patrickfreen Posted March 18, 2005 Report Share Posted March 18, 2005 Thought I'd share my excitement. I've been riding for about 14 years now but the last two seasons have been a problem for me as I've been having knee and back problems. I thought Father Time had finally caught up with me (I'm 63) but fortunately (hopefully) I've still got more gas in my tank. What happened was I was getting a lot of pain in my knees after riding and sometimes during riding my lower back would go into spasm. So this season I put the skiis back on for the first time in years. My goal was to just slide my turns and take it easy (beats watching tv). Recently I took a couple of runs with one of the psia examiners at our ski school and he said I was starting my ski turns with adequate edge angle but after the fall line I was dialing in too much edge angle and overloading the ski and my joints. I thought about it and for some unknown reason put my snowboard back on the next day out. After about 3 runs my back started acting up again so I decided to try to finesse my turns and SLOWLY roll onto an adequate edge angle. It seemed to work. I kept at it , and after a bit I was getting all the way over again but more subtly. Well I stayed out for much longer than usual, had a great time- the back spasm disappeared and tonight my knees and back are feeling pretty damn good.- So- I've thought about this and I've come to the conclusion that my problem was that I was DIVING into my turns, loading up my joints very quickly, and that translates into IMPACT which is a big no- no when you get older. MY boards (Oxygen protons) have excellent holding power so in the past I've been able to just drop to the deck at speed and they would hold. Early on I was riding a 160 and making fast hard edge changes- good for the ego but bad for the knees. When the knee pain started a few years ago I moved up to a 168 to make fewer rapid edge changes but I was still diving into my turns, Now I'm on a 172 proton and I believe (hope?) that I will be able to keep riding if I can discipline myself to be more subtle in rolling (slowly) on to a high edge and not stay down for a long time in a loaded static position, but to extend back up sooner and ride with more rythm(?) instead of a bent for hell style. So why am I writing this? Two reasons a) hoping it will help me get more subtle so I can keep riding b) hoping the info will be helpful to others (I KNOW I'm not the only aging nut out there - Regards to all- keep riding ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pchang Posted March 18, 2005 Report Share Posted March 18, 2005 That's awesome!!!!! I'm glad to hear that you're back. I must say it brought a tear to my eye when I saw you on skis a few weeks back. Ward and I will be at Windham on Sunday the 20th so let's hook up for some runs. Here's a pic of Pat rippin' it a few years back, back when he was ONLY 60: <img src="http://tinypic.com/299b0x" alt="Image hosted by TinyPic.com"> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patrickfreen Posted March 18, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 18, 2005 Prentice- talk about a fast reply, see you guys this weekend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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