How to create a better athletic ski stance

Being able to maintain an athletic ski stance is fundamental to your progression at getting better at all aspects of your skiing— moguls, carving, short turns, skiing the entire mountain. So I'm going to do another video on ski stance because I still see it as one of the areas that I keep having to cover in private lessons with people, or on how to, how to keep it and what to be aware of. And in my mind, in this video, I want to get across 2 things. For this athletic position that you see in all sports— tennis, football, soccer, surfing— 2 things. One, upper body management. And with that, did you know that 65% of your body weight is in your pelvis and up? So your upper body, including your pelvis, constitutes just about 2/3 of your body weight. So what does that mean? Well, nearly, you know, 2/3 of your body weight is pressuring and moving and dictating how your legs and feet respond. So you need to be aware of how to manage that area in order to keep weight being directed into your feet and into those skis. So that's one part. The other part has to do with edging, because unless you're pure carving all the time, that's just not possible. You go to any mountain, you're going to need to ski steeper slopes, off-piste, you're going to have to steer a ski. As soon as a ski is steering, there is skidding going on. So that means the, the full length of the ski is not grabbing completely, like the tail is displacing somewhat. To help show an example, in these short turns, the whole ski is not gripping completely from tip to tail in the whole turn. The start of the turns I allow drift so I can steer the ski more sharply. In comparison, in these bumps at Lake Louise, I'm sliding the ski even more. My point here is you need to be able to maintain a good stance as the ski displaces and slides around the place. Why is that important? Well, if you're managing this upper body weight, And say just standing, we're practicing here indoors actually, it's very easy to practice an athletic stance because the ground doesn't move away from you. So when you're on skis and on snow, as soon as there's skidding and steering, your base of support, part of it is actually literally sliding away from you. So that makes it difficult. It's a moving target to wedge that 65%, 2/3 of the body weight against. And so you need to be aware of your edging, like so precisely so you can like catch a platform, catch your skis, create some grip so your body weight can then wedge in against this and then be moved, you know, around obstacles where you want to go on the snow. So the edging part is possibly the new part that is going to be talked about in terms of maintaining this athletic ski position. So let's get into an indoor exercise, get A pair of ski boots, get your skis, maybe get an old towel to put down with your skis on top of so you don't ruin your carpet or your floor. But it's really good to just test this out and feel it. As you'll see, the ski boots change how you practice an athletic stance as opposed to not wearing ski boots, because this part can block you. So you just need to be aware of— and I'll point out a few things to do with the cuff and this 65% of your body weight. And then we'll talk about the edging part and also some exercises that you could do to sort of heighten the awareness of when that ski is gripping and you doing that in order to maintain an athletic position, because again, the main problem I see is people lose this position and they don't know the components that are affecting it, distorting it, and breaking it apart.

So if 2/3 roughly of our body weight is sitting in the pelvis and above, It kind of means that the pelvis has a lot of power over the legs, it can really influence things, the weight of our body up here can really load the different joints, knees, hips, ankles on both legs. The first thing you want to do with your skiing is be aware of using this part to influence your stance. And I'm going to give an analogy to mountain bike riding. When you set up your suspension on your mountain bike, like when the pros do it really well, they will put the travel, so the suspension fork, they will set it so when you're sitting on it, when your body weight is on it, you're roughly a third of the way through the entire length of travel of the fork. So for me, if I'm like a fork, a suspension fork on a mountain bike, and I'm this tall, I'm going to sink down about a third of the full kind of range I've got. So that's my home position, and in that position I've got access to the travel extending. So a mountain bike goes over, you know, a dip, because it's already preloaded like a third, the suspension, as it loses pressure, the tire will go down to the dip and keep gripping. If it was not already a third of the way down, then you'd get no, the legs wouldn't be able to drop down. So finding this third of the way through your full range, that's kind of your home position you're always coming back to. So in the transition, you never really want to get higher than this. Most of the turns, as soon as you lose like some kind of stability, Come back to a third of the way through. Now that third of the way through travel, again, like when someone gets on their mountain bike, comes from the person sitting on it, okay? So you've got to take most of your weight sitting in your pelvis and sit it on your legs. So now you can feel that this weight kind of puts the travel, the suspension, a third of the way in and loads up. A little bit the legs, and the calf and the feet. Now this third of the way through should also put you smack on the front of your boots, but not overly there, and what I mean by not overly there is, as you keep pushing beyond that third of the way through, you'll feel you start to change the pressure under your foot a lot. Your foot starts to move around, the ankle shifts back, the heel lifts, You'll also find you get disrupted, your knees and hips take over more of the bending, whereas the third of the way through, especially if your boots are set up right, you should be able to get there without changing too much else. The only other final point I want to make about sitting our weight into our pelvis and into our legs is about the boot cuff. So I'm trying to feel for this a lot of the time to know I'm in that really good range of travel, and then second, if I keep pushing through that, see, because the cuff provides pressure, I start changing my main pivot points in the travel to being knees and hips, so I'm going to have to fold up this way a lot more, so the stance feels different. So the first third of travel feels very different to the second and third third of travel. Okay, so you have to be aware that once that shin pressure is blocked, you don't want to keep pushing past it, you, you want to not force that, you want to just keep directing the weight continually back into the feet again, back into the base of support.

Learning to fine-tune your stance as you move through a large range of motion is something very worthwhile doing, I highly recommend it. Here I am practicing a retraction extension drill, and this is great for working on trying to stay centered as you're low and centered as you are tall. There's a whole video I made around this, so search that one out too.

