He is talking about old school "back arm" which is left shoulder/arm going from #1 to #2.  It is rotating your shoulders into the turn, dropping the shoulder, blocking the boat, etc.  The outside hip/hand thing is "trailing" or right hip/hand and gets you moving through the finish, COM leading, and moving in the direction you want to go instead of trying to block the boat.

"Outside hip / outside hand to handle will leave your shoulders level with your hips forward."

How this got interpreted by anyone to mean a rotation of the hips while keeping the upper body facing downcourse is beyond me. I'm not seeing it at all. Chris's description to me sounds like the hips and the upper body should both be facing the same way at the point of connection with the handle. Maybe Chris or Wade will chime in with further clarification.
Jim

jbski wrote:

"Outside hip / outside hand to handle will leave your shoulders level with your hips forward."

How this got interpreted by anyone to mean a rotation of the hips while keeping the upper body facing downcourse is beyond me. I'm not seeing it at all. Chris's description to me sounds like the hips and the upper body should both be facing the same way at the point of connection with the handle. Maybe Chris or Wade will chime in with further clarification.
Jim

One aspect of the confusion (I think) lies in the precise manner that Rossi is using the word rotation - that is, he's using it distinctly to mean the opposite of counter-rotation.

Suppose you are a firm believer in "West Coast style", or counter-rotation, and that as you are entering your turn coming into the 1-ball you begin cranking your hips and shoulders in a clockwise direction (as viewed from above) until you're twisted up to your absolute extreme.  At some point, before you get to the 2-ball, you're going to have to un-twist that pretzel and re-twist it the other direction for your next turn.  So, do you retain your 1-ball-twist all the way across the wake right up until your edge change, or do you start un-twisting progressively during your travel from the end of the 1-ball turn all the way to the beginning of the 2-ball pre-turn.   In other words, in the same way that “what goes up must come”, whatever you twist one direction at the 1-ball will have to eventually twist the opposite direction at the 2-ball (and so on). 

I think what Rossi is suggesting is that the un-twisting begins at (or slightly after) the apex of the turn.  The hips do this un-twisting before the shoulders because that's how your body works, but this also allows you to lock into Chris' "Power Triangle" without closing off your pull.  The primary advantage of an open pull is that it affords you a much stronger position (biomechanically speaking) than a closed pull, and a secondary advantage is that it helps prevent you from taking an angle off the ball that you cannot maintain.

Logically, we can interpret what Chris Rossi is saying (in the Power Triangle article) by examining the final position he describes and working backwards to understand how he got into that position.  He writes:

” At the completion of a buoy one turn, your right hand will connect to the handle and the handle will connect to your right hip (or slightly below) … this puts you in the hip forward, accelerating position.” […] “From here, just allow your upper body to fall away from the boat with your shoulders at a level height. This does two things. First, by keeping your shoulders level, you will keep your hips in the forward accelerating position.”

In order to rationalize these two concepts within the same turn (without conflict) I think we have to conclude that - from the apex of the turn through hook-up - the trailing hip (right hip at the 1-ball) follows the ski around the corner while the shoulders remain counter-rotated.  Upper and lower body separation is especially easy and natural when the point of separation is at the waist - which is conveniently located between the hips and the shoulders.   Above all else Rossi’s writing promotes a natural, non-contrived manner of skiing and I think the ideas expressed in the Power Triangle article dovetail cleanly into that approach.

TW

Here is what has been working well for me. As TW explains in his last paragraph, let your hips come around with the ski while countered with the shoulders. I find the amount of counter controls the speed of the turn. My goal is for the ski, handle, and outside hip to all meet together at the 45-50 degree point. Now the key point is to fall away into your leveraged lean and simultaneously raise the outside hip up into the handle, locking it in place, and also raising the lead shoulder and chest up into a strong locked position, level, and open to the boat. You are leading with COM so the ski accelerates. At the second wake there is a slight ramp effect allowing the knees to come up and cast the ski out. This is also the point the boat starts pulling me up out of my lean finishing the edge change or transition, which began after my open lean was established right after the hookup.
This technique has been working really well and I would like to hear from others that are experimenting with this same thing as originally brought up in this thread by Mark.
Thanks,  ED

Scott,
As far as the 45-50 degree point it is in reference to the ski path in relation to the boat path. A lot of skiers try to grab 90 degrees at the buoy and cannot sustain this to the second wake, and they end up getting slowly pulled up out of their leveraged position. This totally eliminates the possibility of carryout or castout off the second wake.
If you were watching yourself on video, at the 45-50 degree point, you would see the nose of the ski come to the ski rope and the hand to the handle at the hip simultaneously. Thus connecting the power triangle. This assumes no rotation during the turn. This is the time to now lean by falling back with hip and shoulder open to the boat and Center of Mass leading the direction of travel. The ski gains angle and acceleration. Done right it  feels like one big turn off the apex to the second wake. By staying low and leveraged you are also building pressure on the ski so it can cast out by relaxing your knees coming into the second wake. You do not want to ROLL the ski from one edge to the other since this will result in being narrow. Usually caused by pulling yourself up during the edge change.
Please read Chris's article the Power Triangle, he explains it much better than I can.
Good Luck, ED

EdJohnson wrote:

Scott,
As far as the 45-50 degree point it is in reference to the ski path in relation to the boat path. A lot of skiers try to grab 90 degrees at the buoy and cannot sustain this to the second wake, and they end up getting slowly pulled up out of their leveraged position. [...]

Not only can they not sustain it, they can't obtain it to begin with.

In the approximately 1.1 seconds it takes a skier to travel from just outside the buoy line to the center of the wake the boat has traveled 50+ feet downcourse.  Because of the pendulum-like path of the ski handle (and therefore the skier), the skier travels about 32 feet downcourse over the same period of time*.  The line from a buoy to a point on the centerline that is 32 feet downcourse describes an angle of about 51 degrees.  So, if a skier finishes his turn right at the buoy he cannot actually obtain a cross-course angle of much more than 50 degrees.  Because we usually finish a turn further downcourse (and closer to the wake) the angle can be as much as 60 degrees at shorter line lengths.  However, no matter how sharply a skier turns (or how hard he pulls), crossing the wake at 90 degrees is absolutely impossible - as it would require essentially moving from the finish of the turn to centerline in zero seconds.  Until someone suspends the laws of physics that will not be possible.

So, since the skier' maximum cross-course angle is very much controlled by the boat's movement it only makes sense for the skier to match the available angle as closely as possible - thereby reducing the amount of wasted energy and reducing the likelihood of being pulled out of one's lean prematurely.  Fighting for more angle than the physical limitations allow is a fool's pursuit.

TW
*Fuzzy math disclaimer: times and distances are based on CAD analysis of overhead slalom footage at -35', and can only approximate an average result.  "Exact" values will vary from skier to skier and even within an individual's average performance.