Inside Leg Mechanics In Skiing - Tom Gellie and Demelza Clay

Hey skiers, you're about to listen to an interesting conversation between my good friend Demelza Clay and myself about the inside leg mechanics in a ski turn, something that's not really talked about too much.

So we wanted to bring some ideas that have really helped us over the years.

You'll hear a really cool story post-rehab of an ACL injury.

You'll find out more about that and how that actually helped her relearn movements she'd already almost had on lockdown but then surpassed them, and she's skiing the best she's ever done in skier in her entire life and loving it.

So we want to share this information with you. And so if you're a new listener, please consider subscribing to the channel if you find the information really helpful. If you're a follower already, thank you so much, you're a legend. We really appreciate your help.

All right, I'm not going to give any more away. Let's get stuck into this episode with Demelza Klein and myself talking about inside leg mechanics in skiing. So on today's episode, Demelza, I really want to share with the viewers and listeners a bit more about the importance of the inside leg, and specifically for sort of carve turns where there's greater edge angles. Now, the cool thing is you've got a bit of a story of how you sort of almost went through learning this importance of the inside leg, how it bends, through a bit of a setback.

Uh, without belaboring it too much, I blew my knee. I was not skiing. It was in August during the pandemic, and I hit the ground. I was, I was dirt biking. My Darren, who, um, my now partner, came running over and he, he looked at me and I was like bundled around my knee counting on my fingers going September, October, November, December, because I knew I had wrecked my knee. Um, and I also knew that in theory I could probably get back on snow in 4 months. And I don't know where I learned that from. I have a background in sports science. Um, but I'm definitely not an expert. I have a great professional support network that I leaned on and did manage to get back on snow in about 4 months. But essentially what happened was that for me, getting back on snow was more just like a mental health thing. I wasn't skiing to, uh, I guess like my regular level. It was just about being able to spend the whole season on snow, enjoying it, cruising the blues, and just participating. Like, so it was the pandemic, I got the surgery done, I, um, essentially followed the Melbourne ACL protocol. It's a return to sport criteria-based protocol, so strength-based criteria, pardon me, versus, um, some of the old-fashioned models is like wait for 6 months, do some squats, and then come back to skiing. This was very scientific, all the scientifically backed tests on, you know, hop tests, squatting 1 point— I think I did 1.6 times my body weight on my single leg as well. So yada yada yada, did all of the stuff and managed to hit these, these tests and pass these tests by, um, the 4th month. One of the things that was in that approach that my physio and I agreed upon was that I was going to ski in a knee brace for that first year because essentially, I mean, my, my surgeon had told me I couldn't ski for 2 years, which I think you get to take advice in the rehab ACL recovery landscape as you see fit. There's a lot of differing opinions, but, uh, so I decided to ski with that, with that knee brace because the graft is is very weak for the first sort of 6 months. It's very weak for the first 3 or 4 months, and then after that starts getting stronger and stronger. And I thought, well, if I do happen to get hit by someone on the snow, then at least I've got the knee brace in place to potentially protect that knee. However, the other thing that I, that I sort of decided was that I was going to ski in a way where I didn't feel like I was moving my knee into what we call a valgus. So my physios were always saying, make sure you're not going to let the knee roll into the middle and do any valgus-type movements because that could put stress on, on the new graft.

So for the people listening, I'll just get like— it's almost like the knee, inverted commas, collapsing inwards. You were advised, and with great, you know, reason, to keep the knee in a pretty specific spot, tracking straight, straight ahead over the second toe, no deviation. And if any, like, the worst deviation is inwards, potentially.

Yeah, that's the direction that I had blown it. I'd also done my MCL, um, little nick on the meniscus, the whole, uh, a few things in there. So I was really focused on just allowing the knee to hinge. And over the course of the season, um, you know, by the end of the season, the knee was— I was pretty strong. The graft was getting a lot stronger, and I was starting to increase my performance a bit. And just on groomers and skinny bumps until the second season. Um, but I started to notice with my pure carved long turns, I was getting whipped, was the way I explained it. I was just— as soon as I got to my lowest, my highest edge angles and lowest inclination position, I was feeling as though I was going to get whipped up the hill. And when I looked at my— the pictures of videos of me skiing, I was sort of doing a lot of analysis, as you do, um, and I'm like, what am I doing? It just— it looked all wrong.

But yeah, and I'm going to jump in here because people might not know you, Demelza. For context, Demelza was on the Australian demonstration team with me when we went to Austria in 2011. So very high-level instructor. She taught level 4 courses, examined them, was a, a, like, technical trainer for ski schools. So you are obsessed with analysis, you know what you're looking for, and you see your own skiing and it's, you know, it's looking not the way you would like it to and what it looked like before the injury. So anyway, and I think this is a really important thing because maybe some people out there in a, in a long turn through the end, when the forces really build, they get this whipping, almost like you're going to maybe highside yourself and there's too much pressure coming on. So I'll let you pass it back to you. So this, this problem's occurring.

Yeah. And I was— yeah, um, I was literally like looking at the video just going, oh my God, what am I— what is going on here? Do you want to give us some—

what, what could you see? What, what were some visual clues that you really—

so my stance had separated really far apart.

So wide feet, wider than my hips.

I'm a pretty narrow person, um, and I looked really boxy from like the knees down, and my hips were not stable. So for me, that's odd because I've always been like— my skiing has, has been characteristic, like I've always had pretty good hip stability, and I felt like I had some kind of counter issue um, because I could see the outside hip coming up. And I give you permission to, to play if you want some of those videos that I sent you.

