Review
It covers everything you would ever want to know about the sport, from dryland training and equipment selection, to on-snow training tactics by ski racing discipline. It also contains the most detailed waxing and ski preparation guide ever available to the public.
Book Description
Ski Faster
Learn to ski as expert racers do, even if you never plan to enter a starting gate.
You don't need nerves of steel and a passion for flying down slopes at 85 mph to benefit from the competitive-level advice and insider anecdotes in this book. In fact, even if moving at 15 mph on the intermediate slope makes you nervous, Ski Faster is for you . . . if you want to ski better . . . have more fun on the slopes . . . and learn how to carve those new shaped skis like a pro.
"The best skiers are ski racers," writes Densmore, pointing out the technical impact of champions such as Jean Claude Killy, Stein Ericksen, and Ingemar Stenmark. In this book, Densmore shows all skiers how to apply champion racing techniques not only to gain speed but to improve skill. Ski Faster shows you how to Prepare for and enjoy any kind of alpine race, no matter what your present skill level Tell a slalom course from a Giant slalom or Super G Get more fun out of skiing by mastering better technique Ski professionally with improved form and better-carved turns Understand how the new shaped skis improve your carving and racing potential
With pro-level guidance on training and conditioning . . . on-snow and dry-land drills . . . waxing tricks . . . faster starts . . . course tactics . . . mental preparation, including conquering fear of speed . . . tips from top racers . . . and over a hundred illustrations that make it all easier to understand, Ski Faster is the finest race-preparation manual available.
"A must-have in any Alpine master's ski library." --Bill Skinner, U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association Masters Coordinator and Park City Resort Masters Coach
"The most complete ski racing book written! It's an encyclopedia that reads like a personal diary of a ski racer. Whatever your interest or ability, this book will help you ski better and Ski Faster!" --Dave Merriam, Director of the Stowe Ski and Snowboard School and Head Coach of the PSIA Demonstration Team
"Lisa Feinberg Densmore has compiled a comprehensive digest of pertinent concepts, details, and personal accounts to form an improvement road map for recreational skiers, beginning-to-seasoned racers, instructors, coaches, parents, and fans. I'll recommend this book to many people." --David Ojala, Program Director, Mammoth Mountain Ski and Snowboard Team
From the Publisher
"A must-have in any Alpine master's ski library."--Bill Skinner, U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association Masters Coordinator and Park City Resort Masters Coach "The most complete ski racing book written! It's an encyclopedia that reads like a personal diary of a ski racer. Whatever your interest or ability, this book will help you ski better and Ski Faster!"--Dave Merriam, Director of the Stowe Ski and Snowboard School and Head Coach of the PSIA Demonstration Team "Lisa Feinberg Densmore has compiled a comprehensive digest of pertinent concepts, details, and personal accounts to form an improvement road map for recreational skiers, beginning-to-seasoned racers, instructors, coaches, parents, and fans. I'll recommend this book to many people."--David Ojala, Program Director, Mammoth Mountain Ski and Snowboard Team Skiing Downhill Skiing Alpine SkiingSki Race ConditioningSlalom CoursesSuper GGiant SlalomShaped Skis
About the Author
Lisa Feinberg Densmore is one of the best-known figures in skiing and an elite downhill racer. On the Women's Professional Ski Racing Tour from 1985 to 1990, she ranked 10th in the world. Winner of 15 Alpine Masters national titles since 1991, she has received many other skiing honors, as well. Writing for magazines including Ski Racing International, Mountain Sports & Living, Outdoor, American Health, and Women's Sports & Fitness, Densmore appears regularly on major cable television sports networks. A multisport athlete, she has competed in figure skating, soccer, marathon, triathlon, tennis, bicycle racing, and also fly fishes, kayaks, in-line skates, hunts upland birds, and studies ballet.
