Sol Art
Sol Art is a technology company working in the fields of web development, robotics, and energy. For more information on the services available, please contact Ryan Jarvis at jarvir3@gmail.com
Posts
Dolphin Turns – The Hows and the Whys
Dolphin turns are a great movement pattern for advanced to expert skiers who want to improve their performance in the bumps. What dolphin turns provide is ability to manipulate fore/aft pressure along the length of the skis, ski snow contact at transition, and an ideal body movement pattern for flying through the air. I like to think about the general movement pattern for dolphin turns as a reverse bicycle pedal, and this is typically how you will see them introduced. Using one foot, you would slide one ski forward while picking up the tip and pushing down on the tail. Now pull the knee toward the body, and ski off of the ground. With knee picked up, push the tip of the ski into the snow by pulling the foot back under or behind the body using a flexion of the knee. This is the movement pattern you will want to perform with both skis at the transition of the turns. Practice moving your feet through this circular movement pattern se...
The Non Linear Fun of Increasing Edge Angle in Skiing or Riding
It is well known that increasing edge angle of a ski or snowboard will increase the grip of the device on the snow (assuming proper platform angle). It is also known that with “shaped” skis/snowboards the effective radius is given by measured side cut radius multiplied by the cosine of the edge angle (this is a rough calculation, and we will talk about supplements and limitations to this). What this means is less intuitive unless you get out a calculator and increase the edge angle drastically. To avoid this confusion and make this both easier to understand and apply on the snow, lets take a look at the graph of the multiplier vs the edge angle: As you can see, at 90 degrees the multiplier becomes zero, so obviously there is a cut off to how much the ski will actually bend! You will also boot out before you get anywhere close to this edge angle! But the main thing to note is the non linearity of the curve. That is, the more you ti...