Knee Tipping

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Re: Knee Tipping

Postby agent00F » Tue Sep 22, 2020 2:12 am

jbotti wrote:Knee tipping is not a phrase we use. Kinetically speaking we can only drive the knee. Tipping comes from the foot and the ankle.


This last point is confusing to me because I just can't see how the foot & ankle are used for tipping when they're fixed in position in the boot. I can see how the large external forces generated by body weight against the snow can flex the equipment to alter the ankle angle somewhat of the boot, but the whole "flex ankle" process doesn't make sense to me (either in PMTS or otherwise) since the ankles alone can't sufficient force. Some rotation in the shins is possible, but I don't believe that's what is meant by tipping ankles.

The reason I bring this up isn't to be pedantic but rather due to a curious discovery after doing some physio last season for a knee issue. I discovered that I had relatively poor hip dexterity, but that was causing undue (side) flex in the knees. After quite a bit of painful stretching & other exercises to substantially increase flexibility in the hip, it made all the difference in generating arbitrary angles far easier at the skis (and using the knees properly in their only "good" plane of rotation), at least before the season ended. In hindsight for extra tipping, to keep the knees stable extra rotation in that hip "universal" joint seems necessary just from the geometry.

Now it's easy to dismiss this as just a unique case with a bit unathletic person, but I don't believe I'm particularly poor in this regard for an office worker, which many skiers are. So it's worth pointing out that hip flexibility might be under-emphasized for regular folks, especially if you're looking to do anywhere near the angles H Harb et al exhibit in their vids.
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Re: Knee Tipping

Postby HeluvaSkier » Tue Sep 22, 2020 8:32 am

agent00F wrote:
jbotti wrote:Knee tipping is not a phrase we use. Kinetically speaking we can only drive the knee. Tipping comes from the foot and the ankle.


This last point is confusing to me because I just can't see how the foot & ankle are used for tipping when they're fixed in position in the boot.


How much time have you dedicated to working through specific PMTS drill progressions and performance checks that are in the books? Your statement reads like one from someone with very little practical experience skiing with expert level movements.
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Re: Knee Tipping

Postby ToddW » Tue Sep 22, 2020 10:57 am

You may have diagnosed your own skiing issue. Some footbeds, usually rigid “posted” footbeds, block many skiers from being able to tip. And some foot design variants require special tweaks to make tipping easier (no two human feet are built the same.)

Standing barefoot, can you raise the inside / big toe side of each foot as if a door hinge were keeping the other side in light contact with the ground? Try to do it with minimal knee movement. If it’s done via ankle muscles the knee initially won’t move until you’ve tipped a good bit. If the knee moves noticeably, you’re using big muscles up near the hip.

That’s the movement you need to make within the confines of a ski boot. Even wearing snug-fitting plug boots, you should be able to make that movement in every turn. When your foot makes firm contact with the sides of the boot, the boot will start to tilt over in unison with the foot, but the ankle tips before the boot tilts.


If you can do it barefoot but not when standing indoors ski boots, then 1) practice this indoors in ski boots. Look up Harald’s series of slant board and dry land training videos, and 2) see if you can get to HSS for footbeds and alignment. If you can’t, then experiment with taking out any custom footbeds you have and substituting a cheap generic skiing insole that has a little give / flexibility to it and basically serves to take up space previously occupied by the custom bed.
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Re: Knee Tipping

Postby agent00F » Wed Sep 23, 2020 1:51 am

ToddW wrote:You may have diagnosed your own skiing issue. Some footbeds, usually rigid “posted” footbeds, block many skiers from being able to tip. And some foot design variants require special tweaks to make tipping easier (no two human feet are built the same.)

Standing barefoot, can you raise the inside / big toe side of each foot as if a door hinge were keeping the other side in light contact with the ground? Try to do it with minimal knee movement. If it’s done via ankle muscles the knee initially won’t move until you’ve tipped a good bit. If the knee moves noticeably, you’re using big muscles up near the hip.

That’s the movement you need to make within the confines of a ski boot. Even wearing snug-fitting plug boots, you should be able to make that movement in every turn. When your foot makes firm contact with the sides of the boot, the boot will start to tilt over in unison with the foot, but the ankle tips before the boot tilts.


