similar traits in body shape to me, did this. Why am I finding it's not that good? There must be something wrong with me. It can't— that's— whereas just scrap all that and I used video and feelings, based it on that, my own. I'm the boss of like, I like that, I'm gonna do it because the scheme felt like it worked better.

Exactly, exactly. And so I mean, and I think— go ahead, go ahead.

Okay, I was just gonna say like because I don't think people realize, like, you— I mean, so into your background, you raced for New Zealand in an Olympic Games?

Yes, correct.

Yes, Vancouver?

Yes, Vancouver in 2010. I raced in the Super-G. I raced in two World Championship events in 2009. Sorry, I raced in two World Championship competitions in 2009 and 2011, and I raced 3 events at each one, and my top ranking was 31st, uh, in the world in Super-G.

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. There we go.

So some pretty— like, I'm saying that because that's some experienced credentials behind, you know, what you're sort of, you know, some of the stuff you're talking about. But I'm interested in, in that time you going up training to get to this pinnacle of ski racing, how did you come across— did you decide, were you told, hey, Tim, you should change your bindings, or hey, maybe—

No, this is actually the key question here. This is really interesting, and I'm glad you asked that. So we haven't— we've talked about one thing, right, is back and forth placement. And then the main thing that we haven't talked about is the lift under the front binding compared to the back. Now, in ski racing, we call that the delta angle. Um, and so basically, um, when you're provided with a racing ski, you've got a plate, a binding, and a ski, and then you've got lifters you can put underneath the plate, uh, all the— of the front or the back of the binding. And these are generally produced by the ski companies, right? Now, so I ski for Völkl, and most of the time, like, I mean, you know, what I found was quite tough at the time— this was partly due to my skill and partly just due to my body type, because I'm only 5'8", right? And most ski racers are probably, as a male, they probably average 5'11", 6 foot. So I found it quite tough to bring the ski around. So I was always looking— but as I've told you already, I have, you know, a good range of ankle flexion and a big upper body. So I was finding it quite tough to engage the shovel of the ski. And then I was provided a kit from Völkl at the time. And it was basically lifters. And I mean, we're not going to learn anything new here. I started playing, right? So I got screws and lifters. And I figured out that if I lifted lifted my toe up, and we called that at the time, we called it gas pedaling. And what I also figured out was it was better depending on the slope, like it was steeper. Um, so gas pedaling, what it means is you've got, as you can picture, a gas pedal under the, under your foot. You've got a little bit more lift under the front than under the back, which, like most skis naturally, the way they're mounted, they, your heel is raised a little bit from where your toe is. And so we could change that. And what I figured out was that I was able to make a way more powerful turn and engage the front of the ski faster if I lifted up my toes a little bit. And sort of like, basically, in, in slalom, I probably went to— so that's slalom being short turns— I probably went to about -1, -2 millimeters. So my toe was slightly higher than heel. And I figured out from that point I could do everything I wanted to manipulate the ski. And that was the difference. Like, when I was back from that, I was pretty fast on flat courses, but if I went to a steep course, I just— what I look for in skiing, I look for the ability to tell the ski what to do at any one time. And when I was on a moderate or steep course, I lost the ability to tell the ski what to do if I didn't have enough lift under my toe. Now that's a different story for Andrew Wiley, for example, right? He has a totally different body type to me. He needed lift under the heel, and so did Johan Olsson, and I think Ligeti for a while was running quite a bit of lift under the heel. He was at like a positive 4, positive 5 in order to be able to put him in the center of the ski, but Ultimately, what I was looking for was I wanted to be able to be in the ski and I could engage and carve the front of the ski, the middle of the ski, the back of the ski, and if I wanted to, I could pivot the ski at any point in the turn. And that was like sort of— those are my measures, right? Like, I can choose where I am fore and aft and engage the edge, and I can pivot the ski whenever I want. If I have those two things, then I'm in the right place. But, you know, 4 and a half, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Excellent. So you, you first experimented then with, with the Delta before the 4 and a half, is that right?

That was— well, so I, I mean, back on this, in this journey, I first, I first— no, that's a good question. I first experimented with intent with the delta angle. I had already experimented with the 4F position, but I, I hadn't been analyzing it. Somebody had told me I should do something different, and I had just copied them. Okay, now, now this is interesting. So I'll sort of shift away from me for a second, and I think you know, few people listening will probably already know this, but I've coached for a long time. I coached Alice Robinson, and she is now, you know, World Cup winner. And I've coached her since 10 years old, um, and I have played with her binding setup on a day-to-day basis that she has absolutely no, no idea about. I hope she's not listening, but, you know, so we really— I've really fucked with her, and for, for a good reason. Sometimes it's been to help her learn things and make it more difficult. Sometimes it's been to help her be in the, you know, in the optimal place on the ski. And if I could give you a good example of this, so generally speaking, she would overturn. So I always had her on a longer length ski than was necessary, and I would set her up in a pretty natural position. And then we got to, uh, we got to Racing FIS and the skis that arrived, she just— they, they weren't the best that we had ever had and she just couldn't turn them. And this has been quite consistent with her career and her style.

So you said she couldn't or she could just turn them?

