Tom GellieBig Picture Skiing Pty Ltd · Coach/Director

Get rid of the A FRAME

11 Dec 2025 · 2 min

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2:28

In this instructional segment, the ski coach (Speaker A) guides a learner (Speaker B) through a step‑by‑step correction of the common “A‑frame” stance. The coach first demonstrates a knock‑knee position, urging the skier to bring the knees together and roll the outside foot onto its edge. He then introduces a novel proprioceptive cue: using the logo printed on the side of the ski boot as a reference point for weight placement. By pressing the foot against the logo—just past the boot’s edge—the skier can feel a balanced, slightly forward pressure that aligns with the pole. The coach emphasizes relaxing the muscles while simultaneously activating the glutes and hip area, encouraging the skier to lean more on the poles to deepen the stretch and improve hip feeling. The learner repeats the cues, noting the new sensation of weight through the sole and the logo, and confirms the improved glute stretch on the inside leg. The exchange blends visual alignment, tactile feedback, and controlled muscle activation to transition the skier from a flat, weight‑on‑sole stance to a balanced, hip‑centric posture that eliminates the A‑frame.

Chapters

If everyone kind of stands in a knock-knee position, so touch your knees together. You're close enough there. Roll your outside foot onto the edge. Yep, so knock knee. Yep, that one's on way too much edge. Yeah, or more edge than this one. Do that. Yeah, that's it. Okay, how do we match that up with the inside without losing the good hip feeling here? Well, the feeling is down in your foot. And, and what helped yesterday with people is— see, everyone has a logo on the side of their boot. Fischer, Nautica. Get this position and then just try and get your foot to rest and press on the logo. Okay, you're not going to try and press down on, on the— even on the side of the foot, you're going to try and get on the edge of the boot. This part right here is where you're going to try and balance. So check if this makes sense. You had skis on vertically, you're not trying to balance on the edge, you're trying to balance a little bit up past the edge. Does that make sense? Because you're resting on that part of the boot in line with my pole, and the edge is here. You see it's just past that, resting there. Now if you prop your poles over, you can feel the cheek to butt cheek and getting on the side of your boot, right? So the two things— the relaxed feeling we got from here Let your muscles go and some activation to try and feel like, feel like my foot is almost like in an ankle sprain position to get there. Right on the side. So do it on the other leg. Start with your A-frame. Start with an A-frame. First thing, notice like, ah, kind of right here I get this really nice glute stretch on your inside leg.
Huh, this is a good feeling. Feel like I can move down. I look down, I've got a bit of an A-frame. Notice where the pressure is on your inside foot.
It's kind of flat, it's pushing down to the, to the snow.
You're pushing through the sole of the boot. Now you're going to do is just try and put the weight through the logo. Put the weight through the logo.
And you're going to go and relax further, so lean on your poles even more. So like, yeah, that's it. And let the weight sink down and almost press that logo further down. People, does that feel like a— maybe a new sensation to some people?