Timothy 2

Today was scorching hot and we ended up touring and working on technique along the way. There wasn’t much time for looking for off-piste so it was a very different day from yesterday. The afternoon was too warm to go near the off-piste for risk of avalanche.  We discovered that the lift and bus system from Villars to the 3000 Glacier was extremely inefficient. This is a shame because the best skiing by far in those temperatures is up on the glacier and on its north facing slopes returning to the bottom – but having waited at one point for almost an hour for a bus with no café open it was a little bit discouraging. The skiing was good though.

Technique

Liliana had a strong hip rotation on steep terrain – particularly on her left side – so I decided to work on the "chi stance" as a means of overcoming this instead of the simple “countered” stance that she had been relying on with limited success for some time. 

Victor has already developed some awareness of the chi stance and so he could move on to a more advanced exercise - reaching towards the inside of the turn with both ski poles. At first Victor rotated his hips outwards and didn’t understand how the motion inwards of the arms is a “translation” and not a “rotation” with the aim of separating the direction of the hips from the shoulders.  

Liliana was reverting to an uphill ski stem on the steeps so I decided to revise the pivot with her – so that she would pull the skis inwards instead of pushing the outside ski outwards while using the lower one as a platform.  I explained that although it took more nerve to feed the skis into a turn by pulling inwards it actually slows you down more than anything because the skis are always on their uphill (braking) edges except for a brief instant of edge change when the skis point directly downhill.  The chi stance helps with “pulling inwards” because it helps you to stay in contact with the front of the ski boot through improved alignment of the supporting (outside) leg and because the centre of mass can drop more effectively down and towards the centre of the turn and so there is no need to compensate for ineffective stance and hip rotation by falling backwards.

Timothy was growing in confidence constantly so I was happy just to see him copying the exercises in pivoting and getting faster and more adventurous when following me. The only thing we did directly was to work on dynamics – pushing against my shoulder and then trying to fall inwards more when carving. This is the first time Timothy has had to opportunity to understand any of this. Until now his inclination has just been completely natural. He has never been taught to “transfer his weight” to the outside ski and so is not making the error of moving in the wrong direction with his centre of mass. Victor had worked at home with him on skating and that was obvious in the way he was moving and his solid stance over his supporting hip. Timothy enjoyed the slushy Skier Cross course that we blasted down a couple of times at the end of the day. I don’t mind children going over small and controlled jumps – though jumping over anything too big is just acrobatics and combined with the speed of skis is a virtual guarantee of eventual serious injury so I don’t encourage that.