Can you guys critique my skiing?

Just to make a start and if you're at the hill at the moment it may be best to look at one thing at a time. If you look at 16 seconds on the video, you can see clearly that you are in the backseat. If you were able to give some feed back on the move, I would suggest you would be able to identify that your weight feels like it's going through your heels. Try a really easy run on terrain you're completely happy with feeling where your weight is. Flex the joints of the ankles, knees, hips and lower back the slightly and the same amount and feel yourself balanced over the middle of your foot just behind the balls of your feet rather than your heels. Don't get hung up on the kind of turns you're making at the moment, just get balanced.

 

Others may go into more detail and give you lots more to work on but if you're going out skiing tomorrow try this and see how it feels. When your hips are thrown back and legs are heavily flexed the quadriceps are working over time. This is very tiring and inefficient. It might also be worth shedding the backpack until you've got your balance nicely dialled in.

Muscle tension can cause joint pain. When you tighten the muscles, you stress the connective tissues. Think about swinging a bat/tennis racquet/golf club. If you tense the arm and torso muscles, your accuracy deteriorates. Same with your legs. So before starting a run, stand on both feet and bounce a little, flexing your ankles and knees. Pick up one ski and bounce a bit on the other foot. Repeat with the other side. Alternate, feeling for the entire bottom of the weighted foot. After you start out, feel for relaxed use of the leg muscles. This might be easier on the easiest slopes.

While you do want to pressure the front of the outside ski to complete turns, tensely pushing down on your big toe will move your leg rearward against the back of the ski boot cuff. You want to feel the front of the cuff.

To begin turns, you want to think about steering the inside ski into the turn. Flex the left ankle and point the left knee toward the left when beginning a left turn, for example. Begin your forward pressure on the right ski as the turn continues.

You need to flex and extend your legs alot more.  The advice you got to start turns by pushing down on the ball of the foot is good, as you do that, thou, you also need to extend your knees and hips.  This will bring your body's weight up and forward, this will take stress off of your knees and quads.  As the turn starts...stay tall, for at least the first 1/3, then gradually flex all joints (ankles/knees/hips) until the turn is  complete...press the ball of the foot and extend all joints again to start the next turn and repeat.

 

Good luck and let us know how you go.

First things first - compared to your postings last year, you've improved quite a bit.  Good job.  I will add a couple things.  For the most part, you already have plenty to work on and you've gotten sound advice.

 

The thing that jumps out at me is the back pack.  You are in the back seat and have chronic knee pain.  The back pack isn't your friend.  The little bit of weight is going to only make this worse.  Adie said it too.  See if you can distribute the items to your pockets or better yet, your friend's pockets .

 

If you want to know how it feels to be forward, look at 00:42 seconds on your video just before you throw your arms up.  Other than your upper body being twisted and skis in a reverse wedge, that is pretty much it.  Your hips and knees are open and ankles are flexed.  You are doing this because you stopped facing uphill.  Worked out perfect as this is often what skiers are told to do so they get the feeling of what being forward is.  You want that position but with your skis parallel, and pointing downhill.  Next time out, find a safe spot to face uphill and feel everything the previous posts are talking about.  Your shin should be up against your boot cuff, ankles flexed, knees open but with an easy natural bend, hips open and forward.  In your video at 00:42 you can also see your butt is forward of your heels.  Hard to see because you are facing the camera but it is. That is what you should be trying to do.  I know I have the right position when I feel a slight pinch in my lower back (that could be old age though).

 

It is a very comfortable position to be in and you can be in it for long periods without any fatigue.  It isn't that different than standing in the lift line.  Tall and leaning on the front of your boots.  You wouldn't want to stand in the lift line in the back seat position like at  00:16 right?  The irony is because we are on a hill sliding down, our minds have been conditioned to tell us to lean back (compared to the slope) like when we are walking downhill or down stairs.  You need to lean down the hill without crouching or folding at the waist.To do this, flex the ankle, open the knees and hips.  Stand tall.

