The most remarkable thing to happen today was my car wasn’t towed away after spending 5 hours in a “one minute” parking spot! The parking at Les Arcs 1800 had me baffled and I didn’t have a week available to work it out.
Everyone except Bas was a complete beginner – having only skied that morning for the first time. It’s clear Les Arcs 1800 is not a beginner’s resort with a serious shortage of long green runs. It was impressive that they had already manage a long blue run in the first morning and were all intact. When Kirsten said she was afraid – well it’s not surprising!
Skating
Skating along the flat was used to describe how gravity is used by upright human beings for propulsion – even on flat ground, when walking, running or skating. When walking you are not “balancing” – you are walking!
Skiing is not about balancing either – it’s about directing your centre of mass in the direction you want to go in. This implies “falling”, accelerations and imbalanced forces.
Modified (braking) Snowplough
Given that everyone had already been getting around the mountain with a snowplough I decided to work from that basis by modifying the characteristics. Instead of “transferring weight ” to the outside ski the focus would be moving the centre of mass towards the turn centre and keeping it there through the whole turn. This puts the weight on whichever ski is downhill of the body – that ski always being on a braking uphill edge. This means the start of the turn has all the weight on the “inside” ski of the turn and only the second half of the turn being on the “outside” ski.
In the video you can see everyone holding their centre of mass toward the inside of the turn – which is why they look stable either in a plough or parallel. Kirsten could still move inward a bit more during the second half of the turns.
Side Slip
Side slipping was encouraged to prepare for parallel skiing but also as a way to get down steep slopes that might be intimidating.
Dynamics
The top of this blog page has a button for “Dynamics” where the actual exercises we used today can be read about.
Our goal was to replace the static support of the plough with the support of the turning ski created with some speed and dynamics (accelerations of the centre of mass). This requires commitment to standing on the uphill leg and ball of the foot while pushing the centre of mass downhill and laterally to the direction of travel of the skis.
It’s really important to understand that it does not matter which edge your uphill ski is on – it will support your Centre of Mass acceleration and will turn/swing/side-slip into the turn from either edge!
Pivot
The top of this blog page has a button for “Pivot” where the actual exercises we used today can be read about
Each person was assisted through a pivot turn of the ski from the uphill edge to feel how easily the ski will turn – when the centre of mass pulls the ski fronts laterally into the new turn. You do NOT turn your feet and do not “turn” the skis!
Linda being taken out by an idiot!