I'll try and, I'll maybe, yeah, try and put something up here so people can put an image to it if they're watching it.

Yeah, if you watch this on YouTube, but there's a shot that you have of me from Japan years ago, completely different stacking compared to what was going on, um, during especially the end phase of this whole knee brace. Situation. So you and I literally bumped into each other in Silver Star, I think, in that— that— yeah, I still had the knee brace on first year, started coaching a bit together on the Academy. And then you were due to come over in the end of February, beginning of March. I think it was like the last— yep. So I had pretty much ditched the knee brace, but I'd managed to keep the new mechanics that I had developed over that time, which was, um, a little frustrating. I was also skiing in— I wasn't skiing in, in my performance race boots. So you had been helping me a little bit, just sending videos through. Like, I think you were sort of looking at it yourself and trying, probably waiting until you got on snow with me as well. But what was really interesting for me is once I put the race boots back on, um, a lot of the, the, the unevenness in the hips started to really straighten out because my Freeride boots weren't properly fitted, really. But, um, that's another story. And then, then, and, and my performance and stacking, everything got a lot better. But then you started working with me on the whole inside knee thing, and you said to me you, you're moving your inside knee too much into the turn, like you're rolling too much with your inside knee. Um, and I don't, I don't remember exactly if you remember the exercise we did on the groomer, the cat track. You were just trying to get me to move my hips in and over and past my, my knee and ankle.

Yeah. So let's pause there right now because I'll try and do bit of an explanation from what I was seeing, and then you can keep going on what you felt as we, as we explored that. So I was sort of seeing the same thing. You're coming around through the turn, and when the forces build the most and you need that higher edge angle to hold against the forces and get deflected, you weren't in this great position like you were on the opposite leg. And I should say that that's the side that you're getting whipped more on was when your sore knee, your right knee, that the rehabbed knee was on the— was the inside leg. Yes, inside leg.

Yeah.

And, um, and so I said, I think you're taking too much of the stuff from the physio and your exercise practice into the ski technique, which is making you roll your inside knee further than your hips inside the turn. It's like your inside knee is leading more than your inside hip.

Yeah.

And if we look at any, uh, good— like, you look at a World Cup ski racer snapshot, bam, going around a gate, if their hip is on the snow, their hip is lower and further to the inside of the turn than the knee. So that mechanic needs to happen. And I was like, okay, let's try an exercise on a cat track, wide, easy, and see if you can, in like an in-rigger— yeah, like a wide stance— can you get your butt cheek to move further than your knee?

And so this is the cheeky butt cheek.

This is the cheek. So then talk about the cheeky butt cheek, what you learned as you tried to do this and change that movement pattern.

We named each of the phases, right? So that was the cheeky butt cheek. And I think even before you'd come over to Canada, you showed me, um, just because it's so easy to see a race skier over in New Zealand, and you paused it and showed how the, the bottom of the flesh of the butt cheek can be seen, um, in a, in a good long turn. My turns were— you could see my knee, you could see my inside knee. And so now this was really challenging for me because I had this whole year plus of protecting my knee and protecting this sort of weakness that was gaining strength very slowly. So it's just for anyone who doesn't know, usually, um, it takes 2 years for a graft to reach maturity. So I had the allograft, which means I had a donor tissue, and it's about the same, I think, if you have— maybe a little less if you have your own tissue taken. So I had in my mind that I had to really babysit this thing because you only do it once, and if you, you know, it doesn't take much to mess it up. So Tom was essentially through this drill. When I looked down and, you know, through your peripheral, low peripheral vision, it looked like my knee was really crooked.

It looked like you're doing the thing that all your, your like friends was and physio experts were saying don't do, and I should say here, we're not saying like— no, I wasn't trying to go against all that.

Not at all. No, no.

If you've just had a knee reconstruction, you know, you want to make sure, like Demelz was doing, everything was strong and, and ready for this.

But I had taken it too far. My, my personality, you know, I get quite like, yeah, if, if doing something good like this much is good, then doing it this much must be even better. But it wasn't like that. I was putting in too much effort. Um, so anyway, so I said to Tom, and I said, is it like you want me to ski with a crooked inside leg? And he went, yes, you want it. Because from the bird's eye view, looking down at, you know, where you can see your femur and your tibia, it looks like it's crooked.

Yeah.

And so after I was—

a big epiphany moment, wasn't it? And I think that's it. Yeah. And so maybe just everyone just stop here, and if you pretend to get in a ski position Even sitting here and you look down like Demelza's trying to describe, that's what she saw. And, and then, you know, try to put the feelings in the seeing and, and checking, is that— that seems really wrong, Tom. Is that more in the direction you're saying?

Yes, but, but once I, uh, ski around a little bit, uh, just trying to move my— like nudge my hip into the turn more than the knee, essentially. The other thing I'm going to add is that I was very stiff from basically my lats, my shoulders, all the way down past my knee, almost to my ankle, from all of the muscular work I'd done to build that strength back.

Protecting it, you know.

