Maintaining a tight line CONTROLS your speed and makes you FEEL slow. Stability on a slalom ski comes from controlled speed. It's not just keeping yours elbows tight, it's also feeding/feeling the line as you reach. If you reach fast the line goes dead/loose and speed bleeds rapidly. How many on here think everything is going well, your body position seems fine and then you get pulled out of position heading to the wake? Thats often line control issues.
-Blackdog

Back arm pressure, when coming into the ball, means keeping the outside elbow close to the vest. So, if you're heading to 1, 3, or 5, keep your right arm tight to the body all the way out to the buoy line. This helps you to keep outbound direction. As soon as you release your outside arm, your body starts rolling in for the turn and you start to go narrow.

If you watch pros, no matter what style they ski, they all keep their outside arm close all the way out to the buoy line.
-kpickett

If I understand Greg and blackdog correctly...they are saying that you control your speed AND direction better by maintaining a tight line...and you maintain a tight line by keeping the elbows close to the vest. No one doubts that getting your hips up (in a traditional form) is essential and foundamental...but it's incomplete w/o other fundamentals to complement it.
-ScarletArrow

I have been blessed with a lot of ski progress but I agree here, I wish I would have had someone skiing with me or these internet forums to read to pin my focus on keeping my elbows tight from the start. That alone would have put me years ahead of where I'm at now and saved thousands of dollars in gas.
-skisix38off

Not only not reaching so early, but reaching SLOWLY. I don't even think you need more speed thru the gate, you just need to maintain it longer off the second wake. Line tension carries you wider and FEELS slower, But if you have a tight line you can pick when you want to turn and get instant & controlled direction the other way and you get early as you want to the next ball. The hard part is figuring out what it feels like. It's not that hard to do once you know what it is. Then you just make it habit. If your working hard at this point you're not doing it right. 15off is easy to over ski for some reason which leads to other bad habits (reaching early/fast, etc.). The reason i run 15off is because it teaches you rhythm/control, you have to do alot of things right to make it feel good. How many people do you know who make it look easy? not many!
-blackdog

I think reaching slow is one of the biggest factors to keeping a tight line around the buoy. Every time you get late and try to speed things up you start getting later and later and in worse and worse shape. This was the comment I heard just this week, "If you get late slow down everything at the buoy and make up the time when your behind the boat." Essentially they were saying that trying to make up time around the buoy results in you 1) rushing the turn and getting a bunch of slack and/or 2) over turning at the ball and taking more angle than you can handle an losing the rope or losing your angle. In order to keep a tight line your reach and turn cannot be rushed they need to be slow and methodical everytime whether you are late or not. If you are late, don't try to make up a bunch of time at the buoy, but instead make it up behind the boat in your pull.
-lagdawg

Jhughes lets try an experiment, read the line tension discussion, try it for your next few sets on the water, try it free skiing, try it in the course, try it fast, try it slow, try it on jumpers...just pay attention to the rope, try to keep a little tension on it from the second wake to the apex, look at pictures of 39 & 41 off skiers 1/2 way from the 2nd wake to the apex. pay attention to where the handle is & where the elbows are and try to emulate that and then let me know how your skiing is doing. i'll bet if you fix the rope control you'll almost instantly pick up 2 to 4 passes. how many people would try that to pick up a couple of passes. i'll even go a step further any pass you can control the rope on, you can run. How's that for a bold statement?
-Blackdog

April and Chris Eller tried to point this out to me in the spring. April suggested I run 2 handed passes to enhance my handle control. Chris suggested I work on reaching slow in the turns. I heard what they were saying but I didn't feel it. You have to feel it to understand it. The feeling is that you are hanging onto the pylon of the boat through the handle. Imagine that your handle was welded vertically directly to the pylon. If you were to grab onto that welded handle, that's what it feels like when you have a tight line in the course. It feels like you are a superhero who can actually stretch their arm out 60 feet and grab onto the pylon directly.

It's funny how I've heard this advice a million times but only recently felt it. I felt it by keeping my elbows in close after the second wake and not letting the handle out any faster than I needed to in the turns. You need to feel what rope tension is and learn to preserve it at all costs though the course. Tension in the rope is like trying to start a fire on a deserted island- once you get those embers going, you don't want to let them die out. You hold that tension after the second wake and cherish it as it carries you through the turn. If you let the handle out too quickly (as seen in the photo above), the flame goes out and you are out of luck.

