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jack97

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I seems always make big effort to get my hip over the feet, I can only do it about 5 or 6 bumps then bang!, bailed out .

I did not see the whole vid, but first three appear to lose the weight transfer to the downhill ski at the trouble spots and could not keep the skis underneath them. For a formation that tight you need to really get the weight/com forward to load the tip of the sk as you make the turn to approach the face of the bump, that means you should feel pressure at the tongue of the boots. What that does is control the turn and keeps the com over the feet. A lot of time is spent on the flats just to get forward so that one can ski such a tight formation.

Drill for getting forward.



Another drill to get forward as well as balancing on the down hill leg.

 
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RichGuo

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Eh, good grief @Philpug , zipper line bumps on an internet discussion forum …what could go wrong!

If we’re going there, might as well start with some matches and gasoline! Bumpers are often ridiculed as athletic neanderthals that cannot actually ski. I suppose you can find video to support that position if you want. Personally, I think good bumpers are some of the most accomplished and versatile skiers you can find …and if you want to be a good bumper then the recipe is the same as elsewhere on the mountain: fundamentals {how boring} [also note I did not say one is accomplished and versatile because they ski bumps…]

Good bumpers are masters at rotary (all forms), edging, pressure-lateral&fore/aft & balance; being able to separate those and seamlessly blending them as necessary to address what is underfoot …or about to be! …and like literally right freaking now on demand fast. Good bumpers also demonstrate great command of purpose, will and touch.

Lots of good advice on technique above, but before that. Where are you equipment wise? How are your boots for fore/aft alignment? …as it is kinda critical in your chosen venue! Are you able to flex and extend fully from one extreme to the other (knees in chest to straight legs) while maintaining your balance and staying cuff neutral in your boots? …try it on a flat surface without skis and with the boots shimmed to the same angle as the delta of your bindings. Good? Are your boots and skis of appropriate length and flex for a beginning bumper or did you buy Glenn Plake’s setup? Many express you “adapt” to your equipment/alignment and overcome ...and that can work. My opinion is there is already a thing or two you have to concern yourself with in the bumps so go ahead and take these things out of the mix.

How are the fundamentals? Got this stuff dialed on groomers? How about flat groomers going slower than a sloth! How’s the rotary pool? (more gasoline!) Skilled at Rotation, Counter-rotation, Stem turns, Independent leg steering, Anticipation, Blocking pole plants… mixing them? Flexion/Extension? Do you have a full range of motion? Do you use it? Can you change edges while: extending, fully extended, flexing, fully flexed? …does your edge change rely on a certain sequence you need to complete (like most) or are you able to move through neutral at will from one turn to another? Foot to foot work, comfortable with it? ..needs work? Fore/aft? …are you comfortable moving your feet under you in order to accommodate terrain and stay centered doing so? I think there is a current thread with a ton of drills highlighted. Anyway, not intended to be a complete list but point being all play together and there is no magic mogul trick, it is just fundamentals applied. …and don’t limit yourself i.e. blocking pole plants bad, counter-rotation bad, steering bad, etc. Be more skillful :)

To go faster, you have to do it more efficiently (get rid of extraneous motions that aren’t needed), do what is required quicker, and learn the timing as James mentioned. If you’re running away, then slow it down and dial in the skills and precision. A ton can be gained by skiing those moguls extremely slowly (no, I mean way slower than that, no, even slower still) and the precision that is required to do so, then that precision gained will apply when the speed is dialed up.

For the feet pull-back/containment. I would work with everything that all the prior posters have raised! All good suggestions and as Jack mentioned it is more about what makes the connection for you. Work it slowly, then add speed. Also work the skills individually then try blending them together. For example, lets look at tball’s scenario: Can that be a blend of refined edging used to slow the feet and let the mogul push the feet back, while at the same time flexing (passively or actively depending on rate needed) while allowing the body to flow across the feet and change edges while compressing and passing over the crest, so now we are ahead of our feet and the skis naturally roll forward to match the pitch of the backside of the bump and we can begin to extend again into the trough. Naturally as James mentioned we have to anticipate meeting our skis at the crest of the bump and consciously move there in order to be in position to flow across the skis and into the new turn.

One more time for good measure: Fundamentals! Never waste a flat, work the easy stuff hard so the hard stuff becomes easy...

Sometimes some pictures help, so here a few images and graphics from the archives that have been posted in the past by Bob Barnes or myself. And of course, there are a ton of good videos like the one James linked above!


View attachment 36752 View attachment 36753 View attachment 36754 View attachment 36756 View attachment 36757


the Left animation of back pedaling is my issue, I am backseated, so I drop to bottom of trough from time to time,
 

François Pugh

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I seems always make big effort to get my hip over the feet, I can only do it about 5 or 6 bumps then bang!, bailed out .
My bump skiing sucks, so take this with a grain of salt.

