Controlling and staying in perfect natural for/aft balance while skiing fast GS or slalom turns is an athletic skill bestowed on few individuals. It took me many years of serious training in my racing years to find answers to this problem in my own skiing. It is essential for racers to manage for/aft balance, as when you stay forward for the whole turn, they are slow in races. This of course is less of a problem for recreational skiers. Racers must learn not only how to get forward quickly, but also how to get pressure back through the middle and heel of the foot to accelerate the skis. Notice I say pressure to the heel rather than back of the ski. When you feel the pressure or balance on the back of the ski it is already too late to save the turn.
Check out Bode crashes
(additions 11-02-05)
Recently I was skiing with one of our clients, friends, and we tried to reference the heel pressure and how it related to pressure under the ski edge and where that pressure helped or created part of the turn. He realized that the beginning of the arc the hips needed to stay open (reference in this case to forward tilt). Open means not bent at the waist or at the pelvis. The stronger position is with open or un-flexed pelvis. He had the habit of leaning forward with the shoulders and upper body. This is a substitute for keeping the boots under the hips.
The definition of “for to aft balancing” relates to constantly moving and changing relationship of the hips to or over the boots or feet. Commanding this relationship is accomplished by monitoring the sensations relayed from the bottom of the feet, front and side of the shins to your brain. To a lesser degree, but important is tip engagement and ski behavior and that can be felt and realized by the relationship of the body in space and time. Once you have trained yourself to know where you are in space (relationship of hips to slope and skis to the falline) you can be active with adjusting the degree and duration of extreme forward pressure, which is based on hip position and/or feet to hip relationship.
How do you develop this ability? The easiest way you can arrive at the beginning of a turn with proper hip over the feet position is to use the energy from the previous turn to launch you into the optimal position.
(Additions 11-02-05)
It has been a life long pursuit to be able to convey this ability to skiers and racers. Open the hip and keep it open as long as you can in the turn.
When you achieve energy enough to do this, you must then learn to organize the body into the feet and hip relationship during what I call “the float” between turns. As with much of skiing the question becomes, what comes first (chicken or the egg) the energy or the proper positioning of the body/feet to begin turns? To get the energy to achieve enough float between turns to organize yourself for the next turn, depends on how you exit the last turn. So how do get it if you don’t have the energy from one turn to the next? You have to first learn how to move the hips so they are ahead of the feet at the “High C” (description of high C turn is in articles on the Real Skier member web site) part of the turn. This can be also said in this way: move your feet (back) so “the hips” are in the proper position for the new turn.
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There are no moving the hip forward muscles in the body. You have only the boots and the skis with which you can lever the hips into position. The rebound or energy from the last turn can also project your body into the right place. You have to know or learn how to organize it once it gets projected. This is a very high end movement.
I describe this in both my books as, “bring the feet back or pulling the feet back”, to hold them under the hips as the hips move forward and into a more direct route to the next turn. The hips move forward relative to the feet. This movement sequence is first trained and learned by performing simple exercises on the flats.
Stand in an upright comfortable position; pull your boots or feet back by sliding the skis and leaning forward with the hips. Now push the feet forward so they end up in front of your knees. Now practice this on the flats until you have strong movement of the feet both back and forward under the hips. The skis have to slide back at least six to twelve inches. Now this is a gross exaggeration of the movement you need to make if you have the “float” energy from the last turn. This exercise is skiing static, and with the body vertical on the flat, which is very different than moving dynamically and inclined on the slope.
The “pulling of the feet back” between turns is done during the transition. It is part of the flexing movement of the legs. If you are still pushing off and extending upward to release yourself from turns you will not have success using this method of releasing between turns. This move requires that flexing is the way you release. (Flexing, bending or retracting the legs is explained in Expert Skier 2).
About monitoring sensations:
When you have the knees flexed or bent, pulling the feet back is easier as the hamstring muscles have more leverage from this higher degree of bend. Many skiers respond by saying they don’t feel pulling the feet back or they don’t understand how to achieve pulling the feet back, often because of the reasons I stated earlier. When you are in the optimal position for the beginning of the turn you will feel you hips applying pressure to the front of the boots through the shins. If your hips are too far back your knees will not affect pressure to the front of the boots. Being in proper for/aft balance at the beginning of turn is about where you position the hips not about pushing the knees into the boots.