Yeah, I couldn't move very well into that right side. I couldn't all of a sudden angulate very well. And also because the way I'd been skiing with an over-accentuated lower leg movement going on. So, but once I kind of started to tone that down and started to move my body in these new dimensions, it didn't feel incorrect at all. And, you know, depending on how much you roll your foot inside your ski boot and things like that, the knee has— it is not a hinge. And this is something that Tom has probably explained in a lot of videos on BPS. The knee is not a true hinge, but what I had decided to do to protect the knee during that time had essentially like— I'd regressed my skiing, especially in those pure carve long turns. So I guess the great part about that is that I got to have some firsthand insight into what my clients might be feeling who are in similar situations, some of the experiences and the feelings that they have when they're struggling with similar things like this. Very, very quickly after Tom arrived, I'd gotten my old boots back on, my race boots. We'd started working on trying to get the cheeky butt cheek to make an appearance through— and Tom will have a picture up here for anyone who's watching. And then really, really quickly after that, it was probably— I think I've got a video from like maybe the first or second week of February when you were— yeah, we were down the bottom of Bondi or something, and everything just sort of fell back into place, and it was awesome. And but I'd never had that awareness over that, the crooked mechanics of, of the inside leg.

Yeah, even though if you go back in time, you can see you're inside leg was moving in the way, you're now almost relearning again. Because, you know, you're a good skier, you grew up skiing, a lot of that stuff kind of happens, and it happens to all of us. You forget things because you don't need to hang on to that knowledge really unless you are a coach. You just go, just get my hip down to that point, and then after that you don't even think about that. You just go, I'm just going to turn right and left. So this is a really cool, cool experience for you to go through again relearning it and feeling it. And I'm going to point, uh, just say a couple of things because I want to get in trouble for this knee not a hinge thing. The knee mostly for sure is a hinge, but I think some people, uh, don't realize like that there's rotation available in the knee as well. And you can look it up any anatomy textbook, you know, there's up to even 40 degrees of, of, uh, rotation where the femur goes outwards and less when it goes inwards. But there's, there's some rotational ability in the knee And so it's not only just a true hinge, but for sure it's safer in that, in that straight hinging point. But so I have a femur here. I think it's worthwhile just saying the— because, because you point out the crooked leg and this visual thing has to do with the Q angle. And so the Q angle is the angle from the knee joint up to the hip joint. So here, that angle, and on ladies it's, it's greater, so it might be even more like this, men it's less. That angle, now if the leg is straight, do my best here, when you bend the leg and it's, uh, over here, you can see it looks crooked. The knee is still hinging straight, but because the more it bends, the Q angle from this point gives that cheeky bum cheek look inside the turn, and it's just respecting the Q angle.

That's, yeah.

What is— what was kind of going on. And like you said, you're taking the knee roll too far, so you'd almost kind of like— yeah, taken away almost that Q angle look to the inside leg.

Definitely. And, and then over the, the next season or so, I started thinking about all the other places where there are lesser increments of this that apply. So, you know, let's not dive into sort of low performance terms, but I now teach a traverse differently because of this experience. Like, I don't teach setting your edges and doing this really pronounced ankle knee roll to do like a ski instructor demonstration style traverse. I actually think more about just I mean, I can, I can demonstrate it standing in this room here, um, but I think more about trying to basically— I don't know if you'd be able to hear me here. Here we go.

Yep.

Rather than moving into a turn like this— yes, is what I was doing way too much— I started to now really focus less on moving this inside knee out of the way. This is my outside ski. I started instead trying to allow my hip to nudge inside the turn, past this leg here, past this knee point. And then what I mean by the crooked leg, when you can see my eyes, if I look down at my inside leg here, it looks crooked, but the tibias aren't, uh, no, the tibias are pretty much parallel there because, and I think like right there, maybe I'll put a screenshot up, but like you could see Demelza's Q angle in, in the jeans she's wearing, really obvious.

So there's not— from your hip joints down to your ankle joints is not a straight line. It has this quadriceps angle. So you can actually still have parallel shins, but if you go up and you look at a skier at the thigh level, there's this V-shape. And so yeah, this respect of the Q angle should be going on when you're skiing. So you're saying now you're doesn't matter if they're intermediate level or expert, you're making sure they understand this. I don't know, I remember on the camp— on the camp we did, you, you had people, uh, leaning against trees trying to do their own self-discovery of this, uh, feeling like of this inside hip and that's like the stretching sensation. Because I would agree, when I started figuring this out, if I'd had a break from skiing, I'd come out and I'd just go hard the end of the day, my glute on my inside leg, because it was working so hard, stretching a lot more than normal, like it was—

it had worked.

Yeah, firing for sure.

Yeah, that's when I got stuck into all the crab, the crab walks, because I could— I was— I had my training wheels on, wide stance, and I could, um, again, this might be another video you could lay over the top here, but I could stabilize my inside knee— would my inside ski would be flat, but then I would move my hips inside the turn past that flat ski, and it was just this beautiful stretching sensation that I couldn't achieve doing a regular turn.

Yeah. Um, and did it feel— it must have felt, because you'd gone so far with the knee roll as well as the crooked leg feeling, you probably felt like you were A-framing.

At the start I did, yeah.

Yeah, because—

and I wasn't as worried about it, to be honest, because I had sort of separated myself from a little bit of that, um, I don't know if it's like an older narrative in skiing now, but I feel like it was more common. Um, and look, it is still definitely— it's a conversation a lot of people are having. We get lots of skiers and trainers are being told to keep their shins parallel. The legs and the shins have to be parallel in order for—

and I think that's it. It's like the legs and the shins. Like, shins for sure is a great place to think about the parallelness, but because we have this, the Q angle, the Q angle, it's not really what you would feel. Yeah, interrupted. Keep going. No, no, there's that narrative there.

