Luke and Leonie day 2

Big off-piste day today – not much time for technical input but we managed some all the same.

Chi-Hips

Revision of how the outside hip in the turn has to be held back while the ski pulls the leg around the turn. Both were having trouble with hip rotation preventing effective angulation and safe pressure on the fronts of the skis later in the turn. The effect on the spine and the reflex activated postural muscles had to be revised also – with the load testing added. Basically – the pelvis has to “face downhill” not the shoulders (reversing the direction of the twist of the base of the spine).

Pulling back the hip combined with a strong sinking down action at the hip allows the leg to rotate more easily in the hip socket. The rotation is “passive” is that there is no twisting of the foot or leg.

Luke for a moment experienced “2nd Order Confusion” when despite having already been generally moving his hip the right way he thought for a moment that he had been doing the opposite and was now having a revelation.

Leonie just experienced ordinary confusion for a while but both were straightened out  fairly quickly.

Foot Forwards

While the hip is pulled backwards the foot/ski has to be pushed forwards – same leg.

Two Pivot Platform

The two ski pivot is properly explained on the fixed page accessed from the menu at the top of the page. Basically both needed to make a two footed platform for deep snow – to avoid the separation of the legs and instability that it can cause in those conditions. We looked at how the pivoting on each ski combined to pull the legs together and make a single platform. In deep snow the entire base of the ski loads up and so the mechanics of the pivot actually needs some forwards motion downhill – but the ski pushes the snow in a similar manner to sideslipping.

The angulation and chi-hips are used to develop  the pole support required for this pivot and to enable to pivoting from the ski fronts. Both Leonie and Luke need to be able to get further over the fronts of the skis with the use of pole support  - same when gripping on ice with the ski fronts on steep terrain.

I’m not going to waffle on any longer – there were loads of photos to sort out this evening and a long video to edit and upload…