She could not, she could not turn them. Yeah, and so, and this is interesting because if you look at her body type, it's exactly the same with you, Tom. If you look at her body type, you would think like, right, you want to pull her back as far as you can because she knows how to, you know, she knows, definitely knows how to use the tail of the ski, but she also has the ability to lengthen her body and use the front of the ski, right? And that's what I thought. And she experienced, like, quite a lot of struggle when we went from the transition from U16 to a first ski, and she's trying to race World Cup races, and she just couldn't manipulate the ski and pivot it when she wanted to. So I got to a point, and it was Andrew Wiley who actually taught me this, and he was like, look, what are you doing to her? Like, why don't you put her a centimeter forward on the ski and give her the ability to pivot it and let her sink into it and enjoy the ski? And she did, because I was— all I was playing with was the delta angle. I was trying to basically, I was trying to, you know, solve everything by putting more under the toe and that helped her now and then, but ultimately, ultimately that just pushed her onto the back of the skis. So I flattened that out, I put her 1 centimeter forward, and in that next day we had— it was really cool, we had 3 courses set up at Coronet Peak. We had like race arena, we had Outwide, and we had Robins Run. We had the World Cup men's team, we had the first team, and we had like the U16 team. And she just— I knew she was struggling, and she went from flat course to the middle course to the top course, and by the end of the day she was beating the whole men's team. And it was— that was how much she figured out. Yeah. And that was honestly— it was just— and she had no idea because I never told her, right? It was just by putting her a centimeter forward, all of a sudden she started to be able to move naturally front to back along the length of the skate.

Amazing, amazing. That's, uh, yeah, so interesting. I can see why You didn't tell her though, because that reminds me of the interview, the one before, uh, a few before, where I interviewed a guy, um, who's done basically most of the research, been involved in most of the research around the world done on the effects of binding placement. So Lou Rosenfeld. And, um, so all the testing is blind testing. They— the skier, when they get given a ski to do the same run. Um, they don't know if the binding's centered, forward, or rear-mounted. They just go do the run and then they gather data, or they go—

that's how testing is supposed to work, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you don't have any cognitive kind of bias, which I had. I was like, oh, moving it back, I should ski better now. I think I'd even convinced myself that I was, you know, better grip because That's what logically I thought should happen, yet when I did the opposite, uh, it was different. And that's— you know what, I say probably some of the 3 biggest revelations in my skiing have all been doing something that was actually the opposite of what I first thought. It's, it's really funny.

It's so funny, isn't it? Like preconceived notions, they really fuck you up. So Oh my God, I have to remember we're actually going to be— listen, you're going to have to go through and bleep this. But no, I agree with you. Like, preconceived notions have messed me up in many cases. And what I think really lacks, and I think this is the case— look, I mean, if you're training kids, you probably want something consistent because they're so malleable. But at the end of the day, I think what really lacks is you know, just that sort of spongy mind ability to think outside the box. And that's where learning happens. If you put yourself in a box, that's where you are, you know. If you have the ability to look outside of it and think in a different way, like the dogmas that we've been taught— the perfect example, here's the perfect example, Tom, and I will tell you, you taught me this about my skiing. I have been too far forward more in my career than I've been too far back. Do you think any coach in the world has ever told me that? Now, I will qualify that. What I mean by that is that normally I'm too far forward at the end of the turn, and that means that I'm too far back at the beginning of the turn. But there is so much dogma in the skiing world that nobody would ever tell me that I was too far forward. But it's impossible to tell me that. And that is something that really annoys me, and I think that, you know—

And so why did it change? What— why do you say I helped with that or something? Was that in Wanaka?

Why did you have something to do with that? What was that? It was your frontside heavy, backside heavy? Well, no, you know exactly what it was. We did that little exercise where we stood on the side of the hill and we did like we, we did that. We stood, we had our skis at a 45-degree angle to the left, to the right, and we sort of felt where the natural balance was along length of the foot in order to not be sliding. And that worked really well for me because I realized that— I mean, look, this is not rocket science. It's been in the APSI for a long time. It's a tip-to-tail turn. But the coaches that I had had had never told me that I actually had to engage the heel and the tail at a certain part of the turn. Because the dogma tells you everyone's too far back. And I mean, I'm not telling everybody they're too far forward. This is just a personal experience of like, hey, maybe just test things out, explore the range of it. And this is, this is, this is why I came to where I did with bindings. It was like, let me explore the range of it and let me just do everything that is supposedly wrong in order to prove what's right. And sometimes, like you did, you learn something out of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's— I think that's a great way to emphasize that point. Hey, so have you got any, any other stories of, uh, like, just to give some other examples of, of binding placement or, or ski equipment setup changing? Like, I'm thinking in that season we were both working for Rookies, you— there was a couple of people. I mean, with me, you did something as simple as the piston plate on my slalom skis at the front near the toe piece. There's these like metal— would you call them almost like reinforcement pieces, like bars?

Yeah.

Uh, and yeah, is that— would that be right?

