Advance or hold back--what's the diff?

Several years ago the mantra du jour was to hold back the inside ski from advancing and creating too much tip lead; the past couple of years that mantra is to advance the outside ski to prevent too much tip lead and keep both skis on the same fore-aft plane.

Is this two ways of saying the same thing, or are they biomechanically different, with one method actually achieving superior results to the other method?

Pulling back works way better than striding the lead ski forward especially in bumps and trees. Doing both at the same time is ideal in most situations. Splitting was the term used to describe this (pulling back inside ski while advancing outside ski) if I remember correctly.

Good to see a Telemark question in the Technique forum! :)

I didn't know it was a tele question--but what a good opportunity for me to trot out this:

LOL, Telerods posting did not make any sence to me before reading the last sentence. I was totally confused....

When I started Telemark skiing, I was told to weight the inside ski and use the little toe edge. Shortly after that, I started hearing about more active, weighted inside ski in alpine clinics.

Later you guys started trying to pull your inside ski back, which had been a key focus for Telemark skiing for some time, as opposed to striding.

I've learned a lot from alpine clinics and discussions of alpine skiing here, but you guys tend to be few years behind the nords. I was introduced to splitting two or three seasons ago. Just bringing y'all up to speed. :)

Yes they are different in my mind. The problem in advancing the outside ski is that if the movement is isolated in the outside hip joint and leg it can easily push the outside ski ahead of the hip, leaving outside half in the backseat. If it is done with upperbody involvement we have rotation into the turn, which may be desirable at times but is not somethig I would encourage as a standard focus.

A better way to think about and do this movement is to focus on advancing the outside hip relative to the outside ski. This is really the same movement that we speak of when we focus on holding back the inside ski as well (use the same muscles). However, advancing the outside hip is mechanically different (uses hip extenders) versus "advancing the outside ski" (uses hip flexors), which produces a different result from an alignment perspective.

If you keep tension through the turn that holds both skis back you will maintain good alignment over both feet and skis yet still allow natural tip lead to happen by flexing of the inside leg (heel towards the butt) and letting the inside half lead through the turn with counter. Then no matter how much counter is desired, alignment is still over both feet.

RicB explains it well.  I work on being in position with both hips over the middle of my feet.  I tell students that if they can go from sliding to stepping through a turn, they are in a good position over the skis.

RW

That makes good sense, Ric. I'm interested that you say holding back the inside ski is the same movement as advancing the outside hip--so if we do it correctly we are doing both, or "splitting," like Telerod describes?

Wait, I'm so confused.  Advance which foot????  With which hip??????    And pull back what?????

Quote:

Originally Posted by nolo 

I didn't know it was a tele question--but what a good opportunity for me to trot out this:

 

What do Nords say when they run out of drugs?

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"Man--these bindings SUCK!"

Nolo and Bob, I know you are professionally involved in the instruction of alpine skiing but I wouldn't be surprised if both of you are accomplished Telemark skiers and secretly prefer it.

Hey telerod,,, it appears there's  summer versions of your chosen form of winter fun too!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reenactment

Telerod, skiing Telemark on Alpine skis is one of the Top Ten epiphanies in ski teaching. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rick 

Hey telerod,,, it appears there's  summer versions of your chosen form of winter fun too!!

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reenactment

 

 

"For years you Yankees have been muttering 'The North will rise again!'" ~Granny Clampett

That video of the new born Telemark skier was great! :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by nolo 

Telerod, skiing Telemark on Alpine skis is one of the Top Ten epiphanies in ski teaching. 

Skiing Telemark on Alpine skis (mounted tele) is one of the Top Ten epiphanies in skiing. :)

Touche.

It's a lot more the same than different.

"More the same than different." Thats why I like to read these threads, I learn a lot from them. Sorry for derailing  this one. I'll try to get it back on track, but first I have to try to figure out what the others are saying.

From Telemark skiing, I know that pulling back the inside ski helps keep you from getting into the backseat and encourages a more active inside ski / little toe edge. Striding the outside ski forward, you can easily lose contact with the boot tongue. It might be a tactic for breakable crust or some other reason.

I don't know if this relates to Alpine really, so everyone feel free to ignore the troll and discuss the topic.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nolo 

Several years ago the mantra du jour was to hold back the inside ski from advancing and creating too much tip lead; the past couple of years that mantra is to advance the outside ski to prevent too much tip lead and keep both skis on the same fore-aft plane.