Yes I can do this. Seems if that's what's happening inside the boot it's changing the balance point somewhat which could precipitate a tilting motion, and it's entirely possible that's an efficient or effective way to start a tilt. But regardless it takes a somewhat unrealistic force to somehow bend the boot such that the lower part changes angle without commensurate movement from knees/hip.
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Re: Knee Tipping

Postby agent00F » Wed Sep 23, 2020 1:56 am

HeluvaSkier wrote:
agent00F wrote:
jbotti wrote:Knee tipping is not a phrase we use. Kinetically speaking we can only drive the knee. Tipping comes from the foot and the ankle.


This last point is confusing to me because I just can't see how the foot & ankle are used for tipping when they're fixed in position in the boot.


How much time have you dedicated to working through specific PMTS drill progressions and performance checks that are in the books? Your statement reads like one from someone with very little practical experience skiing with expert level movements.


It's possible I'm misunderstanding what "comes from" means here. If it means "starts from" per comment about balance point above that makes sense; less so if it means "comes from the ankle independent of the knee/hip". I can believe that "expert level" implies stronger ankles, but not superhuman strength.
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Re: Knee Tipping

Postby HeluvaSkier » Wed Sep 23, 2020 6:57 am

agent00F wrote:
HeluvaSkier wrote:How much time have you dedicated to working through specific PMTS drill progressions and performance checks that are in the books? Your statement reads like one from someone with very little practical experience skiing with expert level movements.


It's possible I'm misunderstanding what "comes from" means here. If it means "starts from" per comment about balance point above that makes sense; less so if it means "comes from the ankle independent of the knee/hip". I can believe that "expert level" implies stronger ankles, but not superhuman strength.


I see my question went ignored... I'll just take that as a "No I actually don't have any intention of developing PMTS movements in my skiing and I only came here to start an argument on a topic I have no understanding of."
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Re: Knee Tipping

Postby noobSkier » Wed Sep 23, 2020 10:33 am

agent00F,

You would be shocked what's possible with only your ankles. In fact, those with highly developed tipping skills can do more with one ankle than an average skier can do with their entire bodies...and to much greater effect. Don't make the mistake of taking an overly simplified view of PMTS, expert skiing is very dynamic and nothing happens in isolation to anything else. An expert skier is a finely tuned machine, everything is connected from the ankles to the shoulders and is moving in harmony to produce performance.

The PMTS progressions are all about emphasis and exaggeration, so we isolate certain movements to build muscle memory with the goal of eventually being able to connect everything together. Needless to say this takes years. PMTS'ers are doers, not talkers; so while many are willing to discuss at length your specific movement needs through movement analysis (see MA section), few of us can help you with questions that have no apparent relation to your personal progress.
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Re: Knee Tipping

Postby agent00F » Wed Sep 23, 2020 1:03 pm

HeluvaSkier wrote:
agent00F wrote:
HeluvaSkier wrote:How much time have you dedicated to working through specific PMTS drill progressions and performance checks that are in the books? Your statement reads like one from someone with very little practical experience skiing with expert level movements.


It's possible I'm misunderstanding what "comes from" means here. If it means "starts from" per comment about balance point above that makes sense; less so if it means "comes from the ankle independent of the knee/hip". I can believe that "expert level" implies stronger ankles, but not superhuman strength.


I see my question went ignored... I'll just take that as a "No I actually don't have any intention of developing PMTS movements in my skiing and I only came here to start an argument on a topic I have no understanding of."


Is PMTS meant to defy physical explanation or be some belief system which requires indoctrination before understanding? I was curious how ankle flexing per the boot is possible given the torsional rigidity of the boot design in that axis, and the answer here is that this is only accessible to level X members or something.

I've actually watched a decent bit of Harb's material and considered what's going on there. Much of it makes considerable sense, for example the feet pullback to basically load the tips efficiently using the body's momentum. Some of it isn't so apparent, like this ankle flex which ironically I've also heard from PSIA instructors. Now it's entirely possible there's something going on there that's not readily apparent, the "hidden" mechanics of which I'll try to guess at subsequently, but "accept the doctrine beforehand" doesn't make for a good explanation.

noobSkier wrote:agent00F,

You would be shocked what's possible with only your ankles. In fact, those with highly developed tipping skills can do more with one ankle than an average skier can do with their entire bodies...and to much greater effect. Don't make the mistake of taking an overly simplified view of PMTS, expert skiing is very dynamic and nothing happens in isolation to anything else. An expert skier is a finely tuned machine, everything is connected from the ankles to the shoulders and is moving in harmony to produce performance.