The best part about keeping a tight line out of the wake and into the turn is that it fixes so much other stuff. A tight line gives you a nice, controlled, upright turn. It's so much easier to get in a good wake-crossing position when you turn on a tight line. Every problem in slalom can be traced to a step or two back from the problem area. In my case, a step or two back usually comes down to a loose line after the wake and into the turn. Not slack, but not a tense line either. The photo above illustrates it perfectly- just enough lack of tension in the line to let it bow in the breeze a bit.

This is the single most important thing I've learned in slalom. If you are struggling at 28, 30, or 32 MPH I'd drop everything and concentrate ONLY on maintaining tension in the line after the wake and through your turn. You might think "hey, I don't get big slack in the turns so I'm fine". Lack of line tension is very difficult to detect unless you know what you're looking for. If it doesn't feel like your handle is connected to something solid during the entire pass, then you don't have line tension. Just by figuring this one thing out, I feel like I could gain an entire pass in the next couple of weeks. It's that important. Concepts like this one are the entire reason I created this site. In my opinion this post alone means "mission accomplished" for what I'm trying to do here.

I can't tell you how many times that weekend I heard somebody say "that was soooo fun!" after climbing over the transom. It was awesome. Typically when we ski it's all business- ski a couple sets in the course and go home. It was so nice to teach all of these kids to ski and to see how much they enjoyed it. It also goes to show how the right equipment and driver can make learning to ski so much more enjoyable and so much easier for young kids.

I'm starting to sound like a broken record here but ONCE AGAIN, our site member Anthony Warren, AKA ScarletArrow has brought us a whole trick bag of video from his latest ski vacation. Anthony is becoming our unofficial field correspondent, confidently approaching pros around the country with his video camera in order to bring their knowledge and insight to our viewers. His latest trip was to the H2Oz training center in Charleston, South Carolina. Seth Stisher, pro coach, competitor and co-owner of the H2Osmosis.com pro shop and ski school and Waterskitrainer.com website agreed to let SA interview him AND let us film him running every line length and speed from 15 Off, 30 MPH all the way up to 38 at 36 MPH. What a guy!

I hope you guys and gals enjoy the video. Let us know what you think by posting your comments using the comment form below this post. We'd love to hear what you think. The interview vids are in lower quality than the ski videos. Making the ski videos much bigger in size than they are would require a heinous downloading experience for you, so I decided to make them fairly high quality but also fairly small in size. Since they are Quicktime files they seek very smoothly so you should be able to scroll the action back and fourth very easily. I also have Seth's passes from 22 Off up to 38 Off, which I'll be posting in the future. For now I just wanted to get the first few passes up there. Enjoy.

Seth Stisher July 2008 Interview Videos

Seth Stisher Interview Part One (Quicktime, 6.3MB)

Seth Stisher Interview Part Two (Quicktime, 6.6MB)

Seth Stisher Interview Part Three (Quicktime, 9.1MB)

Seth Stisher Interview Part Four (Quicktime, 6.1MB)

Seth Stisher Interview Part Five (Quicktime, 8.7MB)

Seth Stisher Interview Part Six (Quicktime, 8.9MB)

Seth Stisher Interview Part Seven (Quicktime, 9.2MB)

Seth Stisher Runs 15 Off

Seth Stisher 15 Off, 30 MPH (Quicktime, 6.0MB)

Seth Stisher 15 Off, 32 MPH (Quicktime, 4.7MB)

Seth Stisher 15 Off, 34 MPH (Quicktime, 4.4MB)

Seth Stisher 15 Off, 36 MPH (Quicktime, 4.5MB)

Figure 1. Right after the second wake: The elbows are in tight and I’m resisting my upper body getting pulled forward. I’m going to keep this position almost out to the buoy line, the thing that will change is my body's angle to the water. Here I am setting up my body to allow the ski to swing under me and continue outward on the trajectory I set up off the last ball. I will use my arms to start making up the increasing distance between my ski and the boat.

Figure 2. Same time period of the above picture but form a different angle. You can see how the ski is already starting to swing under me as the boat is progressing down course, the ski is going to keep going outward. My elbows are in tight, so, the pull is coming through my center of gravity. This is important because it means that I just have resist.

