Things That are More Fun with Your Legs Apart
By
Don Oakes
PSIA Level III
By
Don Oakes
PSIA Level III
There are few REALLY fun activities that work very well when your legs are too close together. You can do them, but they are MUCH more fun when your legs are apart. Skiing is one of those activities.
Many of us learned to ski when the closer our feet were together, the better we thought we skied. Not the case any more. These days, you really want to have a stance where your feet are somewhere near hip width apart. In a perfect world, your femur (upper leg bone)ought to come straight out of your hip socket and along with your knee and lower leg, form a perfectly plumb, vertical line. If this were the case, you could look down and find somewhere around 6 to 8 inches between your feet. This is the starting point for getting into an “Athletic Stance”. This athletic position is virtually identical in most sports. In golf, tennis, basketball , baseball and even boxing you start with your feet hip width or further apart.
In skiing , this stance can be a little wider or narrower depending on the conditions and task at hand. If you are skiing bumps or deep powder, a slightly narrower stance is ok. Skiing fast through gates or down an icy steep works much better with a wider stance. It all comes down to creating higher edge angles. With your feet very close together, it is difficult to get your skis more than a few degrees on edge. If your skis are only slightly tilted in a turn, the edges can’t grab, especially in the last half of the turn, and you end up with a skidded inefficient turn. It works, but it’s not pretty.
If you open your stance you will find you can now tilt your skis to a much higher angle. Watch the A racers ski by when you are going up the lift. Focus on their skis.(Try to ignore Tulos’s Chicken). You will see edge angles well over 60 degrees if they are really cookin’. With your feet glued together the best you can hope for is maybe 15 degrees. That’s why they can carve on really firm snow and why you may find yourself sliding towards the trees when the conditions get “loud”. So that’s Part A of an athletic stance. Get your feet apart.
Part B may be even more important. It concerns making sure your weight, or more accurately your center of mass, falls somewhere between the center and the balls of your feet. Try this…(but not after a few beers at Apres Ski). Look out at the horizon and jump straight up in the air. Land on two feet. If you landed your jump successfully, you should find yourself in an athletic stance. Your ankles, knees and hips should all be bent about the same amount and your weight should be on the balls of your feet. Weight too far forward and you fall on your face. Weight too far back and well,… you get the picture. There are even expressions in the English language which refer to proper weight distribution. If one is doing things correctly and efficiently we say “She is really on her toes”. If one is slow to react or sluggish we say, “He was caught resting on his heels.”
Take a look at the photos of a correct stance in some other sports and compare them to how you stand on your skis. You will notice all the athlete’s lower joints are bent more or less the same amount. If you drew a line from their ankle to their knee and another from their hips to their shoulders, you would see that they are parallel. They are essentially standing like their mothers told them not to….a little bent at the waist and somewhat round shouldered, but, their weight is now firmly centered on the balls of their feet. Many skiers ski with their ankles and knees bent, but are upright from the hips up. (Imagine someone sitting erect in a straight backed chair.) Mom might be proud of their posture, but their weight is now firmly centered on their heels, a skiing recipe for disaster.
This all seems pretty simple and straight forward. And it is on flat terrain. So why then do so many skiers end up “in the back seat” when the trail starts to get steep? Lets look to the trees for the answer. Barring outside influences, trees grow straight up and down. On flat terrain, trees are both straight up and down AND perpendicular to the ground around them. Now check out the trees on steep terrain as you are going up the lift. You’ll notice they still grow straight up and down, but are no longer perpendicular to the ground around them. They “know” which way is straight up and “stand” that way even in sloping terrain. The trees on the upper mountain are all in the back seat! The same is true for us. Thanks to our inner ears we know where straight up is and our natural tendency is to stand that way no matter what kind of pitch we are on. The problem is that in order to have our center of gravity fall near the center of our feet and ski effectively we need to be perpendicular to the terrain. If we follow our natural instincts to be vertical, we will be “on our heels” and in the back seat just like the trees. Next time you are on a steep pitch, stop and stick your ski pole in the snow, PERPENDICULAR to the hill. This will give you a general idea of how far “forward” you have to be to stay “centered” on your skis. If done correctly on a trail as steep as most Black Diamonds, at the transition between turns, you’ll almost feel like you are diving forward into a pool. It becomes the skiing equivalent of a Kirkegaardian “leap of faith”, (find a friend who attended a Jesuit University or one who didn’t sleep through Philosophy 101 and ask them what I’m talking about.) Bottom line, you just have to trust that your skis will catch up with your center of mass as your turn develops.
So to recap:
-Keep your legs at least hip width apart, (it’ll be more fun that way).
-Stand like your mother told you not to: round shouldered, a little bent from the waist, and with your weight centered near the balls of your feet.