Excerpted from Ski Faster : Lisa Feinberg Densmore's Guide to High-Performance Skiing and Racing by Lisa Feinberg Densmore. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
CHAPTER 1 The New Carved Turn The Basics A carved turn is a turn that involves no skidding. The evidence of a carved turn is two clean lines, one from each ski, in the snow behind the skier. As recently as the early 1990s, the evidence of a carved turn was only one line in the snow because 100 percent of the skier's weight was on the downhill ski. Today, although most of your weight should still be on the downhill ski, the uphill ski gets about 30 percent of the pressure--more on a flatter slope, less on a steep, icy slope. The reason for this change in technique is found in just two words: shaped skis. Shaped skis were first seen at ski areas as a teaching aid around 1995. They promised a quicker learning process because they required less steering than traditional, straighter-edged skis. Most first-time skiers could make carved turns after only a morning lesson. After a day or two, a newcomer could handle a groomed intermediate slope with some technical prowess. Before the advent of shaped skis, it often took a week of ski school just to negotiate an easy slope with some confidence. For many, carving a turn was a lifetime pursuit. Why the dramatic improvement? Because of the pronounced sidecut (wide tip, skinny middle, and wide tail) and soft longitudinal flex of shaped skis, turning on them takes only two key skills, maintaining a balanced stance over the center of the skis and rolling the skis on edge. By just standing on shaped skis, your body weight provides enough pressure to bend them into reverse camber. Once in reverse camber, if you roll them on edge, they automatically make a turn with a radius between 18 and 25 meters, similar to the radius of an average giant slalom turn. Shaped versus "Straight" Skis Any ski designed over the last hundred years has some sidecut. Even though older skis look straight by today's standards, they do differ in width between the ends and the middle. Otherwise, they would not turn. The sidecuts of shaped skis are just more pronounced. On average, they are 10 millimeters wider in the tip and the tail, a few millimeters thinner in the middle and 10 centimeters shorter than their predecessors. (Actual measurements vary depending on the manufacturer.) The extra wide tip and tail and technological advances in vibration dampening have made shorter length possible. Even though a shaped ski is not as long as a "straight" one, it typically has more surface area on the snow and more edge, because of its added width fore and aft. For example, if you use a 200-centimeter "straight" ski, then switch to a 200-centimeter shaped ski, the shaped ski will feel like a 210-centimeter straight ski. A 190-centimeter ski may look short at first, but it feels surprisingly fast, stable, and responsive. High-Performance Carving The introduction of shaped skis is one of the few times in the history of skiing that ski design produced a dramatic change first at the recreational level. In fact, many expert free skiers and elite racers were rather underwhelmed the first time they tried shaped skis, usually because they tried to steer them too much. As manufacturers figured out ways to make shaped skis torsionally stiffer for better edge grip and to make them better at dampening vibration for more control at faster speeds, top racers began to ski faster on them and switched. The first real success for the new design came in 1997, when Deborah Compagnoni, an Olympic gold medalist from Italy, won the World Cup giant slalom title and the World Championship giant slalom race on shaped skis. High-level skiers took notice. Before long, racers marveled that their new giant slalom skis had shrunk 5 to 10 centimeters and were about the same length as their slalom skis. Today, slaloms are the only races where you can find straight skis, and even slalom skis are beginning to have more shape. Compagnoni, however, did not single-handedly raise the performance bar by competing on shaped skis. Earlier, the success of her compatriot, Olympic hero Alberto Tomba, and Norwegian World Cup star Ole Christian Furuseth, had produced a tremendous influence on technique--and thus on the ski designs that best accommodated that technique. This influence eventually filtered down to the black diamond masses. In the late 1980s, Furuseth gained recognition among World Cup watchers with his first of seven World Cup wins. During his career, he also garnered two World Cup discipline titles and one World Championship gold medal. As coaches analyzed his technique, they made a startling discovery. Furuseth put pressure on both skis rather than only on the downhill ski when he turned. Other Norwegians were doing the same, but Furuseth was winning. He seemed turbocharged. By putting pressure on both skis, he got more acceleration out of every turn because two skis have more rebound than one ski. Furuseth figured out how to channel that power into smooth, flowing turns. The classic "step to the new ski, roll it on edge" style made popular by Swedish champion Ingemar Stenmark was out; two skis on the snow was in. In 1992, the flamboyant Alberto Tomba won the Olympic