It seems to me quite likely that two things are happening. Thing One is that you are not in a position to drive your tips down into the back side of the bump. You need to pull yourself forward, pull your feet back, close the ankle, back pedal...whatever you can do to get your body over that crest and above the front of your ski so you can make sure the front of your skis make good solid contact with the back side of that bump. Thing Two is that you are not absorbing the bumps well enough; instead you are letting them knock you into the air, or at least partially so. This again breaks good solid ski contact with the snow. When Thing One and Thing Two gang up on you, it's easy to end up going too fast and being launched by a bump from the back seat.

For me working on thing one in the bumps was a simple matter of concentrating on driving those tips down the backside of the bump as soon as I could.
For me working on Thing Two was helped greatly by going straight through a set of bump sized and bump spaced rollers that the competition team had set up on my little speed bump. Also surprisingly enough, absorbing the virtual bump while carving tight turns with flex to release seemed to improve my absorption abilities.
 
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RichGuo

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For all above great tips, some I understand, some I don't understand, I am relatively a beginning skier, don't have enough experience to fully understand them . but I am a solid bumps lover, this season in East is really good season for practicing bumps, haven't got ice yet, all days is good day, although I bring frustration home every day.
 

mdf

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Thanks for all suggestions above, every time i bailed out like the second guy in this video when he begin lost center on ski

This is interesting.
The difference between the first and second skier is mostly timing. You can see the jolt at the bottom of each trough for the second skier, At first I thought he was a few milliseconds late absorbing -- as mentioned above, if you wait till you feel it, you are late. But after rewatching, I think he may still be extending when he hits the bottom - so he is late extending. I suppose he is late at both. But what is interesting to me is how small the timing difference is.
 

tball

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This is interesting.
The difference between the first and second skier is mostly timing. You can see the jolt at the bottom of each trough for the second skier, At first I thought he was a few milliseconds late absorbing -- as mentioned above, if you wait till you feel it, you are late. But after rewatching, I think he may still be extending when he hits the bottom - so he is late extending. I suppose he is late at both. But what is interesting to me is how small the timing difference is.

Also, note how much better the first skier is pushing his tips down on the backside of the bump. There is a vast difference between when each skier's tips first hit the snow and the angle of the skis.

The first skier is maintaining far more contact with the snow. Skis on the snow control speed. Skis in the air, well, you can see the result with a bunch of skiers in that fun video.

Skis on the snow is also low impact. The impact difference between the first two skiers is dramatic. That second guy is taking a beating from a hard landing on each bump. You can't have a hard landing if you're never in the air!

 
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jack97

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For all above great tips, some I understand, some I don't understand, I am relatively a beginning skier, don't have enough experience to fully understand them . but I am a solid bumps lover, this season in East is really good season for practicing bumps, haven't got ice yet, all days is good day, although I bring frustration home every day.


Feel fortunate that your home mountain seed bumps on a blue and back trail. As mentioned, lots of the skill needed to ski them are developed in the flats as well. Below more drills from one of my favorites vid. The turn drills can be done on the way to the seeded runs.



BTW, I don't think completely learning how ski bumps can be done on the internet but can be use as an aid. Developing solid turns will be a great head start. Eventually, seeking out coaching goes a long ways, if your local mountain has a freestyle team, follow them around for a day and maybe they will point something out. Or fly over to the summer camps where they seed a tight formation where they go through techniques and drills for the zipperline.
 
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Josh Matta

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the lateral impact of skiing that is being shown even if the skier in never in the air is huge.

but simply put you pull back you feet when your feet are right on top of the bump<or the highest point they will reach. If your tips appear of the snow, then you did not do it fast enough.
 

tball

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the lateral impact of skiing that is being shown even if the skier in never in the air is huge.

but simply put you pull back you feet when your feet are right on top of the bump<or the highest point they will reach. If your tips appear of the snow, then you did not do it fast enough.

I disagree. In a zipper line like that video, I think it's geometrically impossible to keep your tips on the snow. Your tips will be off the snow as you crest the bump because the bump is round and your skis are longer and flat(ish). Is it possible to keep your tips on the snow on this bump from the video, for example?

tips_up_in_bumps.png


On the impact, that's a steep zipper line. Keeping your skis on the snow is far lower impact than off, but yes there is an impact. I think it's manageable with good technique. Getting to good technique without impact is another question. I'm not sure there is a way to avoid some amount of the pounding seen in that video when when you are learning and it's that steep and tight.