 

Have fun and keep us posted,

 

Ken

An excellent exercise is to hike uphill in a herringbone and pay attention to where your legs and pelvis are in relation to your feet. Then turn around and try to get into those same relationships while going downhill.

So far there is a lot of good advice about what to do while skiing. Chronic knee pain while skiing typically forces us to keep our knees as straight as possible and I suspect on some level pain may be motivating you to do exactly that. It also may be causing you to adopt a pretty conservative and somewhat defensive mindset. If I may ask, Do you have any past knee injuries, or any history of knee problems?

 

Assuming you don't, a quick joint bias test might reveal a habitual movement pattern that might be influencing how you flex your leg and foot joints while skiing. It's pretty simple, stand up and drop a coin (or any small object) about a foot in front of your feet. Now pick it up. How do you bend as you reach down to do this? Do you bow, squat, or use a combination of both? Now try it while wearing your ski boots. Do your movements change and if they do, how do they change?

Nice smile FGOR! This is awesome for your third day. You are very good at turning your feet to turn the skis. I love how you control your speed on the narrow trail. Congrats to the cameraman too! The video is just fine to let us see your skiing. Ideally we want to see the skier take up 1/3 to 1/2 of the screen and this is pretty close.

 

There are some great suggestions above for how to make wedge turns with less knee pain. My first additional suggestion is to try to finish your turns with your skis turning more up the slope. Imagine a clock face where 6 o'clock is your skis pointing straight down the trail. Currently, you are turning your skis from about 4:30 to 7:30 as you ski. Try going from 3:30 to 8:30 instead. The second suggestion is to separate your upper body (hips and shoulders) from your lower body (legs and feet). Currently, at 6:00 your upper body and lower body point in the same direction (straight down the trail). This is good. As your feet turn from 6:00 to 4:30, your shoulders turn the same amount as your feet (both turn to 4:30). This is easy to do, but makes it harder to turn. If we could finish the turn with your feet pointing to 3:30 and your shoulders pointing to 5:00 (upper body turning less than the lower body), you'll find it much easier to bend your legs more and to get out of the back seat. My last suggestion  seems counter intuitive: try skiing with your hands behind your back. The goal is the same as Adie's suggestion to balance over the middle of your feet. For some people, making the problem worse (moving your hands behind your back shifts your weight back even more) teaches the movements to solve the problem.

 

Here's something for the last suggestion that you can try at home. Find one or two objects that total 4-5 kilos weight (a plastic milk jug or two should work). Stand barefoot on a hard surface holding the weight(s) at your side. Rock forward and back so that your toes and heels just barely start to come off the floor. Then lock into the center between those points. Now take the weight(s) and move both hands slowly behind your back. You should feel yourself shift backwards. If you feel you need to step backwards to recover, try focusing on moving your hips forward and bending your knees to compensate. This is the movement we want to add to your skiing when you start to turn! Once you feel balanced with the weight behind your back, move the weight back to your side again without letting your lower body shift back to where you started. With the weight at your side, now bring your balance back to where you started by bringing your hips back just a little. Finally, practice rocking forward and back like the start of this exercise, but only by moving your hips and knees like the weight forced you to do. This is what you'll need to do to ski with your hands behind your back. 

 

Measure the weight of your back pack. My bet is that it is light enough and closer to your body when you ski that you won't notice the effect of how it brings your weight back like the exercise above. But now you'll know that it's not helping. If you do the drills at home and skiing with your hands behind your back, then skiing with the pack on will be no big deal.

 

 

 

But if I had you in a lesson, I would get you onto a wider trail and work on turning more by putting the skis on edge and turning less by turning the feet. In order for this approach to work you need more room to let the skis run uphill to slow down (e.g. turning to 2:00 and 10:00 instead of 4:30 and 7:30). Skiing this way our skis will be more side by side and less in a wedge (tails wider apart than the tips). Skiing this way it is easier to feel the sensation of balancing against the "outside" ski (the same sensation as driving a car around a sharp corner) and thus easier to feel your weight balancing in the center of the foot versus over the heels. These changes will greatly reduce the pressure on your knees.