 

Is this two ways of saying the same thing, or are they biomechanically different, with one method actually achieving superior results to the other method?

I remember back in the 80's we were talking about pushing the outside foot forward while keeping it weighted, at turn completion, to pull the hips across the skis.  Then I heard about pulling the inside foot back, which to me, felt different because it did not aid in the edge change, which was the benefit of the aforementioned method.  I did notice though that pushing the outside ski forward caused my hips to square up at the turn completion and even caused a bit of early counter.  Because of this, I was criticized early this season for too much early counter and finishing too square.  With the focus this season on skiing into counter, the opposite movements are emphasized and I find only a few situations where I focus on pushing the outside foot ahead.

I find my more recent focus has been on turning my feet keeping them inside the box.  Taking a pivot slip type movement and modulating more or less edge angle throughout the arc to suit the need but leaving the hips out of any rotation as much as possible, skiing into and out of counter, if you will.

Bud, there are good reasons for skiing into counter, but also liabilities with it.  Just as there are with finishing square or establishing early counter.  Skiing into counter requires greater skill to keep arc to arc.  When trying to eliminate a pivot in students who do it as a default, coming back to square through the transition is the better option. 

Nolo, focus on the balance relationship between your CM and your outside foot and you'll be fine.  Get in touch with the bottom of your feet.  Low edge angles are quite tolerant to rotational states, but bigger edge angles require counter to keep solid outside foot balance.  Pushing things on the outside half forward, or pulling things on the inside half back works against creating counter.  Too much tip lead is often a mattter of poor counter creation methods. 

www.YourSkiCoach.com

I agree Rick, the beauty of exploring both movement patterns is that they each offer functional benefits in specific situations.   

Quote:

Originally Posted by bud heishman 

 

 

 

I find my more recent focus has been on turning my feet keeping them inside the box.  Taking a pivot slip type movement and modulating more or less edge angle throughout the arc to suit the need but leaving the hips out of any rotation as much as possible, skiing into and out of counter, if you will.

Bud,

That box sounds a lot like the leg steering on two bar stools idea in that if we turn the legs without turning the hips a bit of inside foot lead occurs naturally. No pull back or push forward of either foot is needed to produce this natural lead. Mechanically the two moves are different and RicB put into perspective how he accoplishes this alignment very well.

So that being said I have a couple things to ask about why we would be trying so hard to maintain this vertical alignment.

My experience is that most people do the bar stool move inside, on a flat (level) floor, with a couple pieces of paper (instead of actually standing on two bar stools). It introduces the leg steering idea and allow us to experience how it feels to move the legs in the hip sockets. What it doesn't do is take into account the leg length difference that occurs while standing on a slope, or the leg length difference that happens as we tip the ski onto edge. To simulate that we need the feet to be at different levels and the legs to be different lengths. Sort of like when we stand sideways on stairs.

What comes to mind immediately is if I was doing this in ski boots the limited amount of ankle flexion would force me to use more knee and hip flexion and it would be difficult to maintain the hips vertical to the feet. Especially with the uphill leg / hip. My solution would be to hike the uphill hip and probably also create some hip angulation to give the uphill leg more room vertically. this would produce the strong inside half leading through the turn. From there pulling the inside foot back, or pushing the downhill foot forward doesn't make much sense to me because it disrupts the whole idea of trying to keep the hips and feet in vertical (to the ski)  alignment. I find it easier to keep vertically aligned hips and feet by just turning the legs in the hip sockets.

An additional idea I was working on with Bob Barnes this spring brings up a question of where in our turns do we want to maintain that vertical alignment of foot and hip idea? What happens when we do a femurs parallel to the snow cross under move like we were practicing for reaching slalom race turns. The feet and the body are moving at much different speeds through the transition and if the femurs are parallel to the snow the feet are way ahead of the hips. As we extend the legs and get near the apex, this vertical hip / foot thing makes more sense because the femur of the outside leg is more vertical to the ski. Although with sufficient edge angle keeping the inside hip over the inside foot may not make much sense either because the femur is much closer to being parallel to the skis than it is to being vertical to the skis. Not allowing the ski to get too far ahead is the underlying concept as far as I can tell. Which isn't a bad thing unless we start talking about absolutes.

Although I would offer this one, any time the knee and hip flex enough it is impossible to maintain this vertical alignment. So as a means to develop discipline and balance it makes sense but only through a limited range of motion of the legs and hips.

