I think @Jilly addresses this. Headlights - shoulders facing in the direction you're going (ie not uphill) and snot - get over the outside ski. I used these two terms with my group - needed a couple of simple things to focus on for this lower-end group. Gotta keep it simple. As the season went on I found this helped me in my own skiing as well.
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Angulation feels like....
- Thread starter Erik Timmerman
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I think @Jilly addresses this. Headlights - shoulders facing in the direction you're going (ie not uphill) and snot - get over the outside ski. I used these two terms with my group - needed a couple of simple things to focus on for this lower-end group. Gotta keep it simple. As the season went on I found this helped me in my own skiing as well.
So, for me, this would be better clarified as "shoulders facing the direction of travel (NOT necessarily the direction of the skis)." Your shoulders don't have to be going up the hill in order to be problematic.
Does that make sense to others, or is it differently problematic?
It makes sense fine; the only problem is that it's not enabling - you can't just tell someone that and have them pop into the proper form.
Downhill...otherwise you're squaring up to the skis and then you will have problems initiating the next turn. Well not problems, but it will be much easier and smoother.
Right, but SkiBam said "not uphill," which is not the same as downhill ...
I guess in general saying "the direction you're going" or "the direction of travel" - to me - sounds less than helpful, because as a beginner my direction of travel - my intent - would frequently be more across than down. For many years I have interpreted "the direction of travel" as "if you're traversing, you want to face across the hill." I only learned otherwise in the last two seasons.
I felt that way about the other formulation ... putting physical concepts into words is hard!
As a beginner yes, but to improve, separation is the key. So face downhill will support separation of lower and upper body. CSIA jargon is counter rotation. Upper body counter rotated to lower body.
If you at angulation stage, then separation is needed too.
If you at angulation stage, then separation is needed too.
Be careful with facing downhill. You want upper/lower body separation, but not false counter. Too much tip lead is a sign of loss of alignment. Your ski tips, ankles, knees, pelvis, and shoulders should generally be in alignment. Too much tip lead and the hip is dropping back and inside...
The key to this is to understand what you are trying to accomplish, not the form you wish to display. The purpose of angulation is to enable you to balance against lateral forces by moving your center of mass laterally. If you are square to your skis you can only do this a little bit by bending your body sideways. The body doesn't like to bend that way. Likewise if you move your center of mass (torso and all that stuff) sideways (lateral to your direction of skis' travel) by lengthening and shortening your legs you will change your edge angle (and probably skid).
The body likes to fold at the tummy. If your pelvis and upper body are turned away from the skis' direction of travel (probably facing down the hill a bit) you can easily move some of the mass of your upper body laterally just by folding at the waist (tougher if you have a fat belly). Your upper body then is making quite an angle with respect to your legs hence the term angulation.
Does that make sense?
In my experience its pointless to keep telling someone to assume the pose. They just don't understand what they are looking at or how to achieve it.
Oddly enough its comparatively easy to teach this to someone who has never skied before. If the first turns they learn are turns in which the skis are flat, like a narrow gliding wedge they learn to turn the skis by leg rotation, turning each ski by turning the leg in its socket. Just the act of making a wedge involves turning the legs. Active guiding of both skis in a wedge turn involves turning both legs. They already are learning upper and lower body separation and probably achieving a little bit of counter in each turn.
How this carries over into advanced skiing is that the muscular act of turning the legs in their sockets, while it can no longer turn the skis because they are edged, the effect of that effort is to instead turn the pelvis, producing a countered position from which you can angulate.
The trick is to acquire this skill and the movements and not to leave it behind as you progress through that mid level of ski ability when angulation isn't really much needed.
Most of us leave it behind. Maybe we were told to ski in a more squared stance. Watch a skier competing on the World Cup, particularly in slalom and you will see that marked upper and lower body separation. Its done by turning (or attempting to turn) both legs simultaneously in their sockets.
I hope this helps.
The body likes to fold at the tummy. If your pelvis and upper body are turned away from the skis' direction of travel (probably facing down the hill a bit) you can easily move some of the mass of your upper body laterally just by folding at the waist (tougher if you have a fat belly). Your upper body then is making quite an angle with respect to your legs hence the term angulation.
Does that make sense?
In my experience its pointless to keep telling someone to assume the pose. They just don't understand what they are looking at or how to achieve it.
