Naz group - Meribel

Driving up to Meribel is always a pleasure. The road is steep, winding and scenic without much traffic and the valley is more attractive than the dark rugged one leading up to Val d'isère where there are regular fatal car crashes. It's hard to see how both are part of the Tarentaise "valley" - but they are. It dawned on me on the way up this morning that I've never cycled up this road and that's something that will have to be rectified soon. On the way home after the ski session there were two separate cyclists tackling the steeper sections and I felt envious of them. It should be possible to climb all of the Three Valleys in one day. That will make an interesting training session a few weeks from now when the skiing is over.

Why Coaching? 

Turning up an hour early this morning was matched by the group turning up an hour late! Not something that troubles me but I know how much there is to learn and how little time there already is. Mastering any skill is not just about learning a few tricks - it's about constantly developing perception - opening a channel to endless novelty and progress. The commercial world of skiing leads in exactly the opposite direction, towards quick "convenience" fixes and superficial goals. People are exposed to this from the start and it's not their fault. Martial arts have been around for thousands of years and have developed along with people struggling to survive. Downhill skiing developed as entertainment and leisure so it's hard to cross this gulf in values that separate the two. Skiing as a discipline however probably offers even more than martial arts as a vehicle for personal growth. To begin to shift things a little bit in that direction we need time - and this morning there wasn't a lot of that left. Fortunately all the participants were willing, open and very capable but the session would have to be non-stop and tiring instead of paced with a pause for video feedback and refreshments in the middle to keep concentration fresh. Learning should be fun but when it's done under pressure it becomes a bit like hard work for the participants.

Coaching shouldn't be just seen as a solution for problems. It is much better when the subject is developed correctly and the coaching is just someone opening new doors for you to pass through. When this is done correctly then even with only a minimal amount of skiing annually there is lasting progress.

Five skiers - all different...
Matt - who moves quite naturally but very little and gets on the back of the ski boots.
Joe who has a two footed push out to the side and a postural issue with the hip joints relatively locked up.
Cress who moves her body in the wrong direction and is completely unstable and insecure.
Sam who gets stuck on the back of the ski boots - then the front of the boots, rotates and drops her arms.
Naz who has a big upper body rotation and strong tendency to stem.

Not a lot of time to deal with all of this - let alone any single case! However the starting point has to be with the most vulnerable - and that is Cress with the centre of mass moving disruptively in the wrong direction. This is also a useful common denominator to being with where everyone can gain insight and benefit.

Dynamics
We began with the standard introduction to dynamics. Using the "Search" feature on this blog you can find dozens of detailed explanations of this - and how it is taught. We followed the standard process of using my shoulder as a support and experimenting with the results of different ways of pushing against me. Fortunately nobody had any significant problems putting that into action so we didn't have to spend too long with this. Cress understood straight away that she had been previously taught to move in the wrong direction to get pressure on her ski. Balance is about placing your centre of mass over your support foot. Dynamics is about accelerating your centre of mass away from your support foot - and that's what skiing requires. The main objective here is to simply get everyone working generally in this direction and to start to give Cress some reason to feel a bit more confident.

The video below is towards the end of the session when everyone had been developing their dynamics for a few hours.

I explained that the skier has to work to extend the "dynamic range" - to try to "fall over" laterally and into the turn. This is the opposite mentality to defensively trying to stay in balance - but it's what makes the system work. All living things and all machines as sophisticated as a steam engine upwards work on the same principle - generate disequilibrium and provide a countervailing force to produce useful work. You generate the disequilibrium by accelerating your body into a turn - then the ski provides the countervailing force to bring you back up.

Rocking Feet

I briefly explained how to use the feet more intelligently. The feet are a very sophisticated part of the body but in general we remain remarkably unaware of them - and this was the case for everyone in the group. The objective today was to just get pressure on the heels and to touch the shins against the boots. Normally I'd take time and do this properly indoors with exercises out of the boots so that various muscles and effects can be clearly felt. The sub-taler joints under the ankle joints and above the heels were used to rock the feet onto their edges - corresponding to the ski edges in the direction of the turns.

More dynamics were now practised with the feet being activated in this manner until I could see the feet and dynamics being used to some clear degree by everyone.

Spring in the valley (today) ...

Cress was feeling a bit intimidated at this point and wanted to bail out but I persuaded her to stay on and modified the plan of the lesson to help to encourage her more. She was already doing well with the dynamics but still felt the speed and steepness were too challenging.

