How to generate bigger edge angles ?

A snowHead

A phrase that is mentioned a lot in skiing is "generating bigger edge angles".
Particularly with ski racing / BASI courses or performance piste skiing it seems to be the current fashionable term.

However bigger edge angles is obviously an output, rather than a specific input.
So how do you actually achieve those bigger edge angles ?
I have a good idea about the basic answer in my head : you need more angulation (i.e lateral separation).
However : how would you achieve this ?
What tips / drills / mental images or focus points would you use ?

The picture below paints a good picture for starters.
Apologies for the ski geek technique talk Wink

but genuinely interested in people thoughts & answers.

A snowHead

I dunno if this is good, bad or indifferent but when I want to make a really hard turn I'm thinking about pushing my inside hip down.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@Haggis_Trap, what do you see when you look at this picture? What does Ted have lots of (other than edge angle)? Inclination or angulation?

FWIW, I'd say he has huge inclination and a bit of angulation.

IMO so much depends on the environment in which you are in; the firmness of the snow, the speed you are travelling at and therefore the size of the forces present against which you can balance against. It is my view that it is very difficult to remain balanced and generate big edge angles if skiing on soft snow and / or at low speed.

https://www.facebook.com/118675723439/photos/a.10150330873363440.355940.118675723439/10152632236903440/?type=1&relevant_count=1

So, try going faster and on firmer snow?

You need to Login to know who's really who.

^ that is an interesting picture.
huge edge angle achieved with massive inclination (and little angulation).

no doubt Ted Ligety is very skilled + going very fast

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

I guess biomechanically the reason for angulation is to balance your center of mass effectively over the inside edge of the outside ski. To do that it probably only really needs to be raised slightly and anything else is basically less efficient?

You'll need to Register first of course.

Haggis_Trap, For me, the biggest factor was realizing that you feel that you are generating much bigger angles than you actually are doing.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

How to generate bigger angles? Go faster and/or turn tighter without falling over.

For me it's about being in balance when achieving the kind of turn and kind of speed that I want. Sometimes I will need to be balanced much more on the outside ski than the inside ski, so my body naturally angulates to ensure my centre of mass is more aligned with my outside ski:

Other times I need to be balanced more equally across both skis so my body naturally inclines so my centre of mass is balanced more equally across both skis.

At all times the position/shape of your body must be in balance with the forces being generated by the turn. It is difficult to teach somebody to generate big angles without the speed and/or turn radius that requires such angles (by coincidence that's what I was teaching this morning). You can encourage or promote bigger angles by attempting particular drills of exercises, but there is a limit to which you can contrive such angles without the raw ingredient of sufficient angular momentum.

After all it is free

The faster you go, the more you can incline, but you need to remain balanced against the forces on your outside ski. If you incline too much, rotate inside or don't have clean edge engagement it's not going to work. Also much easier to get big angles on a SL ski as opposed to GS, the increased sidecut allows you to incline much more at lower speeds.

@Haggis_Trap, You need to remain balanced on the outside ski.

If you gave enough speed you can incline to do it --- if you don't you will need to angulate.

Watch a motorcross ride make a tight turn --- angluation -- watch a motocycle road racer make a fast bend --- inclination.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

snow reports

^ Yip

I guess skiing is a dynamic / constantly changing movement.
Which sometimes makes simplification hard.

You know it makes sense.

'Dropping the hip' isn't a great movement to make to increase edge angle, yes you have to move the hip inside the turn, but it's much better to think about flexing the inside leg, as then you can stay aligned against the forces, and stay out of the backseat.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

I think we're being pedantic here - obviously you relax/bend the inner leg to get your hip inside the turn. I mean moving the hip towards the centre of the turn not towards the tails. But like I say, the word will mean different things to different people - it's about what provides YOU with the right mental trigger