Figure 3: I have now let go with my down arm and am slowly reaching because I want to use my arms to bridge the distance from the boat to my ski. I want to allow the ski to keep going as far outbound as possible to maximize my angle on the next ball. If I reach too quickly here I will make up more room than the boat has progressed away from me and the ski will stop going outbound and start turning in. I will also start to fall forward because the rope isn’t there to keep my arm pulled tight. This will drop my shoulder closer to the water and get my balance off and move my weight forward on the ski driving the tip down and increasing the sharpness of the turn.

It’s important to know at this point that these shots are at 32 or 35 off and that the only difference is the degree of lean away from and toward the boat. At 15-22 off the same principles apply only the degree of lean/leverage changes.

Figure 4: I am still just slowly reaching out trying to keep allowing the ski to go outbound. You can see though that the ski is starting to come back in and look where the buoy is! Notice where my arm that’s not on the handle is. I want to keep it tucked in tight so that my shoulders stay level and my head stays level. This keeps my weight form coming forward and that keeps the ski from biting too hard and getting either too much angle or getting the angle too quickly before I’m in a position to hang on to it.

Figure 5: This picture shows my off arm coming away from my body and now there’s not a straight line that can be drawn through my body. My shoulders are starting to come forward and notice the water is starting to climb up higher on the ski tip. The one good thing I’ve got going for me here is that my shoulders are still counter- rotated.

Figure 6: I’ve finished the turn now and am waiting for the boat to progress down course. I’ve kept my lean that I established coming into the ball and I’m just going to maintain that. I don’t want to over turn here by pushing on the ski and I don’t want to start rotating my shoulders cross course. I’ll wait for the boat to pick me up and then I’ll evaluate what I need to do then, hopefully nothing but enjoy the nice acceleration cross course.

Figure 7: I wanted to use this picture to demonstrate how early the ski has changed edge and where the arc of turning back in starts. The spray off the ski starts just behind the boat from this perspective. I’m skiing 38 off in this picture so I picked up speed quickly and you won’t need to start your edge change this early but I wanted you to get the idea that even at 15 – 22 off you want to start you edge change 6-10 feet after the second wake so that you can have a bulk of you turn completed before the bouy.

Figure 8: Right behind the boat! Elbows are in tight to my vest, I’m looking down course and the handle is right next to my hips. The further away the handle gets from your hips here the more the boat is loading your upper body and the more forward you are going to have to ride on the ski- the boats are too strong.

I think Anthony did an awesome job and really went above and beyond for this site and our readers, as usual. I'd like to thank Tadd Schreiber at H2Osmosis.com for giving Anthony full "backstage access" at the tournament and arranging these interviews for us. Also, thanks to April, Natalie, Greg, and Marcus for taking the time to talk to us for these interviews. Hopefully this is just the start of a long relationship with the professional side of our sport.

On a personal note I think this MC Pro Tour is awesome. The webcasts are amazing and you can practically taste the excitement that is building around slalom skiing these days. In watching these videos over and over as I edited them, it's obvious that most of the pros want to grow the sport as much as they can. They are excited about this site and grassroots slalom. Go to the next Pro Tour Stop if it's anywhere near you, or, at the very least, tune in for the next webcast. The direction this sport is going is truly outstanding.

Also, this is only a fraction of the video that Anthony took at this tournament. I have quite a bit more footage that I want to stich together into a little short film that I hope to have up in the near future. Until then, enjoy. If you like what you see, use the comment feature to thank the pros and ScarletArrow for their contributions! Enjoy.

April Coble Eller

April Coble Eller Interview Part One (Quicktime, 2.6MB)

April Coble Eller Interview Part Two (Quicktime, 5.2MB)

April Coble Eller Interview Part Three (Quicktime, 4.7MB)

Natalie Hamrick

Natalie Hamrick Interview Part One (Quicktime, 5.3MB)

Natalie Hamrick Interview Part Two (Quicktime, 5.6MB)

Greg Badal

Greg Badal Interview Part One (Quicktime, 3.8MB)

Greg Badal Interview Part Two (Quicktime, 2.7MB)

Greg Badal Interview Part Three (Quicktime, 7.4MB)

Marcus Brown

Marcus Brown Interview Part One (Quicktime, 9.4MB)

Marcus Brown Interview Part Two (Quicktime, 3.5MB)