Yeah, that would be. So basically, and what do they do and what do you do? So what I did, and I, I guess we've never actually really talked about this, I just kind of did something, the next day the ski worked a bit better, which is, you know, something what Alice experienced, I guess. So for those of you who don't know, the Piston is a Marker plate. It's probably, I would say, the most respected plate and binding system in the ski racing world at the moment, and it has been for a long time. And so The way that you can mount it, you can— it has underneath the toe, there are 4 screws that go on, and that provides a little bit of a plate and— sorry, a little bit of a platform, and the plate itself slides on top of that. Now, what I did for you, I guess this goes into a slightly deeper conversation, is that what you can look at with a plate and binding system, in any system you're looking at, you've got places that are fixed in the ski and places that are floating. And the fixed to the fixed, if you have drilled, you know, basically if you've drilled something in and it's fixed, you've created a dead spot in the ski. And you had a slalom ski and it was mounted at the front. You have two options when you mount a piston plate. You can mount them in like further apart or you can mount them closer together. For a GS ski, it makes sense for it to be mounted further apart because that spreads the energy along the length of the ski. If you do that to a slalom ski, it creates a dead spot where the ski won't flex. And so what I did for you, I took, I took that binding and I changed it from a wide mount to a close mount. So it was basically the front fixed points on the ski went from I would say probably 10 centimeters to 5 centimeters, let's put it that way. So the dead spot itself reduced, and that allowed you, as soon as you got on the ski the next day, you didn't find a spot that sort of pinged you back. You just— it allowed you to camber and flex the ski in a natural way. And that's very specific to a piston plate, a piston binding. However, like, you know, it's still certainly applicable to other, other plates and bindings and other setups, especially if you're using a race ski. And what I would encourage most people to do is, like, I mean, find a real expert. Don't find an expert at a ski shop. If you want to be someone who skis like Tom, who skis like me, who skis like Riley, what you need to do is you need to go through the process yourself, think critically, and find a real expert who has some real experience and question their knowledge, and then you're going to actually figure out how you can set your ski up. In racing, we always talk about setup. It's the same thing in Formula 1, and a lot of the time what that means is the connection between the ski and the boot, and the binding has long been ignored, and I would encourage everyone to start exploring.

Yeah, now I was just trying to think of an analogy for the— this change in the plate. If, say, I was an archer shooting a bow, yeah, what the way that the binding was set up before you changed it would almost be like the area where you held the bow with the front hand almost had like— like it was too stiff like past where I was gripping. And so when I flexed the bow, it's sort of like there's almost like, like, yes, stiffer section around my hand. And so that bit didn't flex, so the bow flexed more at the end points, and there was this kind of hard point in the middle that made it hard for me to flex the bow further. And what you did was almost reduce that, so it was only stiff around where I gripped with my hand. So the whole bow felt it was much easier to load and and bend into like an arc.

Correct, correct. And to, to like, to give the other idea of why it was mounted like that, like let's say you weren't just a person, you were a machine, and you had a bow that was the height of a ship's sail. And at that point, so that's the difference between a GS and a slalom ski. If you had a bow that was the height of the ship's sail, you might need not just one point holding it, you might need 2 points a few inches apart holding it in order for the bow to flex naturally. And so yes, I agree with you. I think that— and also I wish we had video on right now because I'm literally picturing myself holding a bow trying to let it go.

Yeah, and you think when people go into a ski shop, you know, they pick the ski off the wall and they grab it and they flex it like a bow. And if you're really tuned in, you could probably feel a subtle difference between a ski that was mounted the way mine was and—

Oh, totally, totally. You actually could. And the way that I flexed it when I held it, I could. And there are some other examples. Look, I'm a Völkl, you know, athlete and skier, and I totally believe in their product. But there are perfect examples of this within the Völkl range. So, and I will tell you that I started this old tradition, you take a recreational ski and you put a piston plate on it. There are some ups and downs to that. So the Deacon, the recreational race ski, like, what you get is you get a little bit more stability when it's consistent. Now, as soon as you take a Deacon or a recreational GS or slalom ski and you put a race plate on it, what happens is you create a fulcrum or a flex point. And because the plate itself is quite stiff and the ski is not that stiff. And so it's all fun and games until you hit something like a mogul. And what happens is it's like you take a piece of paper and you, you know, and you were like a piece of cardboard and you stretch it just so gently over like the edge of your couch, it will flex in a nice natural way. And then all of a sudden you hit it over like something that's a very rigid point and it starts, it just folds and it loses all its integrity.

Yeah, it folds. It doesn't bend, it folds.

Yeah, exactly. It doesn't bend, it folds. And that's, that's kind of something that I think is not really explored within the, uh, ski industry.

But yeah, interesting, interesting. Um, and so then the others, these few examples, you, you were just going off that season with modifying people's stuff. Do you remember what you did with MC, the Marie-Claude's.

Yeah, I do actually. And so, right, so now, and this I will give you as, as I, I mentioned this before, but Atomic has a bias to be mounted too far back. Rozzy has a bias to be mounted too far forward. Why? I don't know. It could be due to the body type of a Germanic person versus a French person. We could talk about this till the cows come home. Now, I will tell you this though, pretty much 80% of people that I've worked with on a Rossignol ski in a race or close to race or high performance perspective need to be moved back on the ski. And like, if you just put a Rossignol ski next to a Head or a Völkl ski, you can just see they are just further forward and it's just, it's something that honestly I have helped probably 5 or 6 people through exams that wouldn't have passed just by moving them back along the length of the ski. And the way that I figured this out is that I skied, you know, I skied the Rossi ski and I just felt like it was oversteering the whole time and all that wanted to happen was my tail was washing out. And so oftentimes you see this with instructors who ski on Rossi, I think, they sort of have that like sink your hips back and just do the snaky left to right technique, and like it doesn't really work, you know. So like they basically— oh, did I see that, absolutely. Like I saw a girl who was really strong, really ready to move forward and push to the front of the ski, and she would try and do it, and all the ski would tell her was to move back again. And just to sort of weave side to side. And it was really frustrating to watch. And as soon as I moved her back, she was like, oh my God, like, I actually— like, she thought she was back the whole time. Really, she was forward the whole time because she was in the wrong place along with the ski.