The role of the skis;
The skis travel ahead of the feet while the body is in transition. But the skis should be tilting to their new edge angles as they travel the wider rounder line than the hips. The hips travel the shorter more direct line to be inside the arc the skis describe. All this occurs during the “high C” part of the turn. When the skis are aimed straight downhill, half the turn is complete. Most skiers begin their edging at this point that’s why they have difficulty staying forward on their skis. Getting forward is done during or at the upper or High C part of the turn.
(Addition 11-02-05)
Pulling or holding the feet and skis from moving forward in the transition is another way to look at this repositioning from turn to turn. If you are a strong enough skier, you only have to hold the feet and skis back, while your Center of Gravity moves into position toward the new turn. Sense where on the foot and the ski pressure develops as the stance leg extends and produces pressure on the ski. Feel the whole ski through the bottom of your foot or side of the foot that is on edge. You should be able to pin point exactly where the pressure is focused on the ski. (Front, middle, heel)
A few comments about ski to hip relationship through the turn:
There is no need to push the feet ahead during the carving or arcing phase of the turn, they will more with a natural acceleration that the slope provides. If you are on very steep terrain you may need to hold the feet back under the hips through more of the upper radius and let them go near the end, to release the turn. Great skiers know instinctively how long to hold onto the feet while the feet are under the body. For this reason you never see a great skier out of balance or slipping on ice, as the ski is always inline with CG pressure and the their body mass is lined up with the ski. If your body mass, hips or center are behind the feet you can not engage and pressure the ski (at least not for very long).
(Addition 11-02-05)
This is what you see when skiers are parking on the side cut to make the turn. The true test of functional fore/aft balance is the ability to decrease the radius of every turn (at the bottom of the arc) regardless of the steepness of terrain or how slippery the surface. This begins with proper fore/aft balance and the ability to increase angles of the body and skis through the turn.
While in the turn use the flexing and pulling back of the free foot and ankle to add forward positioning to your body. Extending the inside leg has no benefits, as this will move the boot forward and reduce body angles to the slope.
When you begin training these movements and monitoring your experience, work with larger turns on moderate slopes at the beginning. The movements will feel contrived and mechanical at first, but you will find you will be able to work through that phase and produce a huge change in your skiing if you stick with it. I have done this process with many developing racers that went on to great achievements.
In conclusion 11-02-05,
Pulling both skis back doesn’t cause skidding or lack of edging ability. In all mountain terrain, crud or powder, one needs to be able to do both, the inside ski pull back and the two footed pull back or hold. Keeping the inside ski and boot back during the turn is very important and it was introduced in Expert Book 1, back in 1997.
The Austrians were masters at this and it was a big reason for their success especially in speed events. If you keep the inside boot back you will create a strong engagement and slicing action. If this movement is nonexistent, the body parks on the side cut of the ski, upper body rotation and steering becomes noticeable.
These two detrimental movements reduce edging and ski traction. If you follow world cup technique closely you will notice that the inside foot moves forward and out of the tucked under the stance boot position, only after the critical part of the turn is accomplished and not until. Those that move the boot away from the stance boot too early or too far lose turn radius and pressure needed to affect a powerful release and rebound.
About counter, we move in and out of counter (with hip, torso and upper body shoulder counter) counter is not static, again static is demonstrated by the park and ride side cut turns.
Bode develops more counter and he holds it stronger and longer than anyone else on the world cup (some of the duration of counter depends on the event and turn radius). Most observers don’t see it because he moves into counter very late in the arc and he holds it very strongly until the release. He also gets extremely counter balanced late in the turn. Unfortunately, often he is too late getting into this ideal position for the conditions of the slope and the ruts in the gates. Now, if he could get his hands out of his wallet pocket in slalom, and set up a slight bit earlier, he might have something.