But yeah, and, and I just started thinking about all the people who— I do tend to get a little bit stuck as a coach on coaching hip stability and trying to keep those hips nice and calm and stable, but I just think it has a really great payoff for skiers. But I see a lot of rotating, and when I was looking at all of this stuff through fresh eyes after going through the whole thing myself, I'm like, oh my God, it's not their hip stability, it's just they're moving their inside knee way too much.

Talk about the person at Sun Peaks. Remember you did a clinic with the Sun Peaks instructors? What—

there was someone there like, yeah, this young bloke was, um, uh, he was doing his Level 4, I think, and he was one of those really athletic kind of guys. He was shorter in, in, in height, but he had really, really strong, um, lower leg movements going on. I would even say like You know how sometimes race skiers and race coaches can get like a lot of that really sort of wide stance? And so we went through the whole system and I could tell by the look on his face at the start, he was like, yeah, no, this is not happening. There's no way because I've just got to keep it all so— keep it all nice and straight.

And this is not in the book. This is not in the book. So I can't— yeah, I'm trying to get my level 4 here.

Yeah, yeah. But anyway, so we did a few runs and in the end I sort of invited them just to try an A-frame and try. And we were obviously trying to— I was trying to coach them to get their hip down on the snow and to touch down or at least just get a little bit lower. And I could tell he was really motivated to do it. He was sort of— he was almost like one of my people because he was trying so hard. And then— but he was getting whipped as well. He was getting like shockwaves. It looked like he was being electrocuted at the end of a turn because he just put so much energy in and he was stacked badly. But finally he, he relaxed that inside leg, let it go crooked, even though to me looking at him ski down the hill, it wasn't crooked at all. Uh, he got down the hill to the bottom. I was videoing and his eyes were like wide open in his, in his goggles. He was like, oh my God, that was awesome. And yeah, and another, another interesting one, actually, I had this— he was an instructor as well. He was doing one of our camps, Tom, and he was a massive yogi. He was hugely flexible. And he, he told me he's from an East Indian family and yogi practicing yoga was a family thing for him. And I said, I think you're a bit stiff in your hips on one side because he just had one turn that looked completely different to the other. And it was more in this eccentric loading on the inside hip and some of the stuff that I guess we'll expand on later. And he was not going to have a bar, but he's like, I can put both of my feet over the back of my head. I'd love to see that. But so we took it all the way back to traversing, and I got him to practice this new sense of stacking in the traverse and he couldn't do it on the one side. He just kept on wanting to keep like, kept on wanting to move that inside knee out of the way in order to engage the edge. But on the other side he could. Anyway, we worked through it. He got there in the end, but he just, he's just like, this is the opposite to what everyone has been telling me. You know, we all get told, look, I've been told, I have coached people to move more.

Same.

Inside knee.

Yeah, there's a couple of prolific people that talk a lot about it, and after you've finished, I want to explain a little bit more about this phase-specific time stuff.

But yeah, well, actually, I, I mean, I have a theory about how it's evolved. Yeah, I'd like to hear yours first. Like, what did you—

okay, well, you feel like this is all sort of come about? I went through a similar kind of journey, uh, with the inside leg. Learning about it. And a friend from outside of skiing, a mentor, he sort of enlightened me on it and really sort of made me be aware of this Q angle thing, which is staring you in the face. You look at the anatomy of the body, it's staring in the face. You just have to take it.

And it's in the books as well. It's in the, the ski books that we don't really sort of do a lot about that, you know, this little model here.

And, and you go, ah, okay, that's why you're seeing this, this position when you watch a good skier show up. But I was just trying to make sure I had a good reason behind it because I didn't want to just say just do it because it is. I wanted to, to be solid in my, in my reasoning and back it up with, with good evidence. So I was going through my own journey of figuring that out, and I'd kind of almost like thrown like, don't roll the knee at all. Away. Um, until, uh, a year and a half ago, I started going, there's got to be a place for that. And I watched a friend, Nick, Nick Jones, who's on the Australian demo team, make these short turns in Switzerland one night. We're at his house and he had this awesome, like, whip across through the end of the turn, this whip, right?

Great skier.

And yeah, great skier. And, and he was using this knee roll a lot through the end of the turn, but it was just after that moment where you needed the kind of the really strong stacked hip alignment. So I was like, ah, this knee roll thing that we practice and we think is for the whole entire turn can actually have a home that's a little more effective and, and, and helps better. Because when you roll those knees more than the hips, so you make that active roll and you really overdo it like we see a lot of ski racers practicing doing on, on mellow terrain, it helps the skis come back under you.

Yep.