Yeah, she felt back because she had to stand back in order to stabilize that ski from—

that's exactly right, she had to, she had to.

Switching gears from a bit of equipment stuff, I wanted to ask you, because I'm a massive fan of Alice Robinson and her skating, I think she's like incredibly athletic and it's just powerful, like so good.

I have to, I have to, I have to tell you, like, so just, just before we go into this, like, I know you're a fan of her and you did this like really incredible analysis of her at the Europa Cup, um, where she pretty much had a huge mistake mistake and still was able to keep that going. Um, and I, I would agree with you. I was there that day and I know every emotional and physical part of that day. It was really cool to see you do such an analysis about it. My question is, like, if you could be a bit more specific, like, what do you like about her skiing? Like, the athleticism, what does that mean to you? Like, tell me, because I love a lot of things about her skiing. I've watched her since I was a kid, you know, since she was a kid. To—

yeah, so you've seen so much of it.

Exactly, like I get kind of blinded by it all. So what is it to you that you like about it?

Okay, what— what— a few things really, uh, attract me to the way she skis. One, it seems more than anyone else she is moving her body in line with forces coming from a turn and what she's expecting to come from a turn. So I see the least amount of angles throughout the body compared to others who use technical angles or think that that's what they should do to then deal with forces, as opposed to it being a little more natural. So, so it's riskier, I would say, because she is— if it doesn't go right, like that turn, that mistake, then things really slide out more easily. But on the flip side, if it holds, you're in the strongest, best position to just rip around that corner. So I see more inclination, less angulation in her skiing.

Yep, absolutely.

And the risk of just getting every single bit of her body inside to be working against the forces that are basically trying to throw her outside of that turn.

So yes, no, I, I, I hear you and I like the way that you put that. And by the way, just for the listeners, this— we didn't plan this question. So what, what I— somebody asked me what— I mean, we were having a sharing the other day within training at, uh, Aspen Ski School, and we had a group of 7, 8 trainers. We were all trainers, right? And I asked people, you know, the question was, what do you like about skiing? And to me, what I like is pushing the ski to the limits of what it's capable of. And that to me is what she does very well. What you're talking about is absolutely correct. There is a smaller margin for error, but she looks at how can I maximize, what can I get out of the ski? And when you get like enough green you need two things about that. You need to be able to get everything as correct as you can, and then you also need to be able to recover. But if she gets a lot of green lights and she's able to achieve that on a, you know, turn-to-turn basis, then she's basically unbeatable, right? She pushes the ski to the limits of its capability, and some of that is through— and her body too— and some of that's through, you know, the way that she moves her body inside. Some of that's also through the tactics that she chooses, like where she chooses to push herself to. Um, but I mean, I think, I believe when I interrupted you, you were actually asking a question to start this, or—

Yeah, I was going to say, so are there any specific stories like that flash to your mind from training her in Europe or in New Zealand where you saw some examples like that? And could you kind of, you know, recall where it's like, that is next level, I don't think I could do what she just did, like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, give one or two of those.

So I mean, I guess that, I guess that what overall what might sort of surprise people is that like Alice kind of had an ugly technique, um, at times in her progression. But what I saw, a couple of things I saw was her adaptability. I also saw her, her lack of fear, and I think that was the most important thing. Um, And there were so many times, like, for example, you know, she has a natural— she has a natural usage of the upper body to rotate, you know, through the turn. That has two benefits. At times it helps her move to the front of the ski, at times it helps her move to the new ski. And when you train youth athletes, you want to train them essentially what you're told to do. Is to train them to have a calm upper body and not use it as a source of power. And I was trying to do that with her. I did all these exercises like lifting the inside hand, like sort of, you know, a bit of a leg— sorry, a bit of a slopey drill where you push the inside hand forward and the outside hand on your hip, and all these different things.

That's the outside boot.

Yeah, and so, and then like she would essentially like she was a bit skeptical, and she would try them, and she would look at me and she'd be like, 'But Tim, what about this?' And then she would just show me a demonstration of how she could use upper body rotation and upper body movements functionally. Now, I'm not saying that the world should go out there and choose upper body rotation. That's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is that there are so many dogmas out there, like I said about being too far back— or sorry, about being too far forward. About it. Yeah, and what I really loved about her, she was like, look— and she wasn't ever like difficult about it. She was like, I will try your style and then I will prove to you that I can do something more efficiently. And what you do is in ski racing when you cut— so in terms of technical training, she proved a few things to me, and sometimes she was wrong and I proved a few things to her. She needed a little bit of the old school, a little bit of the demonstrational mentality. Now, when you put a racecourse in front of someone, you've got this great measure, it's called time. And, you know, there's a clock and it tells us everything we need to know. It's not about what looks good, it's not about anything like that. And I would try and coach her in particular ways. And this happens often in racing where you sometimes get to a position where you're trying to coach a person to get to the next step but like, you know, what they're doing is faster. But with her, it was a little bit different. It was like, hey, like, here's the course. I am now going to do everything that I think is instinctively fast, and I might have an explosion, but I probably won't, and I will be the fastest person down the course. And she would be doing things that I didn't think because of my education, my dogma, the things that I've been taught. I've thought that they were not the right things to do. And at times, what she taught me was it's all about the outcome, it's all about the tactics, it's all about what works at the end of the day to do what you're trying to achieve. It's not about looking pretty, it's about pushing the envelope of what the ski can do. And everyone's body's different, and she proved to me things were— she was capable of things, or things were possible that I didn't really understand.

