Ahmet & Refica

Around eight years have passed since I last skied with Ahmet and Refica. Both have meanwhile developed into real skiers – which is great to see. Well done!

First of all I skied behind Ahmet down the Face de Bellevarde to both warm up and observe his skiing with a view to targeting the best way to improve it. The most significant issue was a lack of angulation – which of course affects most things but in particular makes the turns long and with less grip than desired when on a steep and groomed piste.

http://skiinstruction.blogspot.fr/p/chiskiing.html
The best shortcut to developing good angulation is through isolating the hip/pelvis action in the manner I call “ChiSkiing”. ChiSkiing is my own development of skiing biomechanics based on ground breaking information from the book Chirunning by Danny Dreyer. The difference is that in running the leg moves behind the body and in skiing the leg moves in front – but in both cases the hip must move backwards. The main error in running is also due to the hip moving forwards – though in running the error is at the start of the stride. In skiing this problem arises at the end of the “stride” or turn.

Normally “hip angulation” is taught by telling people to “face downhill” with the shoulders and torso. This causes the hip to rotate in front of the rib cage and for all abdominal strength to vanish – basically collapsing the posture and exposing the spine to injury. The problem here is that those who might show impressive angulation are often seriously damaging their lower backs at the same time.

Immobilising the shoulders (square to the ski tips) and just pulling back the hip instead causes the spine to twist in the opposite direction (right up to the rib cage – the 12th thoracic vertebra) – to stretch the abdomen and allow the core muscles to work. I carried out a loading test with Ahmet so that he could feel it. Fortunately Ahmet could physically understand the sensations and was immediately able to put this into practice in skiing and reap the appropriate benefits from it.

When Refica arrived it was clear that she had even more pronounced rotation so to get both on the same wavelength I decided to work on the same issues. This is where Ahmet said that he could teach it better in only 30 seconds! Ahmet and Ahmet’s ego are like two different characters and sometimes you don’t really know which one you are dealing with – however this can be very entertaining! I offered Ahmet the opportunity to teach Refica – which he naively jumped at – not realising that I was setting him up. The lesson was short, sweet and classic and I fought hard (unsuccessfully) not to laugh. I asked Refica to show us and off she went – then I asked her what she felt and she unsurprisingly looked confused. Ahmet had completely reversed the hip instructions and had her pushing her bottom out to the outside of the turn – and it was funny to watch. Teaching cannot be done without a great deal of experience and people only see a fraction of what is going on so this is completely typical. Ahmet might think that few words are needed to communicate – but that’s just not true for most situations. Different people perceive things in different ways and getting anything across to a cross-section of different people requires a very thorough understanding of both the subject and the different channels of communication – understanding, visual, kinaesthetic, experiential and so on – plus a knowledge of everything that can block those perceptual  pathways – including issues such as dyslexia and dyspraxia. Nobody – absolutely nobody – will successfully teach something in 30 seconds that is so obscure as to be perceived completely incorrectly worldwide by professional teachers and that even with my own  unique insight – and three major back operations – took many years to work out!

Anyway – entertainment aside, Refica picked up the idea and had reasonable results that she could feel very quickly.

http://skiinstruction.blogspot.fr/p/core-principles.html

Later on I explained the Chi derived concept of “centering” – starting all movements from the centre of the body. Already the dynamics principle that has been the foundation of my teaching for 20 years requires that people understand that everything is controlled by the centre of mass and the interaction of gravity and generated forces passing through it. Now all physical actions need to commence from this centre and radiate outwards to the adductors of the legs and the inside of the feet – to the skis and ground beneath. Also – focus has to be centred on this centre – the more it is internalised the less distraction there is from outside of the body and the calmer and more effective the mind – the more relaxed the body and selective the use of the muscles. This circumvents tension on all levels – fighting against the laws of physics, fighting against your own muscles and fighting against your own mind.

http://skiinstruction.blogspot.fr/p/dynamics.html

Both Refica and Ahmet have a tendency to stem slightly and to lift the inside ski. Those are tell-tale indications of a failure to use the force from the lower ski to bring the body up and out of the turn – moving over the ski with the centre of mass. Doing this actively not only is necessary for good flowing skiing but it is critical for enjoying trickier off-piste, for skiing bumps and for gripping well on ice or racing. I demonstrated this with “hanger turns” – carrying out complete turn transition phases on the downhill ski. Both Ahmet and Refica understood this and felt the difference. Later when off piste Refica forgot this a bit and so had a few falls – but part of that was clearly tiredness setting in.

The ChiSkiing and this aspect of dynamics work together. The angulation allows pressure to build up while the body is held well to the inside of the turn. This pressure is then used to cleanly exit the turn when the moment is right. Without this angulation and control over body rotation the body cannot stay to the inside of the turn and everything falls apart – leading in this case to Refica doing a spectacular  “swimming pool” dive head first into the snow.  Ahmet, being the perfect gentleman, didn’t stop to help but carried on past her towards the camera as she lay in the snow – in a manner that said “That didn’t happen and nobody noticed!”. Ahmet’s chivalry appeared to be lost on Refica.

http://skiinstruction.blogspot.fr/p/pivot.html

I wanted to spend a brief amount of time to explain the pivot (exercises explained on the above link) because having asked both Ahmet and Refica to describe what is different with “short turns” it was clear they had no knowledge of this. Unfortunately Ahmet’s other persona kicked in again after about 10 seconds and he said “I’m not interested in that!”. Refica however spotted the implications and continued – managing to get a basic grasp of the skill. We tried later to apply this in bumps but by then she was clearly too tired. Ahmet simply avoided the bumps altogether with Ahmet’s other side stating that “I’m not a bumbs man””!”. No Ahmet – you are just unaware of how to pivot from the outside edge of your outside ski – and how to separate the edges of your feet from the edges of your skis. Sorry – but this cannot be taught or learned in 30 seconds by anyone.

Deep snow – where the skis can slide sideways – bumps and steep couloirs (keeping the feet downhill of the body all the time) all need this skill.

This image shows Ahmet working his turn strongly once it has already started – with inclination, hip and knee angulation and diverging skis. Only the arms are out of position and not serving a useful purpose…

Refica  – also strongly working the turn – with only a lack of hip angulation being an issue. More ChiSkiing would help…

Ahmet needing to tilt the upper body more forwards at the hip joint. This facilitates hip angulation through the turn…

Both Ahmet and Refica with a lack of hip angulation. The hands are far too low in both cases – indicating the core muscles are not working…

The blockage of the hips is causing the ankle (outside leg) to be over-flexed – causing confused signals through the body and to the skis…

I just want to explain to Ahmet’s “other side” that this blog is not about advertising! It’s a learning resource – for everyone’s benefit. It’s a daily “report” as is required on any sort of professional project. It’s also a record and a useful way to monitor progress – both for students and for me and my teaching. In 6 years of spending hours every working day with this effort the blog has attracted only one single client – but in contrast has proven useful for all of those who have participated – at least I hope that is the case!