Now, at the point when there's a lot of power coming at you and there's a lot of speed and force, if you roll the knees, those skis want to come back under you like a, like a Ferrari. And if you're not ready, you get whipped. And if you just wait, allow the hip to be in the strong position, the cheeky bum cheek to appear, the respect of the Q angle, you can drop down and you can stand against that outside leg as strong as, you know, you can be, up to many, many G's. Then afterwards the knee rolling comes in, the skis cleanly come back under you. But it's just after this peak force moment, I really think— and think about it. So I made a video one that season about it saying like, don't throw the, the knee rolling out. Practice it, it's a great thing, do it, but it has a point, a phase where you need it. And then just before that, you actually need this other pistol squat kind of movement. So I made a video about the pistol squat in it. And, and actually, quick digression there, I remember a story in, in Austria with a friend, Joey. Joey Bycroft, great skier. He'd got his Startlizenz, that's the highest level Austrian certificate. So he'd passed all that, the Austrians had said he could ski. And, and we were, we were at a Sölden World Cup, just free skiing together. And I said, hey, like, I want to show you this thing about like putting your hip on the snow, because he couldn't consistently do that. And he was on a GS ski, 1890-meter radius ski, so pretty long— longer ski. I said, just before we go down this steep pitch, just do a pistol squat. Take one ski off, leave the other one in the ski, do a pistol squat. And Joey's strong dude, he could do it. Do it on the other side. Great, did a pistol squat. I said, right, just go make your turns now, and every— in the middle of every single turn inside leg is just going to do the same movement you just did for a pistol squat, that same following up. Don't overthink it. You went down, bam, pistol squat, hip to the snow, this awesome, awesome GS turns left, right. And anyway, we spent the rest of the day— yeah, loving it, loving it. So that inside leg, that's a little bit about my story, but also trying to piece in the knee roll part and not say it's, it's not there at all. It just has It's like, I think, specific. Yeah, like, you and I, we're trying to figure out, like, all these things happen, but the timing, so important, and the reason for it, so important to understand. Hey, just a really quick word from me. If you've enjoyed this episode of the Big Picture Skiing Podcast or any of the other episodes I've put out, could I ask a small favor of you, please? Could you please subscribe or follow on whatever channel you're listening on, whether it's YouTube, Spotify, or Apple? That really helps support the show and helps me bring on great new guests so I can share that information with you. All right, thanks very much for helping me out. Let's get back to the show.

Well, what I feel now is that, yeah, really any movement inside the turn, let's just say through the top third of the turn, any movement beyond that that is required to like stand a little bit on the edges of your feet will displace your hip. But once you have your hip locked and inside the turn—

say that in another way. Okay, so just the same thing, like what you just said, that— say that if you can describe it visually for the listener.

So yeah, I, at the— through the first third of the turn, I try to nudge my hip into the turn more than my inside knee. So I'm not really focusing on rolling my inside knee at all. And I've got, um, a story of my own about—

which is really counter to most of the advice, which is always start with the ankle and knee roll. Whereas I'll say it in what I hear, uh, as well as the hip, I would always say the feeling is you make sure your weight is just nicely always aligned a little bit to the inside, but— and then you start playing with Mm-hmm. The joints below the hip.

Exactly. Because once you're locked in there, I have a video at the bottom of the Face in Silver Star, and I was doing Pure Carve long turns. There must have been some people that were in my way behind the video person, and I made all these ankle rolling movements. Hips stayed locked very close to the ground, but I was fine-tuning the arc of the turn through using those lower leg movements in that end of the end of turn phase, let's just call it, without getting into sort of definitions.

Yeah.

So, and, and any amount of ankle knee rolling in when you're in that position already down low, it can't have any effect on your hips at all because you've already moved the whole way in. When you move too much from the lower leg, call it ankle knee, at the top of the turn, it very quickly throws your hips out. So I think about this now when doing traverses. I think about it when I'm doing basic short turns, even super low-level turns.

Yeah, yeah, I'd agree. Because I think if you go to like a physics standpoint, what must happen in order for you to make a turn, the weight must be inside, inside of where your base of support is. Like, it just has to. That's, that's a thing there. And if you are too active with everything underneath the ankle and knee too much, you almost go against that when that is more for helping you get out of— get out of a turn and into the new one. I think it's a really, uh, it's a really interesting topic, and I think there's some nuance in it too as well. Like, because people are probably going, but I've been told I like dump my hip in. Like, what do we say to those people, you know? Because a lot of people like falling in too much, leaning in hip dumping. How do we— how do we—

well, that's the other end of the scale, I would say. And you probably, in that position, you probably have very little ankle, ankle-knee movement. Um, or really, I feel like with, with most hip dumpers that I've been analyzing with my new eyes, is that they're just moving the hip too fast in relation to the ankle-knee.

Yes.

I mean, in reality, all these—

it's like, don't not do it. Don't— yeah, don't not move the hip. It's just change the speed and be aware of the skis and the hip together.

And it's also context relevant as well. I mean, when you're teaching or, um, doing some— let's just call them rollerblade turns, they call them over here, or edge rolls— it's an exercise, it's a ski exercise, and it helps you, um, get a feeling for lower leg articulation, rolling.

Yeah, that fine-tuning, right?

Yeah. And you, you do do it more than you need to in a pure calf long term. But I think sometimes, um, you know, I definitely do it. We as humans have the, the habit of sort of taking a concept and, um, applying it to the most absolute, like, to the nth degree, pasting it all the way up. Yeah, good, good word. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, I feel like this narrative with lower leg rolling has evolved over time. Like, I remember when straight skis were being ditched and all of a sudden shaped skis were the thing, and I was doing my first year as a ski instructor, and my brother, Alastair Clay, just said to me, look, it's pretty much the same as straight skis, you just got to roll your ankle knee more. And I was like, right, okay, great. And, you know, we'd spent a lot of time skiing as as young kids. So, you know, the adjustment wasn't terribly difficult for us. It was so fun. But it was really relevant advice then. Yeah, you definitely had to move your ankle and knee more to access the carving feelings that all of a sudden this new equipment from one year to the next was allowing us to have. But I just feel like having been a coach for all these years as well and listening to how and where this advice has been dished out, even by myself to myself, um, it's gotten out of hand.

Yeah, I just had this image of like, uh, back to your like past, like the skiing history sort of thing, straighter skis, of some of the greats Alberto Tomba.

Yeah.