The PMTS progressions are all about emphasis and exaggeration, so we isolate certain movements to build muscle memory with the goal of eventually being able to connect everything together. Needless to say this takes years. PMTS'ers are doers, not talkers; so while many are willing to discuss at length your specific movement needs through movement analysis (see MA section), few of us can help you with questions that have no apparent relation to your personal progress.


Just to be clear, I'm not denying that using the ankles is effective, just that it's not what's physically causing changes in the tip angle. But rather it's probably due to ankle movements initiating a shift in balance combined with the sensation of tipping it causes. To help demonstrate this, you can try the ankle tipping when standing while paying attention to how it starts moving your knees to the side as a natural consequence of balancing, and then trying to move your knees to the side sans ankle (using the hip muscles more consciously). While both might result in similar shin (and hip etc) angle to the ground, the sensation is certainly very different, which might account for the "using ankles" instructions. Now it does seems using the ankles more deliberately makes the movement feel more progressive in a way and arguably better controlled.

If we accept the physical reality that the boot isn't flexing much due to forces from the ankle, it necessarily means what's going on is more physiological, and understanding the specific underlying causes here doesn't somehow diminish the content.

To use an analogy from racket sports, there's often talk there of the ball "dwelling" on the racket and player somehow controlling it while in contact, when it's provable that this time period is far too short; or oddly overemphasized "wrist/grip" talk, when really these are just part of the more consequential complex biokinect chain of the body each of which must work in concert for full effect. Now I suppose for pedagogical reasons there's no need to delve into the underlying mechanics, but I'm more curious WHY it works and not just looking for steps to follow.
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Re: Knee Tipping

Postby ToddW » Wed Sep 23, 2020 1:57 pm

Agent00F,

I tried to help you. You talk about making physical sense. PMTS makes good physical sense to me, and I have a PhD in theoretical physics and an undergrad engineering degree. You speak of “requiring unrealistic force” when you haven’t even tried it on snow. Maybe you have an unrealistic idea of what unrealistic means, or maybe you would benefit from custom footbed modifications.

Tipping requires what initially seems like a lot of effort. Later on, you may not even be consciously aware that you’re doing it. Years ago, in my first private lesson with a PMTS examiner, she repeatedly exhorted me to “tip and tip and tippy tip; tip and tip some more!”

No one is asking you to accept dogma blindly. You are being asked to temporarily suspend disbelief completely for a few sequential days on snow. Try to do exactly as you are instructed, whole heartedly and without reservation. Don’t think. Do. (At this point in your skiing journey, your brain lacks the basic concepts needed to effectively think through a sequence of turns. Sorry to be so blunt, but, as you demonstrated above, it’s true.) Odds are that once you have done this then 1) you will know the answer to many of your questions, 2) you will know if this is the way you personally want to ski, and 3) you will have taken the first very tiny baby step towards being able to think productively about turns.

Armchair theorizing just gets you nowhere with ski technique.
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Re: Knee Tipping

Postby jbotti » Wed Sep 23, 2020 2:16 pm

Agent00F, there is really only one question, do you want to use and produce PMTS movements? If you do this is a great place to learn and engage with others. If you are more interested in debating this is the wrong place for you and you won't last long. PMTS is not for everyone, it sounds like its not going to be for you. We are happy to have you stay, learn and improve your skiing, but we are not going down the rabbit hole of convincing someone with a TTS background why what we do here works.

It's your choice and we are happy to have you stay but also totally fine with you leaving. But we are not going into theoretical debates about technique. You can do that ad nauseum on Pugski.com So if that's what you want, head there quickly. Best.
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Re: Knee Tipping

Postby Max_501 » Wed Sep 23, 2020 4:18 pm

Book 1 and the Instructors Manual get into the how and why of tipping. Note that the boots don't bend/flex in the lateral or medial directions.

In PMTS beginners start their training with learning how to tip to the edges using the feet. The reason we tip the foot is to activate the kinetic chain so we have very precise balance control throughout the turn. If we skip tipping the kinetic chain is not activated from the base and then much larger muscles are used to attempt to stay in balance (with varying degrees of success).