Oddly enough its comparatively easy to teach this to someone who has never skied before. If the first turns they learn are turns in which the skis are flat, like a narrow gliding wedge they learn to turn the skis by leg rotation, turning each ski by turning the leg in its socket. Just the act of making a wedge involves turning the legs. Active guiding of both skis in a wedge turn involves turning both legs. They already are learning upper and lower body separation and probably achieving a little bit of counter in each turn.
How this carries over into advanced skiing is that the muscular act of turning the legs in their sockets, while it can no longer turn the skis because they are edged, the effect of that effort is to instead turn the pelvis, producing a countered position from which you can angulate.
The trick is to acquire this skill and the movements and not to leave it behind as you progress through that mid level of ski ability when angulation isn't really much needed.
Most of us leave it behind. Maybe we were told to ski in a more squared stance. Watch a skier competing on the World Cup, particularly in slalom and you will see that marked upper and lower body separation. Its done by turning (or attempting to turn) both legs simultaneously in their sockets.
I hope this helps.
The bend should come from the pelvis over the femurs. If it's from the waist, it is flexing the spine and that is a weak move. Alignment is about many things, but it is also about strength versus weakness.
You're right. My belt passes right over my hip sockets. As best I can tell that's where I'm bending so I refer to it as the waist.. I'm no physiologist though so feel free to correct me. The "folding at the waist" as I've referred to it doesn't seem to involve much bending of the spine. It is instead the part that bends well. My point is not to think of the bending as occurring at the spine. Second point was that the pelvis needs to be turned away from alignment with the skis to some degree. That is done by the legs turning in the hip sockets as well.
Hopefully your angulation is from the hips and not at your knees so your knees are not stressed. Skiing with a "long" outside leg is more biomechanically sound I think than trying to crank a bent knee. Doing your knees a favor is another reason to angulate at the hip.
Trying to use your body parts the way they are designed to be used is part of the development of a sound technique. Your hip sockets are designed to allow leg rotation as well as the rotation that allows you to tilt the pelvis (what I call "folding at the waist". The knee joint is not designed to allow rotation at the joint.
Trying to use your body parts the way they are designed to be used is part of the development of a sound technique. Your hip sockets are designed to allow leg rotation as well as the rotation that allows you to tilt the pelvis (what I call "folding at the waist". The knee joint is not designed to allow rotation at the joint.
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The extra couple of degrees from knee angulation (which is still rotating femur in hip socket since bending knee joint sideways isn't physically possible) can mean the difference between hold and slide on icy surfaces. But as you said it's hard on the knee so I only do it when the situation calls for it.
Knee angulation is really just the femurs either abducting or adducting both proximally at the hip and distally at the ankle...its just that the visual tends to be more pronounced on short radius turns as the "hip" (inside half of the pelvis) doesn't have the time/space to "get low" enough to make everything appear more aligned as they would in a larger radius turn, imho.
Although the knees are capable of some small sideways movement (because of the way the femur and tibial plateau interact sagitally) that varies in degree depending upon whether the leg is flexed or extended. 3 degrees or so for one scenario and 6 or so for the other, but i can't remember which is which...
zenny
Although the knees are capable of some small sideways movement (because of the way the femur and tibial plateau interact sagitally) that varies in degree depending upon whether the leg is flexed or extended. 3 degrees or so for one scenario and 6 or so for the other, but i can't remember which is which...
zenny
If you tip your outside foot so that you have the underfoot pressure on the BTE side you will get some knee angulation. This is a fairly small movement if you are in tight fitting boots (larger if the knee is more bent). It is not bad for the knees. With proper alignment and skis that are not too fat this will naturally align the force so that the force vector passes close to the knee center plane. On wide skis or bad alignment you may have to push the knee inside and that is another story.
Watch out for too much counter rotation, it is not uncommon that it leads to hip dump.
Watch out for too much counter rotation, it is not uncommon that it leads to hip dump.
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yeah it shouldnt feel like that. If your using knee angulation to achieve edge grip on ice, most like your boots lateral alignment is 'soft" ie your knee are tracking to far in, and you need to start raising the inside of your boots so that you can get edge grip and balance from tipping your feet, and not by pushing you outside knee inside.
Just bought new 130 boots, will see if it helps, current ones are 110. Hopefully I can get a video next season too.
Angulation feels like Fox News...Fair and Balanced
Would it be inappropriate to add video and exercises to this thread?
This is something that I've been working on a ton!
I'm still wrapping my mind around what angulation "feels" like.
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