 

 

Skiing in pain is no fun. Please let us know if any of these suggestions help you. We really want to see more of that smile!

fgro

 

 It takes a lot of courage to have other crtique your skiing. Congradulations on having the courage.

 

 A lot will disagree with me & they could be right but for the following reasons it just makes no sense to me  to put extra presure on the big toe by pushing down with it. ( I prefure to keep foot relaxed & just let the amount of presure on any part of my foot be determined by being in balance in a stacked position)

 

Mans mind is so constructed it can not have a lot of differnt things in its focal awareness. Concontrating on pressuring down on the big toe I think is a waist of time, energy & uses the limited supply of that which can be in ones focal awareness. Way to many other things to focus on. I could have failed in my understanding but I have tried pressuring down with my big toe inside the ski boot & I found it useless & find it easier to keep my foot relaxed inside the ski boot. It makes me wonder if by trying to put presure on your big toe it is causing stiffness in the ankle joint & or it make you flex the calf muscle which causes your toes to point like pushing down on a gas pedal. Extending the toes is opposite of  flexing & I kinda think it would make it easier to get in back seat if the pivot came from the ankle.

 

 

 If you can increase counter in your turns ( body facing down hill while your skis travel accross the fall line) your skiing will improve a lot.

 

 Fear can cause one to turn away from the fall line & put you in the back seat. (try skiing on a wider, less steep, uncrowded run & then work up to narrow & steeper runs)

 

 Maybe you have not developed the skills to start your turn with counter. ( I would do side slips & eventually try them with more & more counter till body was able to face down hill while skis slide down fall line @ 90 degrees (or as much counter as flexibility allowed) to fall line & practice using differnt amounts of weight on up hill & down hill ski, Then I would go on to pivot slips. 

 

 To much ramp angle or if bindings are positioned based on manufactures recomended setting which is often to far back can put a skier in the back seat.

 

 Best

      Krazzy legs

fgor good to hear you're trying things and it would be good to see some more recent video. Just a couple of things. When you say leaning forwards what you should be looking for is balanced with ankles, knees and hips all equally flexed. Some people in trying to correct a balance problem hang in the fronts of their boots. Be careful with this. Also if you think you may be further back than before, check that the ankles are genuinely flexing and you're not just bending more at the knees which throws the hips further back. You can get a bit of an idea of the feel for balance without your equipent in a mirror. It's like a tennis player waiting to receive a serve.

As for the ITB. It's a very strong structure that isn't going to stretch very much. There is some suggestion that rolling may loosen adhesions but it won't stretch it. Carry on wiht the rolling by all means but to improve things you will need to look at the flexibility of the TFL which controls the tension of the ITB. There are some good exercises on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AZHU_WEypI

Thanks for answering my questions. I suspected you were breaking at the waist (piking) to protect your knees. A follow up idea would be to put on your ski boots and try to stand on your tip toes. As you stand there, slowly relax your calfs and thighs so you begin to settle into the boots and the pressure you feel across the bottom of your feet becomes equal. It might help to take a big breath and as you exhale, let all of the tension in your body go. Feel your feet spread out in the boot, sort of like they are honey being poured into the boots. At some point the boots will take over a lot of the support role you normally would be doing with your calfs and feet. Pay close attention to how much your knees and hips flex though. In a perfect world all of the joints in the lower body will flex to maintain balance. Not just the hips, or knees, or even the ankles.

So now you are ready to start moving but instead of trying to maintain this stance, I would suggest hopping in place. As you hop your body will automatically seek a stance that will allow you to hop without losing your balance. Which is a very important thing because as you ski, your legs and torso will be moving through this same range of motion as you flex and extend to keep the skis in contact with the irregular surface of the snow. When you are comfortable doing this standing still, it is time to hop while moving down the hill. Start slowly and on very gentle terrain and work up to hopping every few seconds and while sliding for at least 20 meters. It's not an easy change but once you own this self correcting stance drill, doing it on increasingly difficult terrain is actually pretty easy.