So yeah, wonderful. That's, that's exactly— I mean, I think that's another thing inherently that's drawing me to her skiing is because she has proved that she can beat the best in the world and significantly beat them on tough courses with a technique that is not your textbook technique. And exactly, you know, yes, there are consequences. Maybe the consistency side drops, but Like, to me as a spectator, I like that, that risk and that show and that it's just totally mind-blowing. Like, wow, that's, uh, so, so different. And, um, yeah, I love, I love seeing that.

So that's— I didn't know, like, to get to— okay, uh, and that I think is super cool, like, to Sorry to interrupt you there. To— no, to go into, I guess, the only other person that I've ever come across— I mean, I have come across other people like this, but on a consistent basis, and it's not to the same level, right? But Bode Miller was the one who really started this. He was like, look, you know, these are the rules, I'm going to operate without them, you know, and I'm going to prove to you guys that there is a different way to do it. And he was also during the period where we were learning about equipment. But Alice is— she's, to me, she's sort of done that to my understanding again, you know. She's really— she's opened my mind and helped me understand that things are not about what's right and wrong. It's about cause and effect, and it's about how you can— you yourself can achieve the outcome you're looking for.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's important. I think that we're both saying that, like you said, we're not saying textbooks should be changed to say do whatever you want with your upper body. I think what we're both appreciating here is, is, is challenging that spectrum again and saying you need to test for yourself because you might, just the way you operate, like Alice operated, better breaking out of that paradigm Um, whereas others like Michaela Shiffrin fits that perfect technical mold.

Well, does she though, Tom? If we had all the minutes in the world, I would ask you, does she? Does she fit the perfect technical mold?

No, like, I'm sure, like, I know I could find some frames in a video where she's doing exactly what Alice is doing with her arms, but, you know, I saw a video from one of her coaches come out the other day where he's drawing lines on her and he's practicing like a hip hike drill, showing, you know, and then taking a whole bunch of World Cup footage and showing like these one particular frames where there's this angulated position, this like outside leg to hip.

Yeah, one frame from one angle, from what you can prove.

Exactly, anything you want.

Exactly.

I'm sorry, but that's, that's a dogma and that's a bunch You know, and see, I just got influenced again by that because the last video I saw, which was yesterday, of Mikaela Shiffrin was of her doing that. Yet if I went and found a race— well, actually, I can even remember the first year. I don't know if you watched the first race in Levy.

I did, yeah.

Okay, that even the commentator said when she—

on her—

it was a second run It's like, oh, she's doing something new, a bit more use of the upper body and the arms. And if you watch the top flat section, she is looking like she's running, running to the left.

This is so funny because— and I will go back, this is a history lesson or a recent history lesson in ski racing. Here's where this came about in male ski racing, was from Solvang, the Norwegian. And this was at Levy, which every year traditionally you have, you know, a men's and a women's race at Levy, right? And so, like, he was using— was it Levy? I might be wrong. Either that or it was Zagreb. But he was using a massive amount of upper body rotation, and what he was doing was stopping that rotation at the gate, and he was bringing a whole bunch of power. Essentially, he was bringing movement into the, into the turns. Now let me be clear again, I am not going out there and teaching people upper body rotation. Am I respective of the fact that there is functionality in all body movements? Yes, we ski with our whole body. If you ignore a body part, and I see this day to day with ski instructors within the PSIA particularly, and that I see day to day here and even at home in New Zealand, if you ignore the fact that we have an upper body and try and take it out of the equation, you are limiting yourself completely. Please ski with your whole body. Don't ski with your upper body only, but ski with your whole body because we have a body for a reason, you know. That's it.

Do you know what's an interesting anecdote there is that, that girl Emma I skied with as a project, like 3 days to improve her carving.

Yeah.

And you saw that before and after, definitely a lot more performance in her skiing Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we chatted at the end and I said— and she said, do you know what's really interesting is I've heard— she's taken lessons all her life, skied heaps. She's like, this word separation, I keep getting told separate your upper lower body, um, you know, you need separation, do this with this part of your body but not with that part. And she said, what I feel now on these runs is connectedness, not separation.

Exactly.

Completely.

