Hello, 53. Like others, I've watched your progress with interest, and we're all rooting for you. The new video is very helpful in letting us understand where you are in advancing your skills.
As an instructor, I tend to push my students pretty hard. They usually end up appreciating it. I hope you can accept my comments in that spirit.
What I suggest you do first is look again at your new video clips, and compare them to video of skilled skiers in free skiing situations. Don't focus on wedge vs. parallel turns, etc. Instead, focus on more fundamental movement patterns that underlie all skiing. I think that you will see that like most novices, you have a quite stiff appearance in your skiing, as compared to advanced skiers who exhibit great flexibility and fluidity in multiple dimensions.
You have already achieved important goals for new skiers--stability, decent balance, the ability to make a variety of turn sizes and shapes where and when you want, and confidence. Your next goal as a skier should be to move in the direction of that greater flexibility. It's high time for that, get on it! Here are some specific areas to focus upon:
o While your overall stance and balance is functional, you have a marked tendency to sort of crunch down and back as you get into the body of a turn in order to put pressure on the inside edge if the outside ski. You will learn, especially as you work on other skills, that this is unnecessary and counterproductive. Instead, aim for a more consistent, strong posture throughout the turn cycle, staying centered in the fore-aft dimension. We see with many skiers that at some point in a turn, the core goes flabby, the back goes hollow, the pelvic angle changes, the butt goes back, the shoulder blades come together, and the elbows get pinned to the torso. It is difficult for me to see what happens to every aspect of your posture. However, I see you developing those "dinosaur arms" during the turn cycle, a common indicator of posture issues. Try to suck your belly button into your spine, and hold it there. Meanwhile, relax and round your shoulders, letting your hands come forward and out. Think strong in the core, relaxed in the shoulders. This should promote the goal of skiing from a stable, quiet upper body, while having great freedom of movement in both the legs and the arms. Try focusing on this initially while doing straight runs, or runs with only slight turns, over gentle, undulating terrain.
o When you form your wedge, concentrate hard on making it entirely by rotating your femurs in your hip sockets. This will make your knees come toward each other a bit. I am seeng you instead do it it too much by twisting your feet--a below-the-knee action. This results in FLAT SKIS, which are ineffective. Practice with straight runs initially--into and out of a wedge. I think that you will find that this one change will make a huge difference, bringing everything else together for you. You will no longer feel motivated to crunch down to get on that outside edge. You will be able to ski using a SMALLER wedge, a great immediate objective for you. Any time you have control or speed issues, you want to fix it with a BETTER wedge, not a bigger one.
o Develop much greater vertical flexibility--flexion and extension, getting taller and shorter, call it what you will. Practice this just standing still at first, on skis, out of skis, or even back at the cabin in your stocking feet. See how short you can get while remaining in an athletic stance, very well centered over your feet, doing it by flexing all joints. Then get even shorter. Touch the ground with your hands while doing it. Then see how tall you can get. Move up and down between the extremes slowly and smoothly, staying centered over your feet. Now do it while skiing, again initially on gentle, undulating terrain. Practice using flexion to absorb bumps, and extension to fill in the hollows. Strive for steady pressure underfoot. Then do the opposite--try popping off a roller to catch air!
o The next focus--a big, important one!--is to develop upper-lower body separation in your skiing. In a nutshell, this means keeping the entire upper body--pelvis on up--oriented more or less down the fall line, while allowing your legs to turn back and forth under you--along with, of course, the skis to which they are attached. Again, you can initially practice this standing still, on or off skis. Orient the body forward, and progressively step your feet to point left, then right. Try it both in a wedge and parallel. Then aim for the same result while skiing. This is a skill with which you will probably find it essential to have an instructor's coaching. An instructor can give you ongoing feedback, and many good drills to promote the goal.
o You are showing a marked tendency to start a turn with a stemming move. What you want to learn is to initiate a turn with a release of the old edges. Again, coaching on this is likely essential. You want to find the right instructor. Not all are sufficiently focused on this, IMHO. You will find that the release will be easier and will come naturally as you develop upper-lower body separation. It really does all fit together!
o Start practicing traverses and shallow J-turns in a pure parallel stance. You want to ingrain the feeling of this strongly in non-intimidating situations. The goal is equal edge angles, created primarily through knee angulation. Don't get sloppy with it! A focus here, again, is upper-lower body separation. Again, coaching would be a huge plus. Too many students get so damn good at the wedge that they never want to do anything else! Don't be one of them.
Get really good at all of these things, and I think you'll find that pure parallel turns are then an easy progression--or may even happen spontaneously!