Mental Training
I pointed out that her fear was probably justified from previous experiences but that should slowly change now as the new mechanics and coordination were working. In addition it is important to work on the mental side of things were fear is present. You have to re-program your mind as much as your body and start to take charge of your internal dialogue with yourself - cutting out a lot of the negative chatter and and replacing it deliberately with positive suggestions.  Even focusing on your exercises helps because focusing removes the chatter in the mind and relaxes it. I emphasised the importance of focusing and re-focusing when you get distracted. Repeating this constantly strengthens the mind in addition to relaxing it.

Pivot
I really didn't want Cress to go away without first of all learning about the "pivot" because so much control and security can be gained from this. Thankfully she responded positively to the encouragement and decided to continue. I first of all demonstrated a pivot then physically assisted everyone through a single pivot to feel what it is like. Nobody actually managed one cleanly on their own but they all at least knew what to aim for.

Skiing is holistic and that means that even if you remove a part of it the whole will continue to work to some degree. It also means that anything you are working on doesn't have to be perfect to get some benefit. Unfortunately this is also why people get away with skiing very badly!

Nobody could identify that the pivot was different from everything else they had seen because the turn was initiated from the outside edge. That's not surprising - it took me a lifetime to be able to see it for myself even though I'd always done it. That's how strong the effect of educational "brainwashing" actually is! All fall-line skiing is done this way and it always has been.

We did a static exercise to feel the adductor muscles being properly used - pulling the tip of the ski against my planted ski pole. When I was satisfied that everyone was able to use the adductors then we tried it in action - using the ski poles for support planted downhill of the heel of each skier. Everyone still had a tendency to push out with the abductors (outside of leg) into a stem - but that's normal at this stage. The snowplough and stemming taught previously has trained inappropriate coordination. Everything should "pull inwards" and nothing "push outwards".

Obviously work needed to be done on upper/lower body separation but there was not enough time to even begin looking at this so everyone still had strong body rotation problems. Sam especially put in some good efforts at the pivot though.

I explained that this way of skiing meant that the skis were always used on their uphill edges and so could give the maximum braking control. To keep the skis on the uphill edges it is easiest if the feet are kept close together downhill of the body. The skis only go flat for a moment when pointing straight downhill then they are rapidly back on the new set of uphill edges.

When moving forwards and using dynamics we had been controlling speed through the line - finishing the turns (not pushing the feet out to the side in a skid - Joe!). With the pivot the feet were not pushed outwards either - the ski tips were slid inwards. Pushing outwards is not an option when standing on the uphill edges anyway.

Looking towards Meribel  from the valley below with the weather changing...

Dynamics and Timing

After working with the adductors for a while I then asked everyone to return to dynamics and now to also include the use of the adductors there. In the video Matt did a very good job of this. His natural motion was now being supported better and he was simply much more dynamic overall.

We needed to clarify "timing" issues so I explained the "down /up" motion which compares to a motorbike. Joe and Sam had been trying to plant their poles by sinking down at the end of turns even when using dynamics so they could now see why this was inappropriate as the timings conflicted. The pole is useful in the pivot where it can be used as a support - but it is disruptive in flowing turns unless used only as a "touch" just after entry into a new turn - but there was not enough time to look at that.

Sam had excellent natural feel for the timing.

Skating
We had  a very rushed intro to skating and not enough to be of much use. I wanted to get Joe using his legs a little more independently in particular and to relate the timing of the skating action to the timing of the dynamics - but again this was too brief. Perhaps some of the idea got through enough to reinforce the basic idea of timing.

Conclusion
Joe has a postural issue that needs to be addressed and reverts to both a strong two footed heel push and shoulder rotation when out of his comfort zone - but he understood a lot and should be able to work on it.
Cress was visibly skiing more parallel in the video due to dynamics and her confidence in general was growing.

Naz was losing the advantage of his dynamics through his strong tendency to stem and rotate. This needs work specifically on standing on one single leg through the turn and committing to it right from the start. Work has to be specifically done on turn transitions (both in and out of the turn) to establish this - but there was no time for that today unfortunately. It is very fundamental but not the main limiting factor at this stage for everyone in the group. It would be the next thing to deal with though.
Sam had some issues with fore/aft control but once again there was no time to look at that. She did a very good job of developing all of the principles that we were working on.
Matt developed the dynamics very well and that was expected by me from the start. The pivot will take some work though! Some fore/aft issue also to straighten out.