It doesn't, it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean that, it doesn't mean that they're like they're doing the same thing, but they're not doing separate things. They are connected. You, you are using them together. Sometimes they're doing the opposite things. Sometimes they're doing things together. But they are connectedness. I agree with that so much. Yeah, like, that is such a great anecdotal story. And like, yeah, no, that's great. I'm so glad you shared that, Tom. That's really cool. Yeah. And, and I thought, because we go back to the same thing, these are, these are the dogmas that came out of particular systems and particular areas that you just cannot say particular things. And it's like, oh, separation means one part of the body does something against the other. No, it doesn't mean that. It means that you can use those. Your body is one, you know. Yeah, sometimes you need to do different things with different parts of the body. Sometimes you need to do the same thing. But I'll tell you what, if you, if you want to separate things, you might need a big guillotine and you're going to have to cut yourself in half because there is no such thing as separation. There's a body working together. Sometimes they might move in different directions, but and different rates.

Exactly. Like, I see what Alison, those people are doing is it's things are just moving at different speeds, and that creates the impression of— you could— someone could say, look, they're separated. But, um, yeah, I just think it's just interesting, that choice of, of wording. Um, because I've got a funny story.

A lot of, a lot of coaching comes back to choice of wording, doesn't it?

Yeah. Massive, massive, massive, massive. I've got a, I've got a funny story from when, uh, early days when I was training, going through my levels. And so this is in Silver Star in Canada. And, um, so I trained and did my Level 2 and Level 3 in, um, in the same season. And yeah, and, and trained really hard. Yeah. And then in March, did the exam, and it was a pretty challenging day. And at the end of it, managed to pass my Level 3 teaching and skiing. So went to the bar, big celebration, massive. And I don't remember this next part, but people had bought me shots, and I'm absolutely wasted. Totally out of it now, don't remember. Wake up in the morning, had thrown up in the bathroom, complete mess. Walked out into the village to get a coffee and see some people there like, oh my God, Tom, last night, do you know what you said and did in Long John's Bar? This is like the main bar in Silver Sight. They said you got up on one of the tables in the middle of the pub pub and you said, when I become an examiner, I'm going to ban the word upper body rotation. That word is effing gone. So back then I'd already had a problem with like, I was fighting the fact of don't rotate your upper body. Don't like, keep it still. Only turn with your legs. I was, uh, there is like—

I'm sorry, and like, actually, I'm not sorry. I will say this to any organization that has this in their vernacular: there is no such thing as keeping one thing still and moving another thing. That's bullshit. There is no such thing. I've experimented with it, and if you want to doubt me, come skiing with me. But like, there is— you were correct at that point. You do not keep your upper body still and move your legs. There is no such thing. In order to keep your upper body, or keep the illusion of the upper body still, there has to be movement and activation out to make that happen. But there's everything that's involved in that. And like, this is— I swear, like, I haven't come up with it. At the end of the day, I still haven't quite figured out how to say it, but there is a difference between people who read the manual and go out and do it their own interpretation, and there are people who actually ski. And the ones who ski, they have this sort of appreciation for what works on the snow, and that's what we should be trying to impart on our clients, on our students, on our athletes, on everything. Is like, skiing is a language in its own, and if you can understand that language and explore it and figure out what works with your body and what works with the ski and what works for your outcome, then you really understand how to ski. If you're reading a manual and you're trying to do something that makes you look a particular way because somebody's told you to do that, then good for you, but I'm sorry, you will never quite understand skiing. That to me, that's it, you know.

Yeah, I'm sorry about the background noise there. Someone's decided to take an angle grinder or something outside, so I apologize.

To listeners.

I've got one—

I mean, I apologize to the listeners, I didn't hear it, so—

Okay, I've got one.

I mean, you've got it, you've got an angle grinder, I've got an Andrew Wiley. It's similar.

I've got, I've got one final question to, to wrap up with here, and that is, what are you working on in your skiing and experimenting with this season, past the binding stuff now?

Like, yeah, so technically, I guess, is what we're talking about. Now that I've got Litzgrump let's— I mean, this isn't quite the case, but let's grant that I've got a perfect sit-up, and I'll tell you guys what I'm working on technically. I've always had a turn imbalance, um, and, uh, I've been working on that for a while. So the two ways that I'm working on that, um, if I were to split it into— within the NZSIA, we have four movements. We have rotation, lateral, fore-aft, and vertical. So fore-aft on my left footer, I turn to the right, I'm trying to allow pressure to move to the middle and the back of the ski through the end of the turn. And on my right footer, I'm trying to get pressure to the front of the ski above fall line. And that is because generally, like, my ski engages too early and releases too early on the left footer. And on my right footer it engages too late. So that's the fore-aft component. In terms of the lateral component, what I'm working on is I'm trying to use— and this is all body stuff— can I quickly— yeah, go on.

Can I quickly ask you, do you think that still has anything to do with that torn Achilles?

