So today, we’re going to look at the topic
of how fore;aft balance is really a key part in you being able to stay in control and make
the skis grip and give you a nice kind of smooth fluidity down the slope. Hi, my name is Tom Gellie, I’m a level 4
instructor/examiner with the APSI, 2 x demo team member and I'm really interested in the
biomechanics of skiing. I'd really like to help those skiers that
are at the point where they’re really trying to ski steeper blues/blacks and when the snow
gets a bit firmer and slippier, those skiers when they get on that type of terrain find
that they can't keep a rhythm, fluidity and they kind of loose grip at the end of the
turn. So we are really going to look at how we can
help you if that sounds like you as the skier. Let's go take a look. So a shorter turn is really the type of turn
we are going to be doing, so I’m going to warm up on our way to some steeper terrain
doing short turns, as we can just control our speed more often with that, and it's actually
in the short turn that it's much harder to get your fore;aft balance right. So we are going to start off working into
some short turns. Really focus on a good rhythm, consistent,
continuing motion all the way around my turns, and I'm going to start paying attention to
my foot pressures. So, I just started paying attention to my
foot pressures, here's the reason why. When your skiing on a slope, if we just take
one turn from totally across the hill to across the slope, so 90 degrees to the fall line
okay, from the start of the turn for the first half, basically the run is getting steeper,
so i need to adjust my centre of mass and weight forward to be in balance, but only
for this part, many people still stay forward for the end of the turn. Now from the fall line down here, almost like
coming off of a skateboard ramp, you need to adjust your weight differently, so you
have to go back slightly. So we have to be forward at the beginning,
and then move more back on the skis towards the end of the turn to be centred on our skis
so it grips, as I said the beginning of the turn being forwards matches my body to the
slope, but it also helps me pivot my skis more freely, the weight being forward, |I can steer my skis easily. If I stay forward, my skis keep pivoting like
this forward, and I don't want that. So to help stop that continuous rotation that's
why I need to move my weight back a bit, that's why I need to feel through the soles of my
feet where my body weight and pressure is. Okay, really nice bit of flat terrain to practise
just moving my feet without turning and if I use a pulling motion you’ll see the skis
want to come back afterwards, if I just push , they don't want to come back. The tension in the muscles pulling, pulling
I ends up a little more forward. So i'm just going to exaggerate so you can
see me actively moving to the heel, and how i'm going to do that, I'm not going to sit
back, i'm going to use my feet and ankles and move them forward, I'm going to pull them
through the turn a little bit more and that's going to get me on my heels. Really feel the tail bite here as I pull my
feet through. So the fore;aft balance adjustment you're
working on really helps you to grip the tail of the ski at the end of the turn, a lot of
people are afraid of using the tail and being in the back seat but we're talking about a
specific moment in time and a specific how to do it. So if you do it in this way you're not going
to feel backseat, you're going to feel the ski grip, hold and actually push you or pop
you into the next turn. So you should be able to see that in slow
motion here, that the feet move from being on my side, to being almost in front of me,
and that's an active movement to just stay in balance. So a feeling you can I guess use, taking your
skis off on a steeper pitch. When i'm standing across the slope here I
can be very relaxed, I’m sort of centred, if i stand 45 degrees down the hill you'll
notice i'm more flexed in my joints, i have to keep pressure on my heel to not fall head
over heels, this is the same sensation/position, I need to be in to stop the tail of the ski
washing out through the end of the turn, because if i go forward from here i lose my balance,
the heels of my boots come off, even ever so slightly, the icier the slope and steeper
the run, the more that's going to mean your tails wash out. Alright, so on this next pitch, i'm going
to attempt to not adjust my fore;aft balance, i'm not going to move to the back of my foot
and get the tails to grip, i'm going to stay forward and what you should see, the tails
are going to continue to drift and it's going to be hard for me to control the completion
of the turn. So directly for me, that straight away feels
like i lose any flow or rhythm i come to an abrupt stop, because my ski tails keep spitting
and then i stop hard vs … so hopefully you can see the difference there
of not adjusting my weight back and just staying forward the whole time and actively changing
my weight and pressure along the length of the ski. Today i've got Carv in my ski boots, which
is a digital ski coach. It is an insole that goes under my liner and
it measures all these different metrics. So one metric that carv measures is fore;aft
balance, so i'm going to take a run and undo the top buckles of my boots so that i really
get more pure data from just the pressure sensors under my feet, because that's really
where we ski through, the soles of our feet so were just going to be interested in looking
at what the raw data shows us skiing down here without our boots done. So with boots undone I'm definitely relying
more on balance through the soles of my feet, my body, not the equipment, so I've really
got to be spot on with where the pressure goes under my feet as the turn changes, so
forward, back. And a short turn happens really fast so you
have to do these movements really quick and accurately. So i'm going to have a look at the video under
the hood here to see what im talking about, in real time with the pressure sensors of
the Carv insole, so they are saying through the end of the turn, right through here i
want to be more on the tail or heel of the ski. We will go a bit further down here, bang,
red dots showing up so i've definitely moved my pressure, there's the fore line coming
out of it, it's moved aft and you can see the ski tail stops displacing here to help
my steer, it actually stops and shoots across the hill. So taking a look at the run where I deliberately
stayed forward at the end of the turn, and what you'll see is that the tails continuously
displace and wash out at the end of the turn there. So even though i've got lots of edge angle
and it looks like my knees tipped over ,my tails washing out and there's no grip, and
the Carv insole gives me the pure data of why that's happened and it's because my weight
is too far forward, and it's also interesting to notice that I have to use a lot of heel
pressure of my inside ski to try and not fall over. So I think it's really cool because carv uses
all this data and collects all this stuff to build online coaching help for any skier
out there to improve their skiing. I think it's pretty cool. Okay so today's topic, the importance of fore;aft
balance when we are skiing steeper terrain, okay we've got to move forward and aft to
make those tails grip. So we started out getting you to feel your
feet and the pressure through your feet. We then looked at pulling the feet forward
through the end of the turn and then taking your skis off on a steep slope at 45 degrees
angle to feel your posture on that slope, and then we just put it into our skiing. So i hope you guys enjoyed that information
i hope it really helps in your skiing and see you next time!
