_Direct to Parallel or not

太極滑雪

Thanks gentlemen, for bring this subject up, you gentlemen could make history in this. The DTP (direct to parallel) method you gentlemen talking about, in America it was called GLM/Gradual Length Method some forty+ years ago, it couldn’t do the job and didn’t catch on. My DTP is not a trick, or trickery teaching, so it is not limited to some special groups. At the beginning, and it is not limited to the newbie either, I teach them sideslip (some says sideslipping is not skiing, they are kidding, right? I did find a lot of skiers cannot do proper sideslipping), for braking, just like your system would teach them wedges. After they learn that, then I’d teach them what I called “step turn,” that is, follow the skis to go fast, then sideslip to brake, then repeat the whole process, the track would look like a step, so it is called; after they’ve done left step turns and right step turns, then the crucial part, DTP: step onto the uphill ski and press on it, by skis’ design and the binding setup, the skis would track to [parallel] to the fall-line (without the scared skier doing anything), when [parallel] to the fall-line, change/set both edges to the turning side, sideslip to turn—direct to parallel, without dread wedge Christie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcKL4-m2FH4 (skip to the end to view the proofs). Yes, I’ve successful taught many groups of intermediate skiers to DTP in one session. And it is the first time I reveal this method on a public forum. As my DTP totally eliminated the middle step wedge Chritie, so it is correctly called “Direct” to parallel. Now you know, have fun.

太極滑雪

Goggle Bro commented:
I’ve used the term “stairway” turns for what you call step turns for going from step to step (or platform to platform) down the fall line. I think teaching sideslip is great. However, for teaching how to slow down and stop, I prefer to work on creating rounded turns early on. I watched your video of Mike skiing. When he was using what I’ll call a wiper movement to stop, he was rotating his whole body and having trouble staying in balance. I don’t know how you proceed with a student to progress from that point in a lesson.

Thanks for the comments. Not sure what “Mike” you’re referring to, the guy in the video is “Mikey,” one year snowboarding experience, but never ski before, (you can tell by the awkwardness of him on skis at the beginning of the video,



so he was a good candidate to prove my DTP theory. Thou  I’ve taught him parallel turns, but his parallel skiing still got a long way to go, nevertheless, a couple of weeks later, next thing I heard was that he has skied down the famous  Gunbarrel (double black moguls) of Heavenly resort by hockey-stops alone. Without trying to get rid of wedge Christie, he has saved himself a lot of troubles and time, thus can progress rapidly, that’s one of many advantages of DTP. Here’s another example of happy one “day-old” parallel skier, three years snow-plough going nowhere, parallel skiing in one day, can’t beat that.