Actually, I don't try to do one or the other. I was more curious about the difference biomechanically between the two movements. I think Ric explained it well from that perspective -- that it takes some tension (hold-back) in the body to maintain alignment over both feet, but not so much that natural tip lead and counter are not allowed to develop. 

Jasp,  I concur with your analysis.  It all has to flow for sure.

and I agree with nolo and Rick so I think we all agree?  How boring....no arguments here.

I have noticed on medium to longer turns pulling my inside foot back creating tension in that leg helps keep the inside ski tip loaded and working.  I have noticed on icy slopes in shorter turns I like pushing my outside foot ahead in the completion phase to load the tail and aid in moving the hips over the feet, creating good edge hold without a big platform or bracing.  I also find that given the task of making very slow speed parallel turn initiations I focus on pushing the outside foot ahead a bit and maybe pulling the inside back a bit which applies a quick coiling affect of my leg muscles which then recoil to aid the parallel initiation. 

So pushing the outside foot ahead, while keeping it weighted (which is key), pulls the hips into the new turn but causes the current undesirable squaring of the hips at edge change.  What a dilemma?  Is there a happy blend?  I think so.  Are there tactical choices? I think so.  Is it all good skiing if we are in dynamic balance?  I think so.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bud heishman 

 

How boring....no arguments here.

 

If you want to liven things up; to see all views of skiing pushed, poked, and prodded; to see problems in a new light; to break out of your same-ole-stuff rut; to avoid this forum drifting away into the summer doldrums ... that's easy to do. 

The way out:  send an invite to a certain skier from Mt. Bachelor to join your discussions.  That gentleman is a serious student of skiing and delights in discussing any and all aspects of skiing with other passionate skiers.

First thing, I think its a very bad idea to push your outside foot forward for the purpose of avoiding inside ski tip lead.  So if you are obsessed about your tip lead, try other things to correct it, including pulling/holding the inside foot back, among other things.

Secondly, I think its wrong to be so obsessed about tip lead.  Some amount of tip lead can naturally occur, particularly as edge angles get bigger.  Your body simply lines up that way.  

I think instructors and coaches can sometimes become obsessed over this because they have learned to watch ski tip lead as a visual cue.  However what sometimes gets lost in the translation is WHY, they are supposed to be looking for that visual cue.  Ask yourself what is really wrong with tip lead, other than the fact that you have been told that you aren't supposed to "look" that way so you are trying to correct how you "look" so that your boss will stop bugging you about it.

If tip lead is "consistently excessive", and if you even have a frame of reference to know what or how much that is, then you may have some reason to dig deeper.  If there is excessive tip lead happening, its most likely because some other particular movements associated with skiing are not being executed quite right.  The real solution is to figure THAT out and work on that, and let the tip lead resolve itself automatically.  If you try to simply correct tip lead, you are more likely to introduce completely new problems that have not solved the original problem and may in fact create new ones...even if they have managed to hide the ugly tip lead.

Rick mentioned things about how skiers enter their turns, how they establish counter, or ski into counter, etc..and all of that plays into why you might see too much tip lead developing in a skier.  Or perhaps they simply just have limited dorsiflexion.  Perhaps they are tending to scissor onto their inside ski, which will move that inside ski way forward?  Etc...  Perhaps you aren't even analyzing them correctly and their slight tip lead is perfectly acceptable.

Its unlikely that a skier is intentionally creating tip lead by advancing the inside ski consciously, as a skill of its own.  If some skier is intentionally doing that, then I think it would make sense to correct their thinking and tell them to hold their inside ski back rather than advance it forward.  

Otherwise, the challenge is really on you as a coach/instructor to dig deeper and analyze the skiing to find out what is really being done less-then-effectively which might result in the excessive tip lead, and focus on that skill improvement.  that is not easy to do, which is why far too many instructors seem to obsess over tip lead as if it is a specific skill on its own.  Tip lead is either not important or at worst it is merely a visual cue, a symptom, that can help indicate the real underlying issues.

Quote:

Originally Posted by borntoski683 

First thing, I think its a very bad idea to push your outside foot forward for the purpose of avoiding inside ski tip lead.  So if you are obsessed about your tip lead, try other things to correct it, including pulling/holding the inside foot back, among other things.