So I mentioned that one of the main problems with people's stance comes down to edging. So when I'm practicing my stance here. As far as I know, like, the earth doesn't move when I move up and down. Feel the earth ain't moving under my feet. It's blocking me, so here's the wedging, the feeling of the travel, really easy because the earth's not moving. But when I'm on edge and when I'm steering a ski like this, that's kind of like the earth moving away from me when I Like sink down, and so I don't get as much of a sense of steadiness. So the next step is to test feeling this athletic position, the power of the pelvis and the weight going in and pushing the legs into a third of the travel when on edge. So you tip it over, and here's a really good way to notice, do you still maintain that same feeling of shin contact? So that feeling that your pelvis is pushing down enough to feel the flex and like a little bit of resistance against the cuff, but not so much so that you like lose your heel, and not avoiding it so that you sit back. Okay, it's a really good place, it's very different when you're here, it's like, oh, super easy to feel the shin pressure. Give myself a bit of edge angle, Straight away I already feel like it's a lot lighter, it's not, not as much there, so it's a really good place now when you're simulating edging to try and get that wedging of the upper body through the pelvis into that outside ski. So feel for that spot and play with also if you were to go further down as you did it, see now I'm working a lot harder with my legs, And so the, the wedging is now kind of like forcing this joint to bend instead of just being in that third of the way through the travel point. Okay, so work on your stance with some edging involved and play around with wherever you've got to put your upper body and your pelvis, so upper body directing weight through the pelvis to feel the same kind of good position as you do Here, and what I feel, and that's why you'll see a lot of good skiers, is I really have to have this rib cage, this chest projected forward, because that pulls the pelvis into position. Now I've got my ankle engaged in the boot, I've got my foot pressure really even over the ball and the heel, I feel wedged into my stance really nicely. So I've got some slippery plastic-coated posters down on the ground to help me sense and demonstrate a little bit more the slipperiness of when we've got our skis on our edges, because the carpet here, it's got a lot of friction, like I can really press against it and there's no sense that it's going to slip away. That's not like snow, you get anyone to kind of demonstrate A lot of the time they'll, like on snow, they'll be slipping, right, and finding it more difficult to find that position. So I'm going to stand on some slippery posters to just get a little bit more of a sensation of— see, now the skis slide a lot more away. This one, can't barely move it. This one, very slippery. If my ski is slipping away from me, I need to Like chase that foot, I need to move with it because the earth is literally, to my feelings, is moving away, I've got to go with it. Most people are not aware, as soon as they're steering, so if I'm steering here, they kind of add to it and push and stretch away, okay, so their stance will look like this, as opposed to, as the steering is happening, I want to keep looking For that wedge position, okay, I'm still looking for my body to keep wedging in because I'm going to try and find there, applying pressure down so it stops slipping. As soon as I take that away, see, it starts— I start getting pulled apart. Oh, pull it back in. So you could find something else slippery, I mean, best of all you're going to be on snow, just be aware of when you're steering To follow, follow with your stance and try and find that wedging position. And guess what? You will find your body starts creating these same positions of angulation, like the athletic position shows up because why? It's there to help these things stop sliding away from you. So finally, there's always going to be a need to to steer a ski. A steering ski is a skidding ski, so whether the whole ski is displacing or whether more the tail, you're going to need to follow with your athletic position, follow with this 2/3 of the body weight to keep finding that athletic position wherever it slips to. If you are not managing this and the ski is just Start pushing, see the athletic position is gone, you start to stretch out, and in that position here I don't have access to my joints at all to do anything to save me. Any bumps are going to throw me, any funny snow, I'm going to lose control, whereas if I can get back to here again and make it grip, I'm going to be good. So here's a front-on view, managing my athletic stance, maintaining my athletic stance, As my ski goes into a steering position, okay, or as my base of support is sliding on me. So if it was going this way, I'm chasing it, so at every increment of the way here, I'm trying to find that athletic position where I feel the shin, but the whole foot, which corresponds with me being able to stop the slip. We've got the steering skid because we want to change where our ski is pointed, so when we do grip it, we go that way, okay, but as we're going through the slipping steering moment, like this, this, this, we need to be prepared and ready to engage that athletic stance, find the grip and go with it. So the edging part, huge, huge, huge, huge. in like wedging where the majority of your body weight is against the ground, because in skiing these things, you know, we need to be able to slide them and steer them, and snow is very easy to do that on. How do we maintain this position as we're doing it? Well, you've got to be aware of it, and then you've got to practice doing it, because I think you'll find a lot of people are just doing this. And that straight away puts my hip and my knee in a kind of a locked position, I don't feel like I am wedged in the athletic position.

So in summary, I've tried to introduce you to the concept of wedging your upper body and your athletic stance into the edges of your skis, but it is important to realize you're not always getting that grip with the outside ski, you're going to need to drift and slide those skis to be able to steer a lot of turns, especially when you're in bumpier terrain, making shorter turns, or trying to drift the top of your carved turns. So in this instance, you need to practice that athletic stance, staying in that 1/3 mountain bike analogy position, so you are ready to chase the base, you're ready to Wedge that ski edge into the ground and give you grip. As a next step, I suggest you go and practice this concept in some of the drills I have on the Big Picture Skiing video library. Big Picture Skiing gives you a systematic way to work on your skiing. You can follow tutorials on all the different skills, ideas, and subtle techniques you need to work on to become a really well-rounded skier and get out of that rut of feeling like you're just skiing the same Year after year. Thanks for watching and see you on the next video.