And, uh, and that's the thing, and they all show up a lot more of this Q angle position and less parallel shins going on. But the, the most important thing a lot of the time going that fast down a racecourse when the forces are high and you need to deflect across to the other gate is a strong body position. They got their body in the strongest position, and then, and then you bring in shaped skis And now suddenly ankle knee roll, these, these things like turn on their own, which is good. You like, you watch like a Slalom skier coming into the flat section near the end, and it's very ankle knee rolly because there's not a lot of forces from the steep that they're needing to stack against, and they want their feet to whip fast across. Oh, absolutely. Situations. And I think that's a really cool point you brought up. It's like there was a point where that was kind of the new thing to do. So the new technology brought out this new emphasis in technique.

Yeah. And it was really one of the main emphasis in technique for many years. I used to work down in Telluride, and they had a thing called the Telluride Teaching System, which they would have these super short skis that they put learners on. And one of the main steps in the Telluride Teaching System was to roll the ankle, knee, feel the little toe. It was a direct-to-parallel system as well. They tried not to use the snowplow too much. Um, and all of these coaching evolutions are awesome, but I think now what I feel like I'm seeing when I watch, uh, let's just say average level skiers in a ski resort, um, and especially skiers who I think have had some lessons, and you can tell which ones have been told to roll the ankle knees a lot. Their hips are a mess. You know, they can't separate. They've got no upper and lower body separation. Happens through great hip mechanics. So yeah, maybe what— that's what this conversation is about a little bit. It's just maybe beginning a conversation where we can talk about like pulling that advice back a little bit, applying it to the, you know, the phase of the turn where it applies.

And yeah, and as a skill building, like you said, that it's a drill, it's a great skill. You want skiers to know how to work their ankles, uh, ankles and feet and their knees to see what happens. But, but there are points where it doesn't work due to the demands of, of that turn. And where you're at now, being able to put your hip on the snow as long as it's steep enough, fast enough, and the snow is good, like That's— you're just after that. Because— and I want to speak quickly to this— some people out there like poo-poo that. They're like, oh, all these people focusing on hip to snow, like, well, it's like not what it should be all about. Well, how damn good does it feel? How fun is it?

I thought you were going to say something else, then I was going to be like, well, it's not the end of the world, but it's pretty great. No, it's, it's awesome. I've actually even—

and it's fun.

It's like dancing. It's like, have you— do you remember being a child and you got an adult to grab you by the arms and spin you around in a circle, just the feeling of interacting with the forces of a turn like that. I mean, I don't know if you like driving race cars or mountain bikes or whatever you're into, like your body is transformed into this like racing machine and you get to feel the exhilaration of stacking your body and muscles and bones and joints up against these forces. And, you know, I mean, look, it mightn't be for everyone, and it's not the end of the world, uh, with skiing. It doesn't define skiing, but it is something we have access to now, and it is a lot of fun.

And it is. And probably, like, maybe the point here is, like, it really— that it's not just something to look cool. It, it is, it is very functional. So if we go ski a black run, say, at Silver Star, like um, Normania, which is really steep. You pick up speed very fast, and if you want to pure carve and manage yourself through that turn, if you're not getting your hip really close to the snow quite early and throughout a lot of that turn, the forces are going to make you either straighten out the turn and you go even faster. Yeah, feeling even more out of control. Um, or you're going to get this whip and you're probably going to highside yourself.

Yeah.

And, um, yes, there's a real functional point to it. But, but I think absolutely, yeah, I want to talk— say that like some people I think chase that on the easy greens and, and even easy blue runs trying to do it. And that's— yeah, they're going for the look of it. And I wouldn't discourage that for sure, but like, because, you know, it's safer terrain, safer terrain. And then, but then where the real— it really comes out Yeah, as a functional thing is steep.

I, I, uh, there was that the run that I skied on, uh, in Sun Peaks last year on Broadway. I guess it got sort of shared through, um, a bunch of the Facebook groups and stuff. But what blew me away is the number of people that wanted to attack my skiing because they thought the run was a green run. They're like, that's an easy run, whatever. And it's, it's actually a black run. Look, it's not the steepest black run in the world, but it is a black run.

I mean, pictures in that, that section you got videoed on, like, yeah, yeah, it was a great run.

Yeah. And, uh, one of our clients, um, Kevin, videoed it for me with his— you know, he had a great camera. Anyway, I mean, look, a lot of the guys in this, in these forums thought I was a man. Like, it doesn't really matter what they think, but it is really hard to put your hip on the snow like that on a green run. You'd need to come in like off the top of a black run. Tucking, even an easy blue run, to be able to do it, um, in a way that it doesn't look like you're sort of sitting down and awkwardly getting up again. Anyway, but look, everyone's going to have their opinions, and, and, uh, as long as we have, um, humans on the internet, there's always going to be opinions for and against. Yeah, yeah.

But, um, yeah, so I think, you know, an important point there to bring us back to our topic of the inside leg is like practicing the inside leg. Even you say you want to be aware of this hip relative to the inside knee and how they're moving together, even at lower speeds, more basic turns, because it's going on there. And this phase-specific, like what you need to do with your body at different parts of the turn to make that turn work and have the outcome you want, like that still is there. So You don't have to put your hip right down on the snow, but where all the pieces of the body go relative to each other is still applicable.

