I like practicing at slower speeds at my hardest pass. If you slow the boat down and do not run it, you have some technical issues you need to work out or you do not have your ski set up well enough to run the pass. The goal with slowing the boat down is that you run the pass. The more you run it, the more you know the pass, regardless of speed. When I started skiing with Schnitz in 1998, I was running 3@38 all the time. One day he asked when shortening to 38, if I would run 38 at 35mph? I did not know if I could. He asked me if I would run it at 34 and I said absolutely. So we went 34 and I did kind of what you experienced, I turned way too hard, pulled way too hard, but I found a way to make it. Then every day I ran at least 2 38's. AS I grew more comfortable, we would bump the speed up 0.1mph. The key is to be making the pass and learning how the pass is run and at the same time, building confidence. If you miss a pass 100 times in a row, do you go into the 101th pass and believe you are going to run it? This kind of seems like banging your head against a wall to me.
By Chris Rossi
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From Steve Schnitzer below:
Bud,
I slow the boat down to where I can run the pass (so I can learn the pass) and as I learn it and gain confidence, I slowly increase the speed. This increase can take weeks or even months. To learn it, you need to do it so I do it, over and over and over until it gets easy. Eventually, my speed will exceed actual. The faster I can run it, the faster I can run my next pass!
Ski Great!
Schnitz!