Sad to say but yeah and yeah. I'm 42. Luckily my parents were way into skiiing when I was born. They put me on skis when I was 2. 40 years skiing, that's right. My first skis were little wooden ski skates that you slipped like shoes or low regular boots into. For my next pair of skis, I had hard leather boots. The skis were made of wood and I broke one in half going of a jump. Legend has it that my mom somehow glued them back together with candle wax. Now that I have dated myself, I think the major difference between straight ski freestyle and new school is stance.
On straight skis, you were taught to ski with your feet as close together as they could be without interfering with each other. I had a really narrow stance made worse by my years on the Vail Demo Team. I would spin pencil 7's with my feet locked together, and I took off that way. It's hard to explain, but there is a huge difference between hitting a big table on 205 slaloms vs 171 twin tips. The feeling you get when you carve into a hit now on twins is kind of similar to what you felt going straight into a hit on straight skis. For rotation you cranked your upper body as you were popping, using the straight skis (which were locked into the snow) as leverage. Once your feet left the ground, the length and weight of the skis made it really tough to stop the rotation. If you were over rotating something, the only way you could stop your momentum was to throw the biggest panic spead you could and that didn't always work. I landed a nine once on 205 straight slaloms by accident obviously. It scared the crap out of me, because I could have easily tomahawked the whole landing hill. I also knocked myself out cold once attempting a 10. I torqued out of one ski on the take off, made the full 10 but landed on one ski. When my boot dug in, I slammed. No helmet back then so I bounced my head off the bottom of the landing hill.
There are other differences too, but feet width is the biggest. I always have to go into things thinking wide, and I'm probably still too narrow. That is one of the major differences I think betwen the guys who get the really styley grabs, and those that don't. If you start from a wider stance it is much easier to get you skis in the right place to grab. If you hit the jump with your feet together, you have to first spread them, then X, then grab. That's too much to get done, and a big reason why some grabs look ragid. If you start wide, all you have to do is point your toes in and reach.
Rails are another thing. Every time I watch decent skiers trying a rail for the first time they all do the exact same thing. Jump up, spin 90 with feet too close together leaning uphill, land and hip bonk. I actually practice on a mini skate rail in my front yard by jumping on in my shoes. I try to get the wide stance locked into my muscle memory. That's kind of what it takes for old schoolers. It's like that narrow stance is a crutch and unless you really concentrate, it comes back. I have a big purple football on my left hip from last weekend. I thought I was wide getting on, but apparently not wide enough. Every once in awhile I get that feeling of settling on the rail and really locking onto it. It is awesome when that happens. Maybe by the time I reach 50 I'll be able to do it every time.
Damn this is long; sorry.