Changed my short turns. Um, yeah, just the timing. Yeah, yeah, the timing of those inside leg movements is just adjusted, you know, back probably to what they were before. But, um, yeah, I was just getting so locked out and blocked. You know how you asked me before at the start of this conversation, what did you ski, and I was just so boxy from the knees down, I guess, you know, overflexed, um, and, and rigid. But then once I was skiing with respect to, you know, my, um, skeleton and the Q angle, as you say, I just feel like I actually just— it just felt normal again, felt like the way I used to ski growing up on straight skis. And because I started diving into, I guess, just the little theory I sort of shared about perhaps where this narrative has come from, I looked up just online to see if I could find any old ski instructor synchro stuff, that ski instructors on straight skis. And we found Norm Kreutz, remember Tom? And I think Darren must have been in there on the team as well. And I'm sure there's some APSI stuff, but You know, you alluded to this before, but I encourage anyone who wants to see what we're talking about. All of these old videos will have skiers doing probably mostly short turns, if anything, but even through powder and moguls on these skinny little skis, and the hip positions are solid and the cheeky butt cheek is, is visible on every single turn. And there's not this visible rolling of the lower leg, especially in the top, the top part of the turn. There's definitely articulation, or that they're edging their skis and they're on straight skis, so that movement is, is a little bit different. But what struck me was that, you know, good, good skiing now still looks similar to that. You know, the corridor might be a little wider because we're on 11-meter skis or 15-meter skis versus like 30 meters But when you look at the way, um, the body is stacked and the skeleton's operating, I feel like, you know, um, I want to sort of ski like that again. Yeah. You know, with respect to those older mechanics, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I, and I actually think that is a, maybe a fantastic recommendation for people to try and do if they're really into improving their skiing. Get on a straighter ski, a longer, less sidecut, less radius. Longer radius. Yeah, longer radius. So is what I'm going to say. Ski— you will learn all these fine-tuned skills which are not roll your ankle and knee and the ski just turns for you. You learn— like, there are so many level 4s who would tell people, go and do that and don't come and ask me for advice. Just go and learn to ski on that ski, and that ski will teach you to, to like figure out a lot of the skills. So really good recommendation there. Get a long pair of skis, spend some time on it. It'll really teach you a lot.

I think that's probably like the ultimate task, the ultimate environment that you can create for yourself. I mean, moguls is another one. We've been talking a lot about that, Tom, but like getting on a set of straight skis, that is probably one of the quickest ways that you can learn yourself without the world telling you, your coach, whoever, some external person. Referenced, you know, internally referenced learning. It's like, oh my gosh, I can't ski on these things, can't turn. Yeah, so later you will be able to.

Yeah, so on that, what should we say as like some simple recommendations? If this topic has intrigued you, maybe it's made you think about your own skiing or question some things, give me, give me one or two suggestions you'd say for people to just go out and action.

Well, first of all, I would say make sure you can see what we're talking about on the resources that we've shared during this conversation. And I think you also have a video in the works, Tom, that we worked on at the end of last season that will detail this in— but even on this video, you should be able to see exactly what we're talking about. And then The easiest way to play with it, I think, would be just to get in and do some of your inriggers or your crab walk drills. It's a, it's a wide stance drill. You can probably chuck a video up now if anyone who's watching this where you're, you're on green, green terrain, you're making carving style turns with just one ski, but you're practicing this feeling of, of moving your, your inside hip into the turn more than the inside knee. And just get a feeling for that and get comfortable with it because, I mean, I felt really uncomfortable about it, not just because of the knee injury, but because I've been told, or I had this focus for so many years, like, keep everything straight. Um, and yeah, just see how that, that starts. I mean, there's a— what would you say you do from there?

Yeah, I think your first point is awesome. Like, make sure you can see first what we're talking about. You even said after we talked about this, everywhere you'd look you would see this Q angle, hip relative to knee, shins, that sort of stuff. So I think see that first. I reckon I would agree that's probably number one. Two, be open-minded. And yes, I think the inriggers is probably the easiest way to go out and, and play with that and realize that, uh, my only bit on there to add would be because the body has all these different joints, we've kind of focused on hip and knee relative to each other. The ankle, uh, can invert and evert kind of separately whether you're doing the hip thing or not. And so if you're looking down, you're still seeing it looks more like the classic A-frame, not the crooked leg where the shin's more parallel.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, you're probably not active enough with the inside foot in, in inversion enough, and you, you're sort of just not aware of something down there. And that's a whole— like, it just brings up why I called my company Big Picture Skiing. Like, there are just so many pieces to this whole puzzle, but don't worry, don't be in a rush to get it all in one year, because then you're gonna have to look for a new sport. Enjoy the process. And realizes these fine-tuned pieces of what's going on down in, in that ankle. There's even a video on YouTube about activation of the inside foot. You can search that, find that out for free. So, um, but yeah, that's why my video, my video library on people just skiing, I've got so many videos and I keep adding to them because I'm like, well, and in this situation there's this. And, and you and I ski together and we discover these new things. We're like, oh, that's where that fits in. It's not just this blanket, like we said, pasted everywhere. You roll the knees and it feels good, we'll just roll the knees all the time and in every situation. Exactly. It's like, no, such a broad range of skills. So that's all I'd say. Yeah.

And that's, that's a great point because like this year, one of my, uh, one of the focuses I have for my long turns is to, um, with that, you know, call it a slight A-frame, whatever, that I'm showing, uh, through some of my long turns Number one, I'm not that worried about it, to be honest. I'm not a national demonstrator anymore. I feel like my skiing's functional. My edge angles are similar. And, you know, that's another thing we haven't really sort of, sort of talked about. Same thing, like, it's not edge angle exactness. Yes, similarity, you know, similarity. Yeah, yeah. But I will be working on moving my inside um, shin back out towards the outside.

