John, Susan Day 2

Revision

The session began with some revision of yesterday's work. I suggested starting from the bottom and working upwards - so that meant "rocking" the feet. John was immediately in trouble with the carving skis locking on edge and sending him flying off down the hill. I spotted that this was partly caused by tension but also due to a complete lack of dynamics - so I changed the plan and we set to work on dynamics. Once again John ran into difficulty. This time the problem was caused by both rotating the body into the turn and dipping the inside shoulder into the turn. This was a regression from all the progress made yesterday and more reflected John's crisis at the end of yesterday's session when he went into defensive mode on skiing down to La Daille. We tried a few different solutions so that the body would move naturally as if against a solid wall (or against my shoulder when we did the static exercise) but when that didn't work we changed the approach altogether.

I explained to John that sometimes it is not productive to persist at frustrating problems because the real underlying issue lies hidden elsewhere. It's tempting just to keep trying over and over again - but that's seldom the best or quickest way to get a result.

Skating

I suspected that by working on skating that John's movement pattern would modify in the right way and that this would help him in general with moving the centre of mass. 

First thing was to check how John and Susan were at skating. Susan was very good and comfortable at skating on the flat. John had a bit of trouble with the skis slipping away from him slightly on each push off. I explained about rocking the feet inwards and feeling the adductor muscles - just as we had worked on yesterday. This has to be done on both legs with the skis diverging. From there is is just a case of lifting one leg and falling forwards between the skis and pulling the lifted leg forwards then placing it down below the body again. Gravity causes the propulsion and the correctly edged skis grips to allow this to happen. It's not even necessary to "push off". This worked very well for John. 

Next, on the complete flat we stepped sideways around in a circle (to the right) by diverging the ski tips (to the right) and then closing them (to the right). This makes a circle around a point just behind the tails of the skis and displaces the centre of mass progressively around - the body facing outwards from the centre of the circle. This was a prelude to travelling forwards and stepping the skis the same way to project the centre of mass incrementally into the centre of an arc. Both John and Susan were able to effect turns on moderate terrain by stepping incrementally inwards. Both did this correctly due to the skating action and this avoided inappropriate upper body rotation (which had been apparent in the earlier dynamics).

Eventually the skating was brought down to a single skate per turn. The exercise was started by skating directly downhill and then allowing the dynamics to increase by falling more to the inside of the supporting ski  - this converts the skating to skiing as the ski gets the opportunity to close a turn. Eventually there is no need to diverge the skis and the skating rhythm and active use of the legs is maintained uninterrupted. Both John and Susan managed to do this well at the start of the exercise - only losing control and coordination later as speed increased.

The aim of the work was to make clear the relationship between skating and skiing and to show how skiing is really disguised skating.

I explained how the timing of dynamics (dropping down into a turn and being brought back up to finish) matches the vertical timing of the legs in skating - going down then pushing up. It is important to time the two to work together so that there is a resonance between the two and a shared rhythm.

Pivoting

John managed to execute several effective pivots from the uphill ski. This is a fundamental skill but very tricky to learn so to manage this at this stage is very good.

I assisted both John and Susan through a few pivots so that they could both feel the basic movement pattern.     They were then shown how to replace the support that I gave them by strongly using the ski poles planted downhill from the feet. This permits the centre of mass to move downhill from the outside ski without the edge changing early in the turn. The ski pivots downhill from the front due to a combination of gravity pulling the centre of mass and keeping the adductors tight so that the ski slides inwards. Prior to this I explained how the foot rocks onto its inner edge and the shaft of the ski boot keeps the ski on its outer edge - allowing the adductors to be used and allowing the ski to slip freely into the turn with no resistance from the inside edge. Susan was also improving with this after a certain amount of persistence. We did some sideslipping and Susan worked out for herself that a pivoted turn is done mainly from a sideslip. The turn also requires the feet to be close together to keep them further down the mountain than the centre of mass and to keep them always on the uphill edges both through the start of the turn and the end of the turn (edges changing  when the skis point directly downhill.)

Pivot/Skate Connection

My old way of teaching the pivot had been from standing on the uphill ski and diverging the tip of the downhill ski off downhill and in the air. This was referred to as "inside leg steering". The idea was that it led the centre of mass slightly downhill and the top ski would slip into a pivot - while still on the uphill edge. In effect this was a skating stance with the skis diverging and the body falling forwards and downhill between the skis. The only difference compared to a skating step turn was that being on the uphill edge the ski would slip into a pivot. Skating and dynamics were clearly present.