So now that you have a feel for where balance is for you, remember it as your neutral stance. We begin and end turns moving through "neutral" but as the skis turn down the hill and then back across the hill, the effective slope angle will change. It is quite normal to feel the tips dip below your feel as the skis turn down the hill, and it is quite normal to feel the tips rise and become level with the feet as the skis turn across the hill. (doesn't mean both feet will be level to each other though). So that wonderful "neutral stance" we discovered becomes variable and we must adjust accordingly. In other words the ground below our feet pitches and tips in a couple directions and balance becomes a moving target, not a singular set stance. The advice to press down with the toes makes a lot of sense when the tips dip, but as they rise we need to stop pressing down with the toes since all that would do is thrust the torso backwards. Even the clap your hands advice needs to occur at a specific time during a turn, or it will throw off your balance more than it will help you find balance. But try it at different points in your turns and let me know what you discover.

 

A final note on friends and how they can be better friends by not pressuring you to ski where they feel more comfortable but you feel less comfortable and thus creating a situation where adopting that defensive aft stance is your best option. We call that survival skiing here and I try to avoid doing that since it puts the lesser skiers at much greater risk of injury. Of course I do this all the time so being patient and staying on terrain suitable for the least experienced skier in the group is second nature. Sometimes letting friends go and just skiing where you feel most comfortable is a good thing. You can always meet them at the lift, or the lodge. There really is no one right answer though, trying a harder slope but knowing your limits as well is the best advice I could offer. Only you can determine which is best for you.

 

Ski well, fgor.

What I feel when I watch her is pain in the knees by using them as a level to pivot her skis with  a very flexed spine as the handle. This is a big lever on a joint that doesn't like to rotate much on it's own. 

 

Raise your hands with your shoulders, stick yer belly button (hips) out and find your balance there. Next and equally important is to learn to cause the ski to turn you. Allow the sidecut to lessen the amount of pivot you want to get a shorter turn underway. Use flexion and extension of your ankles,knees, hips and still also your spine to modify your balance needs and you'll put less pressure on the knees.

Blend the impact on your body by using more of your lower legs to aid in balance which enables you to begin to learn to balance on an edged ski.

 

Using an edged ski will give you a method that will always cause a turn to begin without so much rotary input you find painful over time.

Garry, The idea of balancing on an edge platform is quite an interesting one. It brings up a few questions about which comes first though. Do we want to suggest strong edging prior to finding a better (more balanced) stance, or should we try to find a better (more balanced) stance first? I have used the Bambi / Thumper story many times here (and out on the hill) but I feel it is very relevant to this discussion, so I will repeat it at the risk of being a bit redundant.

 

Bambi and Thumper approach a frozen pond. Bambi is very unwilling to go out on that slick ice and Thumper can't wait to go there. Why? Traction! Bambi sees a lack of traction as potentially disastrous and Thumper sees it as a ton of fun. So Thumper takes off like a rocket and gleefully slides across the pond, but Bambi tentatively tip toes out on the pond and when his feet start to slide he tries his hardest to dig his feet into the ice. When that doesn't work he tries even harder, until he is moving his feet so fast that they can't possibly gain traction. So he falls. Some will point out that his hoofs are not well suited to sliding and Thumper's feet are. Which is very true but the object lesson I see and how I feel this simple story relates to skiing is obvious. Skiing is about balancing on a platform and sliding across the snow with skis on our feet. IMO skis are "Thumper feet" and very well suited to sliding. We can certainly add edging for more traction and directional control but without the sliding component we would just be walking down the slope. I believe they call that snow shoeing.