slalom and giant slalom races in Albertville, France. He went on to dominate the World Cup in those two events through the middle of the 1990s. Tomba backed up his bravado with the strength and confidence to take a straighter line at each gate, then carve a turn with a tighter radius without losing speed. In addition, he maintained a lower body position throughout his run, regardless of where he was in the turn. To enhance his performance, his ski supplier, Rossignol, began experimenting with the shape and length of his skis, shortening them and increasing their sidecut a little bit at a time. When other racers started emulating Tomba, other ski manufacturers started experimenting with shorter skis and deeper sidecuts. The 10 Secrets of Faster Skiing Although the carved turn is the essence of expert skiing, your skiing will not truly be high performance until you also can handle speed, regardless of how steep the terrain might be. Forget about skiing through gates until you hone your technique and speed on the open slopes. Whatever your speed limit is while free skiing, it will be less when skiing through gates, perhaps much less depending on your mental toughness. Assuming you can carve a turn, here are the ten secrets of faster skiing. Practice them one at a time while free skiing until each one becomes automatic: 1. Finish your turns, but do not over-turn A fast turn has just enough arc in the snow to finish it (place the size and shape of the turn where you want it) while allowing you to maintain your speed. The shape of a fast turn in the snow is never more than a half-circle (180 degrees). If your skis turn past this 180-degree half-circle, even by one degree, you will decelerate. Also be careful to avoid incomplete turns. If you feel yourself going faster and faster but in an uncontrolled way as a result of gravity and not the power you have generated in the turn, you are not finishing your turns. Link your turns in a rhythmic way; try to feel the pressure build and release under your boots over and over again. It is this combination of fluidity and directed pressure that will allow you to ski faster with confidence. 2. Keep your eyes and torso oriented down the hill Unless you have exceptionally fast feet, your maximum speed in a short-radius turn is around 20 mph. Faster skiing not only is more comfortable when the turns have a wider radius, but also more graceful and practical. One of the most common mistakes in a wide-radius turn is letting your body face in the same direction that your skis are traveling, or worse, letting your body rotate into the hill. The result is too much weight on the uphill ski, which leads to skidding, and, if the slope is steep, falling. If you feel your heels slip to the side midway through the turn instead of following in the same path as the fronts of your skis, your body is not oriented properly down the hill. You should always keep your upper body oriented down the trail, if only slightly, to help facilitate the angulation of your hips to the side and to keep most of the your weight on the downhill ski. It helps to continually look down the fall line--the direct line a snowball would travel down the slope. If your body position feels awkward when you look down the fall line, your torso is oriented incorrectly. 3. Allow pressure to build under your skis as long as possible in each turn. Moving faster requires more energy. You are not an internal combustion engine, so you cannot speed up by simply giving your legs more gas. You have to create energy through your turns. You have two sources available, the centrifugal force created by the turns themselves, and the gravitational force pulling you down the hill. To get the most energy out of a turn, you have to allow as much pressure as possible to build up under your feet. It is a matter of strength and timing. Assuming you have the strength to handle the pressure, hold each turn until the last moment before starting a new turn. If you release the turn too early, you lose potential energy. Even if you take a more direct line, you still have to pressure your skis until you reach the transition between each turn. In other words, allow pressure to build on your skis through the whole apex of the turn. 4. Release weight forward, not upward Ten years ago, ski technique emphasized up-and-down motion. You came up to release the turn, then sank down as you progressed into the next turn. Forget up! Think forward! Skiing faster means moving down the hill faster. Focus your movements in that direction. Rising up dissipates energy into the air. Keep low, by angulating to the side and slightly curving your back. When it is time to release the pressure that has built up in a turn, use it to propel yourself forward into the next turn. 5. Keep your skis on the snow Air is slow. That is why downhill racers fight to keep their skis on the snow. They try to time jumps so that they spend the least possible amount of time in the air. A ski in the air can only glide. It cannot generate speed. It is also difficult for a skier to maintain a compact body position in the air. Part of the air control game in skiing has nothing to do with a jump. Sometimes the pressure created in a turn pops you into the air when you release it. This may feel energetic, but