-Finally, Don’t be an Ash, stand perpendicular to the slope and leave the back seat to the evergreens.
Many of us learned to ski when the closer our feet were together, the better we thought we skied. Not the case any more. These days, you really want to have a stance where your feet are somewhere near hip width apart. In a perfect world, your femur (upper leg bone)ought to come straight out of your hip socket and along with your knee and lower leg, form a perfectly plumb, vertical line. If this were the case, you could look down and find somewhere around 6 to 8 inches between your feet. This is the starting point for getting into an “Athletic Stance”. This athletic position is virtually identical in most sports. In golf, tennis, basketball , baseball and even boxing you start with your feet hip width or further apart.
In skiing , this stance can be a little wider or narrower depending on the conditions and task at hand. If you are skiing bumps or deep powder, a slightly narrower stance is ok. Skiing fast through gates or down an icy steep works much better with a wider stance. It all comes down to creating higher edge angles. With your feet very close together, it is difficult to get your skis more than a few degrees on edge. If your skis are only slightly tilted in a turn, the edges can’t grab, especially in the last half of the turn, and you end up with a skidded inefficient turn. It works, but it’s not pretty.
If you open your stance you will find you can now tilt your skis to a much higher angle. Watch the A racers ski by when you are going up the lift. Focus on their skis.(Try to ignore Tulos’s Chicken). You will see edge angles well over 60 degrees if they are really cookin’. With your feet glued together the best you can hope for is maybe 15 degrees. That’s why they can carve on really firm snow and why you may find yourself sliding towards the trees when the conditions get “loud”. So that’s Part A of an athletic stance. Get your feet apart.
Part B may be even more important. It concerns making sure your weight, or more accurately your center of mass, falls somewhere between the center and the balls of your feet. Try this…(but not after a few beers at Apres Ski). Look out at the horizon and jump straight up in the air. Land on two feet. If you landed your jump successfully, you should find yourself in an athletic stance. Your ankles, knees and hips should all be bent about the same amount and your weight should be on the balls of your feet. Weight too far forward and you fall on your face. Weight too far back and well,… you get the picture. There are even expressions in the English language which refer to proper weight distribution. If one is doing things correctly and efficiently we say “She is really on her toes”. If one is slow to react or sluggish we say, “He was caught resting on his heels.”
Take a look at the photos of a correct stance in some other sports and compare them to how you stand on your skis. You will notice all the athlete’s lower joints are bent more or less the same amount. If you drew a line from their ankle to their knee and another from their hips to their shoulders, you would see that they are parallel. They are essentially standing like their mothers told them not to….a little bent at the waist and somewhat round shouldered, but, their weight is now firmly centered on the balls of their feet. Many skiers ski with their ankles and knees bent, but are upright from the hips up. (Imagine someone sitting erect in a straight backed chair.) Mom might be proud of their posture, but their weight is now firmly centered on their heels, a skiing recipe for disaster.
This all seems pretty simple and straight forward. And it is on flat terrain. So why then do so many skiers end up “in the back seat” when the trail starts to get steep? Lets look to the trees for the answer. Barring outside influences, trees grow straight up and down. On flat terrain, trees are both straight up and down AND perpendicular to the ground around them. Now check out the trees on steep terrain as you are going up the lift. You’ll notice they still grow straight up and down, but are no longer perpendicular to the ground around them. They “know” which way is straight up and “stand” that way even in sloping terrain. The trees on the upper mountain are all in the back seat! The same is true for us. Thanks to our inner ears we know where straight up is and our natural tendency is to stand that way no matter what kind of pitch we are on. The problem is that in order to have our center of gravity fall near the center of our feet and ski effectively we need to be perpendicular to the terrain. If we follow our natural instincts to be vertical, we will be “on our heels” and in the back seat just like the trees. Next time you are on a steep pitch, stop and stick your ski pole in the snow, PERPENDICULAR to the hill. This will give you a general idea of how far “forward” you have to be to stay “centered” on your skis. If done correctly on a trail as steep as most Black Diamonds, at the transition between turns, you’ll almost feel like you are diving forward into a pool. It becomes the skiing equivalent of a Kirkegaardian “leap of faith”, (find a friend who attended a Jesuit University or one who didn’t sleep through Philosophy 101 and ask them what I’m talking about.) Bottom line, you just have to trust that your skis will catch up with your center of mass as your turn develops.
So to recap:
-Keep your legs at least hip width apart, (it’ll be more fun that way).
-Stand like your mother told you not to: round shouldered, a little bent from the waist, and with your weight centered near the balls of your feet.
-Finally, Don’t be an Ash, stand perpendicular to the slope and leave the back seat to the evergreens.