Um, so I guess that we can talk a little bit more accurately about our history. Attorney-client privilege is, uh, now out the window, right, Tom? So, um, so Tom's treated me as an epidemiologist. I had a— sorry, not an epidemiologist, as a kinesiologist. Um, I had a surgery when I was 19 years old because I had a massive heel spur on my right heel, um, and it At that point, they had to lift the Achilles off and remove the bone spur from underneath. And, uh, what that caused was like essentially I had to regain my range of ankle flexion and my, you know, my— at that time I had to have it done because I couldn't move forward and ski at all. It was impossible. But when, when Tom sort of like found that out, he was able to figure out that there was a reactive— basically there was a traumatic experience which was preventing my right foot from lining up accurately. Now, is that still related? Yes, 100%, um, and from the exercises that you've been giving— you gave me last year and how to do that, I have a direct correlation with if I do those calf, short calf activation exercises in the morning to being able to be balanced on that part of my foot. Is that everything? No. Here's why. Because my body, my body has spent so long compensating for everything that I have particular movement patterns that I'm now trying to untrain. So there's like, there's a two-part strategy here. I've got a strategy where I'm using your exercises to warm my ankle up in the morning, and I have to be at this point because I've spent so long— I'm 33 years old, the surgery was when I was 19. I spent 14 years back-to-back seasons of skiing with this issue, and I am now trying to solve it. So I have to be cognitively aware to change my movement patterns, um, otherwise, yeah, the outcome becomes a bit unpredictable. Um, so that in terms of poor arc, that's, that, that's the way I'm addressing it. Yep. And laterally, the way I'm addressing it, um, on my right footer, which is— so right footer meaning the turn to the left, which is where I've got the issue with my, um, with my foot. First of all, I'm trying to actually find a platform before I move inside, which is straight up from that exact point of the back of my heel, and just feeling like that chain's activated. But then essentially what I'm trying to do, because I've been so paranoid that by moving inside with inclination I'm going to lose my outside ski. I'm trying to now retrain my body to trust that I can incline on that side and find a chain of power. And if I can do that, then everything works perfectly. On the other side, what I'm trying to do is sort of, you know, essentially release the chain of power from the inside and allow myself to flex through the end of the turn, um, and develop a little bit more angulation. The reason why I hadn't done that in the past is because at the end of the left footer or the turn to the right, when I went to change edges, if my new outside ski wasn't there because my, you know, my whole like the chain from the bottom wasn't there, I needed some kind of different thing to do. And what I developed as a movement pattern was starting the turn on the inside ski. And so I'm trying to untrain myself to do that by, yes, definitely developing angulation at the end of the left footer and then trusting the chain of command from the bottom up and then climbing on the right.

Nice. And are you, are you playing with— are you doing that? Are you slowing yourself down? Are you doing it at a more basic level as well, or are you—

um, so to be honest with you, I have been doing this The way that I've been playing with it is more by changing skis. I've been doing it from a 30 or 35-meter GS ski down to a 13-meter slalom ski, and because the snow conditions are so good, I've been trying to do it just through a carve. I have also in the last couple of days been doing it through a steered turn, but I have to say this, like, look, I understand that the fundamentals come through slowing down your movements, but The best thing that I've done for myself in terms of challenge, um, is that I have— I've gone out there and skied hard every day for basically 20 days right now. And what I've done in my most successful days is that I've changed my ski in the middle of the day. Yeah. And that has allowed me to not become complacent. It's allowed me to think about cognitively think about the movement pattern that I'm using to get inside the turn. And, and frankly, it's not just about what the best way is. It's also that it's just been a shitload more fun doing that rather than skiing around at slow speed, you know.

Also, you know what, can I comment quickly on that? I reckon why I think that's possibly a much better way of approaching it. I mean, ultimately you're trying to change that's the kind of skiing you like doing. So what's the point in, you know, you being the perfect basic paralleler when you— when if it's a fun day, you're not going to do that. So if you go fast, that's it.

That's the motive. That's the motivation piece, right?

Yeah.

And what—

but then also, basically, I was also going to say, so then the movement pattern for that is totally different because all those basic ones, there's a twist of the ski and you're trying to work on something that involves less of that, more just pure lateral inclination and the ski bending. And so it's a much better way to just, yeah, change the, the sidecut radius, which means you can still focus on just purely that and not have to— because you can, you can cheat if you, if you pivot the skis, then they'll— you'll be connected with them earlier, and, and so you won't have to refine that lateral balance pressure.

Totally, totally, totally. Yeah, finding the platform is a totally different mechanic. Although now I'm really glad you just— I got a little bit lost in what you were saying there, but because I was just thinking about, here's what I'm actually really working on in an overall perspective. I was talking very specifically. In an overall perspective, as I told you before, I always want to be able to manipulate the ski in terms of when I want to pivot it but I've decided that I think that I always want to be either tipping or untipping the ski, and I never want to be stuck in a position where I am on the same edge angle. There might be exceptions to this, right? If I'm trying to avoid a slow zone that's quite busy, or if I'm going around a long downhill turn. But in terms of idealism, one of my core principles is just change. And I've, like, if I can, if I can be— here's another measure of whether I've done something right on my left foot. If I'm making a single turn where I'm increasing and then decreasing pressure, then I've done a good job. Most of the time what happens is I move in quickly, I hit a wall, I sort of bounce back off the wall, and then I have to re-engage to end the turn. Now that's, that's a major issue on both sides. And I've used this from a coaching perspective because I've been training the trainers here. And I think that it's really good to always think about, like, essentially you're trying to, like, increase your edge angle or decrease it. And that doesn't mean— there's no difference. It's even maybe more important in a steered turn, because in a steered turn you can just set up a platform and sort of skid it around and do nothing. But if you're able to still be manipulating and changing your edge angle the whole way through a skidded or a steered turn then you really understand skiing and you're really well balanced.

Yes, yeah, I would agree with that. Excellent. So is Andrew Wiley there?