it is misdirected. The fastest skiers are the ones who keep their skis on the snow the most. 6. Angulate to the side, don't bend at the waist In an attempt to apply more pressure to their skis, many people collapse at the waist. To aggressively increase the pressure on your skis, flex forward at the ankles and knees, not at the waist, and let your body angulate to the side at the hips. This angulation should increase through the turn, then decrease as the turn ends. It should be a movement in which your feet and legs move out to the side, then back under your body, then out to the other side, while the upper body stays relatively quiet. However, do not think of the upper body as inactive. The muscles in your back, side, and stomach must constantly make adjustments to keep the rest of the upper body under relaxed control. At the most angulated part of the turn, a skier resembles a large, moving comma. 7. Transfer weight laterally between turns The transition between turns is just as important as the turn itself and not a time for a quick rest. In the old days, the legs straightened during the transition between turns as part of the motion to "unweight" the skis. Today, because of shaped skis, the opposite is true. The legs are at their most extended during the turn out to the side. Between turns, your knees come up under your body (this is done by contracting your stomach muscles), while the upper body stays relatively level in relation to the ground. As the next turn begins, the legs drift quickly to the other side. 8. Feel the carve Even the tiniest amount of skidding reduces speed. Skiing requires acute sensory perception in the feet. Feel the snow, the terrain, and, most of all, what your skis are doing. Are they carving or skidding? Expert skiers strive to make every turn perfect. Sometimes it is subconscious, but the feeling for the snow, for the edge, is always there. 9. Only edge the skis into the snow enough to make the turn, no more This may sound like a contradiction to building as much pressure on your skis as possible, but it is not. There is a fine line between too much and too little edging. With so much concentration on building pressure on the skis to generate speed, you may be edging too much, particularly if the snow is soft. Each type of snow condition and each type of terrain has its speed limitations based on the skier's ability, fitness level, and equipment. Once you reach that limit, doing more is beyond a matter of no added gains. It is a matter of reduced results. Allowing your edges to dig too deep into the snow will slow you down. Part of the acute awareness of body and skis that comes with high-performance skiing is a "touch" for the snow. The next time you are cruising on packed powder, experiment to see just how little edging you have to use, compared with that on an icy slope, to make turns. 10. Keep your hands forward for stability The faster you go, the more important it is to keep your hands forward for balance. For many downhill racers, that is their lone thought; the same is true for many gate skiers, too. For example, Billy Kidd, 1964 Olympic Silver Medalist in slalom (Innsbruck, Austria) and 1970 World Champion in the combined events (slalom and downhill) is a hand man. As a racer, he believed that if his hands were doing the right thing, the rest of his technique would fall into place. If he was having trouble, he could usually trace it to his hands. Today, as director of his own performance center in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, he still practices and preaches the benefits of keeping your hands forward. One common mistake is to drop your hands by your sides, which will cause you to sit back. If you sit back while going slow, it is more difficult to initiate your turns. If you sit back at speed, you will crash. Dropping one hand is not as risky, but it is not conducive to high-performance skiing. Usually the uphill hand is the culprit, especially toward the end of a wide-radius turn. Dropping the uphill hand causes your upper body to tip into the hill; this pulls your weight off the downhill ski and ends the carve. Beware of a lazy hand after your pole plant, too. Plant your pole quickly with just a flick of the wrist, not a big arm movement. As you pass the spot in the snow, do not let the hand drop. Both hands should be in the bottom edge of your peripheral vision at all times. Keeping your hands forward helps drive your body forward, too. To be effective, your hands must be forward and parallel to the slope. In other words, unless the trail is flat, the downhill hand is lower than the uphill hand. This concentrates more of your weight on the downhill ski, which is essential for edge grip. The steeper the slope, the more the downhill hand has to press down the hill, as if it has a weight in it. If you find yourself about to crash, your best hope for recovery is to drive your hands forward. Imagine a fall in slow motion. Picture your hands as you start to lose your balance. At least one jets over your head, out to the side, or behind your body. Get your hands under control, and your skis will be in control, too. Going Too Fast It is not enough push off the chairlift thinking, "I am going to ski faster." Safe speed comes with many miles of