 

A second and not always obvious moral is that Thumper loves to slide and convinced Bambi to join him even though Bambi was hardly well suited to do so. The scene was not written to portray Thumper as mean, just a bit naive to the fact that without big flat feet Bambi would struggle. Friends dragging a beginner over to intermediate trails is a lot like this, not particularly malicious but it certainly sets up that poor beginner for failure. As a ski school trainer I also use this analogy to express to our staff that moving a class to harder terrain needs to be done only after those students exhibit sufficient skill ownership to go there. It is a judgment call but thanks to liability issues we need to be a bit conservative when making that move. Student's who insist on moving to harder terrain (out of boredom) complicates this even more and makes that judgment call a bit harder. Especially when they lack the skills to handle the current terrain. Sharing that concern with these folks isn't an easy conversation but often it is a necessary one. How we combat that boredom is to keep the lesson content fresh and relevent. Working in the same skill pool but varying the activities is a good way to do this. Of course Garry, I know you already know all of this stuff but I wanted to share it with the rest of those folks reading this thread.

Ski well,

JASP

Edited by justanotherskipro - 8/20/12 at 11:44am

 

Everything else you said is good, but this ^^^ is very misleading and can lead to some big problems.  You DO NOT want to LEAN on your boots.  Your bones and muscles should be supporting you, not your boots.  Learn to be tall and use ankle and knee flexion to maintain shin to boot CONTACT, you don't have to be leaning on and bending the boots ALL the time, although at higher levels you will bend the boots at certain times during the turn.

 

Good catch.  Poor choice of words on my part.

To respond JASP . Stance has to be  the first issue to work with because it affects her balance completely.  Then work the ski. In a lesson I coach stance constantly while working on whatever skill we are trying to help them with .  

 

In working towards improving  her stance she will be in better position to work the ski, control her rotation and lessen the toll on the sore knees.. We can't help her to work her hips properly until we can get them into play and balanced over her skis.

Yup, yup...

...Another thought along those lines involves teaching for transfer on a subconscious level. Re-training ourselves to squat instead of break at the waist will involve more knee flex and a bit less hip flex. The amount of ankle dorsiflexion will also change. It takes time and conscious effort to re-program our joint biases but it can be done. I feel once that re-programming happens all the stance issues will go away. And here's a simple drill that will help. Stand facing a wall with about a foot of distance between your toes and the wall. Now squat down and touch the floor at the base of the wall. When you can do this comfortably (without scraping your nose on the wall), move closer. Say eight inched away from the wall. Eventually move even closer, say six inches away from the wall. If you are like most folks, at first just flexing your leg joints enough to lower your torso will be a challenge. I can do the six inch part but mentally I really struggle to do it. I can almost feel static coming from the wall because my nose is that close to it. Of course like all training it's good to consult your Dr. before starting any fitness program. Another word of caution is to avoid brick walls while doing this drill. After about 21 days and 10,000 reps you will no longer break at the waist to pick up your keys. I'm not exaggerating, it takes that much effort to re-program habitual (sub conscious) movements. Which should also explain why students often revert to old habits after a ski lesson. It just feels more familiar / comfortable to rely on old movement patterns.

You just caused a lot of skinned noses .

 

What this young lady does bring in copious quantities is her spirit and desire to improve. She has a great future with a bit of guidance. I hope we can help her some here and that she finds a mentor nearby to work with her . We always hope for such a student. Good luck young lady !

Garry, here's the thing...

...as we go through our daily routines, we do a lot of things that we don't think about. We just do them. When we want to change those habitual movements, it takes a lot of conscious effort to bring about those changes. The wall squat forces us to use our knees and ankles to squat instead of bending excessively at the waist. It's a variation of the "lift with your legs" advice that has been around for a very long time. Another variation of this idea works very well for women. Remind them of how mom taught them to squat when they are wearing a short skirt. If they bend at the waist they would expose their backside. A very pretty mixed doubles partner of mine actually made it point to face away from the net and bend at the waist to pick up tennis balls. She also wore tennis panties that had winking eyes printed on them. It was funny how during a match how a small distraction like that would give us a few points." Guys are so easy" was one of her favorite sayings.

Big improvements. You are right when you say it looks better. Your stance and balance have improved tremendously and you understand what you're trying to acheive. I'm sure others will give you other tips but my advice for now would be to continue working on what you have been just for a while. Congratulations! I don't think it's an accident the knees are feeling better.

 

As for the ITB. It will take time to improve but stick with the exercises.