Search this forum for terms like "kinetic chain", "tipping", "co-contraction", "LTE" to find threads that tackle this subject. Examples:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=827#p8541

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5475&p=#p55134

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4164&start=60#p43399

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2828&p=29261#p29261

Here's an old post I wrote about learning PMTS:

Max_501 wrote:Learning PMTS can be very simple if you follow the progression HH has given us. Book 1, Book 2, then Essentials. No need to over analyze or question the steps that HH has laid out in the books and on this forum because they simply work. Nike has a slogon "Just Do It" and that applies here. Just Do It [PMTS] and you will be on the road to expert skiing.

Historically this forum has been used as a distance learning system to supplement the PMTS books, DVDs, and camps.

If you are learning PMTS from a distance then its very helpful to read the books and watch the videos, starting with Expert Skier 1.

Image ImageImage

And if you are attempting to teach others I'd suggest adding the Instructor Manual to your collection

https://harbskisystems.com/products/ins ... rback-book

Read this post by Harald Harb written in 2004 - Book Learning

Nearly every question I can think of has already been asked and answered on this forum. I like to search the forum is using Google but the forum's search function works well too. Here is an example that you can type into the google search box to find information on counteracting movements.

"counteracting" site:http://www.pmts.org/pmtsforum

or

"counter acting" site:http://www.pmts.org/pmtsforum

Using Google focused on searching the PMTS forum yields a wealth of information!
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Re: Knee Tipping

Postby Vailsteve » Wed Sep 23, 2020 7:39 pm

ToddW wrote:
Years ago, in my first private lesson with a PMTS examiner, she repeatedly exhorted me to “tip and tip and tippy tip; tip and tip some more!” ]



Who would ever say such a nonsensical thing?? Tip and tip and TIPPY tip??? EVERYONE knows that you must twist steer and rotate the skis to be an expert skier!

Geez...the people on this forum! Idiots!

Vailsteve

PS. Sarc off. Tippping IS the first essential.. Agent00F, try it. It really works...
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Re: Knee Tipping

Postby Marc » Wed Sep 23, 2020 10:49 pm

agent00F wrote:
agent00F wrote:
jbotti wrote:Knee tipping is not a phrase we use. Kinetically speaking we can only drive the knee. Tipping comes from the foot and the ankle.


This last point is confusing to me because I just can't see how the foot & ankle are used for tipping when they're fixed in position in the boot.


[...]

It's possible I'm misunderstanding what "comes from" means here. If it means "starts from" per comment about balance point above that makes sense; less so if it means "comes from the ankle independent of the knee/hip". I can believe that "expert level" implies stronger ankles, but not superhuman strength.


Yes, tipping starts at the ankles and the knees must be allowed to follow. The femures will passively rotate in the pelvis. This is easier if you keep you legs bent and your hips relaxed. This is explained in the first exercise in book 1 https://harbskisystems.com/collections/ ... er-1-ebook.

And as you say hip flexibility is helping here.

For "passive rotation" (tipping) vs "active rotation" (knee drive) read viewtopic.php?f=1&t=273#p2701
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Re: Knee Tipping

Postby RyanAllen » Thu Sep 24, 2020 5:57 am

Depending of course on the skier's feet, I think there's plenty of room in the boots for lateral tipping with the feet and ankles. Exploring the limits of foot/ankle tipping inside my boots is EXACTLY what lead to my breakthrough on the Harb Carvers. In fact, I have found that if I want a faster response to my tipping efforts, I will actually tighten my 2 lower buckles over my feet to snug up the shell. I'm out there testing what I have learned in the Essentials book several times a week. It frickin' works!

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Re: Knee Tipping

Postby noobSkier » Thu Sep 24, 2020 7:59 am

agent00F wrote:If we accept the physical reality that the boot isn't flexing much due to forces from the ankle...


I would just add that your entire premise is incorrect :) . A properly fitted boot isn't required (or even designed) to flex laterally in order get an angle from either eversion or inversion. You can absolutely squeeze out 2-5 degrees from ankles only in ski boots. If you can't it's either a physical conditioning issue or a fitting issue...or both. My suggestion would be to build a slant board and try some of this stuff out, i'm sure that would put an end to alot of the confusion. Best of luck!
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