Uh, he just left. He— is it— Wiley has left the building.

Yeah, I was going to say what he— I was going to say, well, since he's there, what is— what's he working on?

Uh, what's Wiley working on? Um, yeah, he is— he's working on, um Basically, in the most simple definition, he's working on angulation. He has a— so, well, this is actually an even better topic, and I'll— I promise I'll give you a short brief of this. Both him and I missed our first season in basically 20 years, or 15 years for him, 20 for me, right? And because of that, he's now been able to retrain his, his body habits and some of that is not just habitual, some of that's because if you ski so much you develop these blocks in your body somewhere. And so he's always been told he needs to angulate, he just hasn't figured out where in the body— why does he need to angulate? Because he can't end the turn and, uh, with the edge angle he wants and into the new turn quick enough. He gets stuck with his whole body in a particular position, he can't quite manipulate and choose where he wants to go, basically from the fall line down. Now he has now, because his body has finally released itself and he's probably forgotten a few movement patterns, he's actually figured out that he needs to angulate through the hip and just flex the inside leg. I'm just talking, I'm a big fan of inclination. If you've ever seen Andrew Wiley ski, he's one of the best inclinators in the world, um, but in terms of angulation, like, he's figured out now that he can use all the angles that he's got with inclination, he can keep those angles and choose when to let them go if he starts to cross the body over and release his hips and flex a little bit. So that's what— and I mean, he might have a different way of talking about it, but from what we've done with video, that's what he's working on. He's quite symmetrical by nature. That is what he is, but he's going from— so my whole spiel here has been it's about the outcome, it's about what the ski's doing. He's going now from that perspective to the— because he's too good at that and his image doesn't necessarily suit everybody, he's starting to figure out the image aspect of skiing as well. And that's also functional, but he's trying to figure out that what what he has a better choice by, you know, having, having that image, but it's also very much functional in terms of like the way that he moves. So no, it's, it's really interesting to watch him mature like this.

So yeah, cool. Thanks for sharing that.

Oh, actually, and yeah, one, the one other thing, and I have one last thing to add which he has been banging on about. So Wylie, for those of you who don't know, he's a very tall guy with long legs, long long shins.

Um, give some credentials like quickly. He, he did—

Andrew Wiley, Andrew, Andrew Wiley, he is— he, he was on the New Zealand national team for racing, for freestyle, for freeride. He was, uh, he's won a, uh, couple of competitions, 2-star, 3-star, in terms of, uh, big mountain. He is a double national champion in racing, and he was also, you know, he grew up in the generation with Jossie Wells and was similar in terms of what he's done and Free Ride— uh, sorry, Freestyle. Um, so, you know, the guy's got sort of got everything. He's, he's someone who you would describe as a cat. He's just a natural skier. Um, but yeah, I mean, sorry, I sort of lost—

and sorry I took you off your train of thought there on— yeah, so why, uh, so the angulation piece.

Ah, no, sorry, no, here's where I was going. We're talking about But yeah, so he's got, he's got a very long shin, and what he's been playing with recently is that he's, he's just basically jammed a bunch more in the back of the boot. And his— for him, and the same with one of my clients who has long legs as well, um, is he's just put a spoiler in the back of his boot. You know, for me, I've, I have big fat calves and I have short shins. I take the spoiler out. He's put it back in, and all of a sudden he feels like by having that amount of ankle flexion, he's able to access a whole bunch of range range of movement that he didn't have before.

Yeah, nice. Don't believe the dogma about just because if someone else does it, it'll work for me. You have to— that's the message from this podcast, isn't it?

The whole thing. The whole thing. Exactly, exactly, Tom. And I feel like we've been on so many tangents, I almost felt guilty about it, but thankfully you've been able to draw it back to a conclusion. So thank you.

Yeah, no, thank you, thank you for for your time. It's been a long time coming, and I hope that the listeners get that message and feel some, you know, freedom and ability to go and test for themselves. Test, and particularly test some things that, if anything, is a strongly held belief, like about their binding setup, their boot setup, or too much angulation or not enough. Then testing that opposite thing, like, I think would be a really good place to start.

Definitely, definitely.

After COVID, yeah, like, how much— start again.

And how many times do we have to say this? Like, there is— unless you know the boundaries of all the limits of, of something, like, everything, everything exists on a binary scale of A and B, right? And you have you know, you've got the limits on either side and you have a belief about where your limit is. Unless you actually test it and you figure out how far you can lean inside or outside, how do you even know? And how do you know, as you, as you said with what you did with that vocal kendo, how would you have known that if you hadn't, you know, tried it and played with it?

No, I would have been trying to fix that bloody lead change and had my bindings mounted back Exactly.

If you came here to this podcast and you were looking for the right answers, you came to the wrong place. That's what I'm going to say. It's the right answers lie with you, not with us.

That's it, that's it.

Great.

Well, thank you very much again, Tim. I, I wish you the best for this season. I'm sure we'll be in touch. And, um, yeah, thank you. Yeah, take care, mate. Thanks once again.

Absolutely, and I hope that, you know, in light of what the world's doing right now, anybody who gets the privilege to be out there and be skiing enjoy it. And, you know, I think we're very lucky people.

So that's right, absolutely. All right, till next time.

Ciao, buddy.