Exactly what I kind of— maybe you talked about, like, you've spent— you've really mastered this inside knee and hip mechanics position.

Yeah, I'm— yep.

And you're ready to allow— you've spent— and now you're ready to, like, fine-tune it and move into the next little area. Um, I think that's perfect. That's like— I would agree. I even see sometimes, like, I move in and out of this kind of spectrum of, like, oh wow, that looks like aesthetically when I watch the video, super, I love it. My shins are more similar. I'm not trying to aim for them being the same because when you get the highest edge angles, it actually doesn't work. The body is not built and the forces don't line up that well. You'll in fact probably get on your inside ski if you aim for that.

Yeah, we're not a square skeleton.

Yeah, yeah. But I do see sometimes that I overdo the hip and are not active enough. And, uh, so I'm, I'm actually just Same with you, I'm going to try and refine things.

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Yeah, and yeah, and I had a look, like, during all this whole process, I, you know, had a look at some other female skiers. I mean, check out Lindsey Vonn ripping around, and I mean, Mikaela, obviously. Pick a skier, especially a skier in tight pants or a woman in a race suit cheeky butt cheek, but their, their lower legs, their shins are never ever ever really 100% parallel. Maybe when they're doing training runs, like warm-up runs, angle turns, and it's a different function. Like, they're skiing for speed, um, but you know, and we ski for fun and to demonstrate great technique, and I just sort of want to almost sort of champion imperfectionist or something.

I don't know, 100%. Like, I think if I'd said to you in that season last year, okay, you got to do this, but at the same time you're not allowed to ever A-frame, you would have probably been hijacked on your journey. Just go down that road and get— and then you can— you've mastered that and add the next piece on. I think so many people are afraid of going down a road because they think they're going to ruin something. Yeah, that is really probably the number one thing that will keep you in exactly the same spot you are this year to next year and never progress. You need to push and get messy, make mistakes, and get out of your comfort zone. That's where the learning happens. So I love that message.

Yeah, ruin is the road to transformation. You have to pull it apart a little bit in order to be able to put it back together in a better way, which is sort of basically what happened, um, in an involuntary way through blowing my knee. But yeah, I'm skiing better than I ever have. I'm coaching way better, I think, than I ever have, having had that insight. Like, I was sort of one of those instructors that did grow up skiing. I didn't know how I skied when I first started teaching, so it took me a long time to actually get it through my head that, you know, my clients weren't just being difficult. I remember in my first season that, um, yeah, and so it it all has ended up being a great thing that's played out for me professionally. It's given me a lot of, I guess it's given me some motive, like a lot of motivation in my career, you know, and it's gotten me fired up again about skiing because we all reach levels where we feel like we're plateauing. And I know when I blew my knee and I thought, gosh, this could be is this going to be that injury? I'd never been injured before skiing really that badly where I'd be out for a season, and I was just a bit worried in the back of my mind that, oh, maybe this is kind of going to be that injury that I'll be plagued by, by that for the rest of my skiing days. And you never stop thinking about your, your blown knee, it just gets further into the back of your mind. But yeah, no, I, I really agree with that, Tom. It's so important for people to get messy and, and try doing the thing that's opposite to what they think they should be doing, just to test it out and be, be a scientist about it, you know.

And you know what, I'm probably— I would say I'm speaking particularly to the people that get higher and higher in their skill and level, because the higher you get there, the more you think is at risk of trying these different things, and then suddenly your reputation or whatever you think which no one really cares about anyway. But you figure you find that out when you're older, doesn't matter. Yeah, the higher up you go, don't you really? Like, the more you're probably at risk of not taking risks.

Exactly.

So just be like the person, the, the person that started 2 years ago and like, oh, I'll give it a try, I've just started, see what I can learn. They're the ones like boom boom boom, continued learning and improving.

Yeah, yeah. Like the fixed mindset, you know, I think is a good people have all heard about that in all sorts of different contexts, and especially with skiing as well. Like, if you have been lucky enough to attend Interski or any type of training from another country where you normally train, you hear a lot of different terminologies, and you could easily sit there and go, well, they've got it wrong, you know. But I know that I walked away from Interski wanting to ski like all these other countries that I'd seen, just because it looks great. And, you know, we have certain focus points in our teaching system as Australians because of our terrain and the clients and all sorts of stuff. Pretty unique. And yeah, countries like Sweden and Japan, and they really inspired what I did next with my skiing, was I wanted to try out all their moves and, and, uh, yeah, see how that sort of moves the needle forward.

But Yep, excellent. Well, I think on that note, we'll, uh, I just want to say finally, if you're interested in, you know, learning from Demelza and any of the other big picture coaches, you can go on to bigpicturescheme.com and check out the camps we have running this season. There's a limited number of camps, mostly in Sun Peaks and some in Silver Star in Canada. And it's your chance to, to get in and step out of your comfort zone and, and learn from people like you and I. So check that out if you're interested. And thanks very much for listening and tuning into this episode. And Demelza, thanks for sharing your story and, and helping us kind of bring up this inside leg topic. I really hope, like, I just ask the viewer and the listener here, like, we're recommending like the roasting of like, that's wrong and this is right. No, no, no, no, no, it's probably going to come. But you know what, this has helped us. We're trying to share some different perspectives. Yeah, so just be a scientist and actually go and test this for yourself instead of just, yeah, standing stuck in the mud where, where you are, are on this stance anyway. So thanks very much for everybody listening. Have a great ski season and hopefully we'll see you out on the mountain.

Thanks, Tom.