competent, relaxed skiing. You ski faster as a result of your technique, strength, and mental attitude. It should never be a reckless endeavor. If you do get nervous about your speed, slow down immediately, either by intentionally skidding or by making rounder turns. Avoid inadvertently sitting back! The first step in the "flight" instinct is to recoil from danger, or back off. The second is to get closer to the ground to lessen a potential fall. This is why many people sit back too much on their skis and/or lean into the hill. They are simply recoiling from a perceived danger. When you go beyond your comfort zone in skiing, the safest move is contrary to your natural instinct: you should drive your hands forward and lean down the hill more in the middle of each turn. And remember, always ski within your limits to lessen your chance of injury. Ski Nomenclature Shaped skis went by several names when first introduced: parabolic skis, super-sidecut skis, and hourglass skis. Today, the accepted term is shaped ski. In the early days of shaped skis only one ski manufactured by Elan was truly parabolic in shape, meaning its tip and tail were the same width, with its thinner midpoint halfway between them. The performance of these parabolic skis proved to be too limited, however, because you could only make carved turns of one size or arc comfortably. At a glance, a shaped ski looks like a stretched-out hourglass because of its wide tip and tail and narrow middle, but the term hourglass skis didn't stick, perhaps because it implied inaccurately that symmetry existed between the tip and tail. In fact, most shaped skis have a tip that is wider than the tail. The difference in width between the tip and the tail creates the ski's taper angle. The taper angle of a ski helps determine how easily the ski enters and exits a turn. Draw straight lines down both sides of the ski from the widest part of the tip to the widest part of the tail. The angle formed where these two lines intersect is the taper angle. Some manufacturers have experimented with reverse taper angles, where the tail is wider than the tip. Also synonymous with the term shaped is the term super-sidecut, because the sidecut of a shaped ski is very exaggerated compared with the sidecut of an older, straighter ski. The term super-sidecut is not widely used because it is more of a mouthful and because deep sidecuts have now become so normal among ski designs--much like wide-body tennis racquets or oversized golf club heads--that they no longer seem "super." The Four Disciplines of Alpine Ski Racing Although alpine skiing is often called downhill skiing, downhill is really just one of four alpine ski racing disciplines, and the least likely pursuit for most people on the slopes. The four disciplines of alpine ski racing are slalom, giant slalom, downhill, and Super G. Slalom is a short sprint through a forest of ski poles. Giant slalom most closely resembles free-skiing on the open slopes, with its smooth arcing turns, back and forth across the hill. In downhill, racers seem to go straight down the mountain at speeds upward of 80 mph. The only turns in downhill typically follow the terrain. Super G is a hybrid between giant slalom and downhill: racers ski fast, around 60 mph, but also make high-speed turns, particularly if the trail is wide and steep. (See chapter 4 for more on giant slalom, chapter 5 for slalom, and chapter 6 for Super G and downhill.) First Person: A Speed Breakthrough Skiing faster takes good technique, physical strength, and a mental leap in confidence. Throughout my ski-racing career, I had a reputation for excellent technique. I could always run faster, jump higher, and do more sit-ups per minute than most of my competitors, but my speed threshold, although higher than most, held me back. During my second year on the Women's Pro Tour, I lost three races in a row by less than 1/100th of a second. It was maddening, yet I couldn't find that fraction of an eyeblink no matter how hard I trained. About halfway through the winter, the tour stopped at Winter Park, Colorado, where an old college friend of mine, Mack Lyons, lived and trained. (He was racing on the Men's Pro Tour at the time.) One afternoon, Mack and I went free skiing. I had never been to Winter Park before and was curious about the mountain. I followed him everywhere, not because he was playing tour guide, but because the pace at which he skied was faster than mine. I never did see much of the mountain. I was too busy trying to keep up with Mack. I constantly felt on the edge of or just beyond my comfort zone, yet my sense of pride prodded me to make respectable turns. I had to keep up. I wasn't scared, just nervous. The next weekend, instead of losing the race by almost nothing, I won a number of runs by significant margins. (Pro races are dual format, set up like a tennis tournament. Two competitors race side by side. The fastest racer in each round moves on to progressively tougher rounds. The top finishers take up to 10 runs per day.) By following my faster friend for a day, I became faster, too. Since then, whenever I have the chance to ski with someone faster than me, I don't hesitate to go. I can inevitably ski faster as a result.
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