I spent a couple hours this weekend vegging out in front of my computer watching the Mastercraft Pro Water Ski Tour online. The webcast was awesome. Head-to-head skiing, awesome commentary, awesome camera work (with the CORRECT aspect ratio, thank you), and a very polished and professional look and feel. This truly IS the future of slalom skiing competition. I'd highly recommend tuning into this program on the next stop, if it's being offered. This tour is clearly the way things should be going in competitive slalom skiing and I absolutely loved watching it. I hope to be at the Michigan stop in person so if you're in the area, stop by and say hi. Our own site member ScarletArrow was at the first tour stop on Friday and has filmed several interviews with some of the pros that were there. Watch for those videos- they should be up in the next week or two! Many thanks to ScarletArrow for being our "field correspondent" on the scene.

Today I tried free skiing at 22 off. My initial thought, as it always is when I try 22 or 28 while free skiing, is that this is one heck of a wake compared to 15. We're not talking about old boats here either- we're talking about some pretty state of the art modern hulls that I've tried this behind. I actually get a little bit of air when hitting the bump at 22 off which is an odd feeling. The on-side wake cross feels OK besides the air time, but the off side cross feels like I'm hitting a wall and on the verge of going right out the FRONT DOOR.

There's also a FEAR factor involved at 22- when I complete that on-side turn and get into my off-side lean, my brain is thinking "hey, this is too fast- better hit the brakes" right at the wake! It feels like I'm about to make the jump to light speed. How I'll get over that I'll never know.

I'm having a really hard time balancing being "strong" behind the boat and at the same time absorbing rather than pounding the wake as I cross it. I can't imagine running the course at 22 with that parking curb wake! What I will do is try to free-ski at 22 off as much as possible now. I think I've been babied by the 15 off wakes that I've been skiing all this time. The 22 off wake will let me know quite clearly if I'm in the right position behind the boat or not, that's for sure. Just getting a taste of shorter lines and the forces of acceleration and velocity involved really makes me appreciate what the pros can do.

I don't know about the rest of you but Brett Yager's death really hit home for me. Pictures of him days or hours before his death, quotes from him on the dock just before his last runs, etc. just yank at the heart strings sharply because we can easily put ourselves in his shoes. I've never met the guy or heard of him before I read about his death in Acapulco early this May, so perhaps I'm not even qualified to talk about it but it certainly had an emotional impact on me so I thought I'd bring it up. We can all relate to how much fun we have on the water and how awful it would be to have our favorite hobby lead to our demise. Imagine a fun day on the water with friends and family ending with an incident like this. I feel terribly sorry for everyone that knew Brett and everyone that was there when it happened. Although it was a freak accident, there has been lots of discussion on TheWaterskiForum.com regarding a protective insert for handles. I'll be purchasing one of these ASAP. Freak accident or not, this will not be happening behind my boat if I can help it in any way. This incident is a brutal reminder that you never see coming. I'm sure as Brett hopped off the dock or raised his glass at dinner the night before that the had no idea that it would be the last night on earth or the last set of all time. You've just got to live every day like it's your last because you just never know what's going to happen next. My condolences to the Yager family.

Of course, I immediately started thinking about slalom training, and how this sort of video analysis software might help slalom students. It probably could, and probably has. The main difference I found is that with golf, a coach can simply walk up to you mid swing and pose your entire body so you can FEEL the position that you need to be in. This sort of hands-on training is much harder to execute at 34 MPH behind the boat as you're crossing the wake! Could you imagine a coach skiing behind you and trying to modify your stance behind the boat? That sort of coaching would probably result in some spectacular crashes!

This golf lesson really illustrated for me how crucial it is to get a lesson from a pro in whatever you are trying to accomplish in a sport. How many greens fees and ski rides would I have blown throughout my life had I not gotten all of the professional instruction that I've had? How many friends do you know who hack their way through the course (golf or slalom) but have never gotten a lesson?

I did a little free skiing this morning after starting the day with a few barefoot runs behind the boat, which is a great way to start a ski set! I handed my camera over to Mark and free-skied at 32 mph, 15 off. I wasn't really "feeling it" until my second set, which was completely un-documented so what you see in today's gallery doesn't tell the whole story. I was actually afraid how bad the pictures would be, but sure enough I think they turned out OK! Certainly a far cry from last fall's skiing. I'm still reeling my arms in a tad on the off-side cross but I'm aware of it so it can be remedied. It will just take time and practice. This should be an amazing year!