Tom Gellie challenges the standard advice to keep your ankle flexed throughout a ski turn. He argues skilled skiers also point their toes downward, which improves edge grip and turn shape, and invites you to test it yourself.
Chapters
I'm sort of excited to share with you something that is a little bit different. Of course, if you're familiar with me, I'd like to delve into topics that are maybe controversial or even sort of opposed to the normal way of thinking, and today is definitely one of those. So I want to start off with— I would say most of you would be aware or be conscious of the fact that everyone talks about flexing your ankle. So when you ski, you should have a flexed ankle the whole time because this helps keep you forward. It's a sign of, you know, staying on the front of the boot is a feeling, but it's a sign of your body is committing forward as it goes down a slope. Uh, you've got sort of this athletic position, you know, when you play sports you have a flexed ankle. And this idea that the ankle is just flexed, always here and never changes, is what I want to challenge. And I want to give you some takeaways, some things to try today to test out and see if it works. So the challenging concept, the thing I'm saying that's different is actually I believe there is— this is dorsiflexion when the ankle does this. So either the shin comes forward or the forefoot comes up, but this angle in here, this closes up. Okay, so closing the ankle. I want to challenge that idea and say that actually good skiers are also opening the ankle, or they're plantar flexing. It's called plantar flexion because the bottom of the foot is the plantar surface, so you're flexing that plantar surface away. So it's this motion. Hopefully this is challenging maybe your idea of what you should do with the ankle and foot in skiing. And that's a good thing. I want you to try it out, see for yourself if it makes sense and if you can feel it, because I've been testing it all winter and this is the first time I really presented it in a professional sort of way. So I'm a little bit nervous because it's definitely, you know, something new in my repertoire and what I'm trying to get across. But from very sort of, you know, intermediate, advanced sort of level skiers all the way up to definitely the expert level, and from even a snowplow all the way up to a pure carve turn, this concept seems to feel great with people, have some really good results, and change turn shape, grip, and the feeling of just feeling, uh, more control in a turn, which of course is good. Now I've got a little poll here, and I probably should have started with this, but, uh, let's launch it. If you can, uh, Forget what I've just said and think of this question: when should we flex our ankle joints? So what have you thought before what I've said? Would have it just been all the time? Would have it been just the top