I should clarify how I think about keeping skis on the snow in bumps. My preference is Ideally my skis underfoot should never leave the snow. Tips and tails can't stay on the snow in many lines, though, because of the geometry of flat skis on a round surface:
flat_on_round.png
 

Rod9301

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I disagree. In a zipper line like that video, I think it's geometrically impossible to keep your tips on the snow. Your tips will be off the snow as you crest the bump because the bump is round and your skis are longer and flat(ish). Is it possible to keep your tips on the snow on this bump from the video, for example?

View attachment 36802

On the impact, that's a steep zipper line. Keeping your skis on the snow is far lower impact than off, but yes there is an impact. I think it's manageable with good technique. Getting to good technique without impact is another question. I'm not sure there is a way to avoid some amount of the pounding seen in that video when when you are learning and it's that steep and tight.

I should clarify how I think about keeping skis on the snow in bumps. My preference is Ideally my skis underfoot should never leave the snow. Tips and tails can't stay on the snow in many lines, though, because of the geometry of flat skis on a round surface:
View attachment 36803
Very true, your tips will be in the air as you crest the bump.
 

James

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Feel fortunate that your home mountain seed bumps on a blue and back trail. As mentioned, lots of the skill needed to ski them are developed in the flats as well. Below more drills from one of my favorites vid. The turn drills can be done on the way to the seeded runs.



BTW, I don't think completely learning how ski bumps can be done on the internet but can be use as an aid. Developing solid turns will be a great head start. Eventually, seeking out coaching goes a long ways, if your local mountain has a freestyle team, follow them around for a day and maybe they will point something out. Or fly over to the summer camps where they seed a tight formation where they go through techniques and drills for the zipperline.
Do you have any links for Stephen Fairing dvd's/videos hopefully in english?
 

James

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^^You did notice it's in Japanese??
I've used her pole planting demo. About 25:00 in the vid. Partic how tight she keeps the straps and the wrist/hand action. Even for reg skiing.
 

LiquidFeet

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I turn off the sound in all how-to-ski videos.
If they can't get across what they are teaching without words, the video is useless.
 

tball

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Great video @LiquidFeet!

Her slower skiing from 27:25 to about 28:30 in the pole plant segment @James pointed out is an excellent example of super smooth zipper line mogul skiing. You know you're old when you start appreciating slower skiing. ;)

Edit: from Wikipedia:

Aiko Uemura (上村 愛子 Uemura Aiko, born on December 9, 1979) is a Japanese freestyle skier. She participates in moguls and dual moguls.

Her family moved to Hakuba town, Nagano Prefecture, Japan in 1986. She graduated from Hakuba High School in 1998, and works for the Kitano Construction Corporation in Nagano city, Japan.

She is the first Japanese woman to win the 2007–08 World Cup in moguls, and also won two gold medals at FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships 2009. She took part in the Winter Olympic Games in 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014.

In June 2009, she married alpine skier Kentaro Minagawa.

At the 2014 Sochi Olympics, she was beaten for bronze by Hannah Kearney, the previous Olympic champion.

 

jack97

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Do you have any links for Stephen Fairing dvd's/videos hopefully in english?

Nope, unfortunately that's from a vhs tape. It unlikely it will be produce in the ordinal format. The Japanese and Koreans love this type of skiing and copied the original to newer formats. They akin mogul skiers as rock stars in our country.
 
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jack97

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Here's my favorite mogul skiing how-to video. It's quite thorough.
Lots of drills and progressions.
You don't need to speak Japanese to understand.



Best sequence is from 12:22 to 12:46 where she's making turns on the wave or rollers. You can see the hip getting forward with the tongue pressure to the top. Once at top, she "sticks" (slang for slowing down) at the top then the quick weight shift and driving the tips downward. That's a drill only done in practice and is subtlety seen in competition since speed is of the essence. Fearing talks about this but I don't think his visual is as good as Aiko.
 
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cosmoliu

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Best sequence is from 12:22 to 12:46 where she's making turns on the wave or rollers. You can see the hip getting forward with the tongue pressure to the top. Once at top, she "sticks" (slang for slowing down) at the top then the quick weight shift and driving the tips downward.

^^^^ That segment's great. The first couple of times I got that feet-pulled-back thing going, I remember that pulling my feet up and back decisively left me with a sensation something like projecting my body forward, as if into an abyss. It took a real leap of faith to overcome the feeling that I might fall on my face. At first, I was able to manage that sensation about 1 out of 20 turns. But that one turn felt really fantastic. These days I can get that feeling out of maybe half of my turns, so it definitely is a work in progress.

The other check I have to know that my weight is truly forward is that if I really am able to get pressure to the ski tips at the bottom of the turn, there is a distinct sensation that I am pressing on a brake pedal with the downhill ski tip. And that pressure on the imaginary brake pedal comes with a very satisfying feeling of speed control.
 

jack97

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First step is too make sure you can consistently get that sensation, Next step is to apply the pressure at the tip to control where and what type of turn you want to make.
 

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