 

Secondly, I think its wrong to be so obsessed about tip lead.  Some amount of tip lead can naturally occur, particularly as edge angles get bigger.  Your body simply lines up that way.  

 

I think instructors and coaches can sometimes become obsessed over this because they have learned to watch ski tip lead as a visual cue.  However what sometimes gets lost in the translation is WHY, they are supposed to be looking for that visual cue.  Ask yourself what is really wrong with tip lead, other than the fact that you have been told that you aren't supposed to "look" that way so you are trying to correct how you "look" so that your boss will stop bugging you about it.

 

If tip lead is "consistently excessive", and if you even have a frame of reference to know what or how much that is, then you may have some reason to dig deeper.  If there is excessive tip lead happening, its most likely because some other particular movements associated with skiing are not being executed quite right.  The real solution is to figure THAT out and work on that, and let the tip lead resolve itself automatically.  If you try to simply correct tip lead, you are more likely to introduce completely new problems that have not solved the original problem and may in fact create new ones...even if they have managed to hide the ugly tip lead.

 

Rick mentioned things about how skiers enter their turns, how they establish counter, or ski into counter, etc..and all of that plays into why you might see too much tip lead developing in a skier.  Or perhaps they simply just have limited dorsiflexion.  Perhaps they are tending to scissor onto their inside ski, which will move that inside ski way forward?  Etc...  Perhaps you aren't even analyzing them correctly and their slight tip lead is perfectly acceptable.

 

Its unlikely that a skier is intentionally creating tip lead by advancing the inside ski consciously, as a skill of its own.  If some skier is intentionally doing that, then I think it would make sense to correct their thinking and tell them to hold their inside ski back rather than advance it forward.  

 

Otherwise, the challenge is really on you as a coach/instructor to dig deeper and analyze the skiing to find out what is really being done less-then-effectively which might result in the excessive tip lead, and focus on that skill improvement.  that is not easy to do, which is why far too many instructors seem to obsess over tip lead as if it is a specific skill on its own.  Tip lead is either not important or at worst it is merely a visual cue, a symptom, that can help indicate the real underlying issues.

 

AMEN!
 

Great post.  Might I suggest deleteing the second last, and third last paragraph and making this a Wiki.

B2SKI682 and Skidude72  I agree with you here but did not see where anybody in this thread said anything about being obsessed with tip lead or wanted to eliminate it?

Question:  Should I shoot myself in the head, or hang  myself?

Answer:  Neither

I don't think anyone is advocating these "biomechanical cookies"  (thanks Weems) as "the way to ski".  These are tasks to help skiers experiment with movement spectrums.  Take minimizing or maximizing tip lead to the extreme and we quickly find the limitations, yet experimenting with the movement ranges helps us find the useful range and understand how different blends may help or hinder our turns.

I believe if we are too determined to always remain right in the middle of anything we will inevitably find ourselves off the mark.  We will become reactive instead of proactive.  The one thing skiing is not is a "position" rather it is continual movement that we try to describe with static words.

Here is another take on the tip lead thing.  While I am pretty sure everyone involved in this conversation understands why tip lead occurs, I believe we can massage how, where, and when the transition from one lead ski to the other occurs.  example: Let's say I decide to advance my outside foot a bit sooner than a natural lead change would occur during a turn completion, now if I just push my foot forward without maintaining weight on it or without allowing my cg to move across my feet, there is no benefit, However; if I use moving the foot forward to facilitate a weighted release, is it a bad thing?  The bigger question for me, is it more functional to enter the top of the turn with the hips facing the turn apex or with them creating an early counter before the fall line?  I think either point could be argued.  The current thinking with PSIA is skiing into and out of counter while some other prominent coaches advocate an early counter and finishing the turn more square.

Should we just shoot ourselves?

Hi Bud,

Well if you gathered all that from the OP, OK....but that was certainly not how I read it.  What was or is the intent of the OP is not likely relevant at this stage so I will just say this.

Without question we move fore/aft along our skis throughout the turn.  The intent of this is to maintain balance and/or to manipulate the skis "self steering effect".  It is not, nor ever was in a real sense done to manage or manipulate "tip lead".  The evaluation of effectiveness then of the various fore/aft options we have available to us should be evaluted within the context of these intended goals/outcomes.

Evaluating these moves, or even discussing them relative to tiplead seems very arbitraty and contrived.  As you wrote there are many other considerations that should be considered.