A snowHead

Not so sure it's pedantic or semantic. I'm pretty certain there is a significant biomechanical difference between the inputs described.... "dropping" the hip in & "pushing" the hip in.
The former would require a motion of relaxing the muscle groups and tendons that allow the COM to fall inside the arc from a suspension situ, whereas the latter would require the tensing and levering, resulting in a compression situ.
No?
I think the sensation would be different albeit the outcome very similar. In practice I spose it would depend the timing of your turn & how balanced and available you are to go form one acute angle t'other

A snowHead

When I did my BASI 4 tech about 5 years ago they were promoting inclinating for the first part of the turn and then angulating for the second part. The reasoning being inclination to create a strong platform at the start of the turn and then using angulation to be able to more easily vary amount of edge angle / turn shape at end of turn and also easier to smoothly exit one turn into the next if the upper body is not too far inside.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Coming back to what Rob was saying, isn't the issue that the degree of angulation vs inclination is a function of turn shape and speed?
So you can start a turn by inclining then you tighten it up to the shape you want by increasing the edge angle
The tighter the turn/ higher the edge angle and lower the speed the more you need your upper body outside your hips to counterbalance.

The dropping or pushing bit is just a description of how this opposing motion of hip in and shoulders out is triggered. If I'm completely honest I can't quite remember the exact feeling of whether I simply relax to let my hips come in or actively lever them in. I think the former but I need to get back on skis to check. My feeling is though that the movement of the upperbody to counterbalance is a bit more active - pushing out

You need to Login to know who's really who.

I yearn for angulation, but it just doesn't seem to happen for me!

The kids sometimes do a boot touch drill and I think that's good for separation. They all look pretty good when they are doing it.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

It's all to do with force vectors and insertion angles . . . Newtonian (sp?) physics. It's a trade off between the angle the ski edge is to the snow surface and how larger is the force you can generate into the hill perpendicular to its surface against the outward centripetal force trying to shear the ski edge out of it's track.

It's quite simple really, the more you angulate the harder you dig your edges into the snow surface. There's a crap load of other stuff you can add to this to influence a turn, but that is why angulation works

You'll need to Register first of course.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

Unless I'm missing something, they appear to be using the same photo to show the difference between Inclination v Angulation ?

After all it is free

@AndAnotherThing.., Yup - it's just illustrating the different descriptions relating to the same event.

Cheers for all the comments / thoughts....
Flexing inside leg, as opposed to actively dropping hip too much, makes sense.

One of the best skiing tips I ever got given was that the biggest edge angle needs to be in the fall line (i.e centre of the turn)
The Ted Ligety pictures shows this well - though I have no doubt he is going very fast.
This means if you are going to generate big edge angles then these then need to be set up in the first section of the turn.
Not an easy thing to do well!

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

Yep, if you leave it late to create angles you will have a phenomenal amount of pressure to deal with, and you'll get slower.

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

@Haggis_Trap, why do you want bigger edge angles?

Somewhat a function of speed. If you think you're losing grip, more angulation required, IMHO; an exercise if to try keeping your outside pole on the ground throughout the turn.

snow reports

One thing which came out of my last lesson was that I was not engaging and steering with the inner ski tip (no lead threads please) as I went into a turn and instead of rolling my ankles I was letting my hip come down first, no proper progression. Changing that made such a big difference. This was specific to me but others may find the same thing happening.

You know it makes sense.

@jimmer, yeah, baby. Cool

although...?

or steeper?? Twisted Evil

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Haha, yeah there is a limit when it gets steeper, you effectively have to be upside down to carve a clean turn, but for most groomed runs, all I really care about is carving as much as possible.

A snowHead

A snowHead

@Haggis_Trap, ah, cool, more agulation then.

Not being in any danger of having my licence revoked by anyone, although having once been charged with being 'drunk in charge of a bottle of blanc de blanc', I feel suitably qualified to suggest... (Later, off out for constitutional and wife finally got coat on)

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

just started raining, so fire lit...

Anyhoo, my inclination (ha ha) is that if you had perfect grip you could get as big an angle as you could get for the speed you were going at, just by tipping over enough. Not enough speed and you fall over.

In the real world, angulation gets round that problem by keeping your CoM more centred, while still acting centripetally to give you grip. Also shortening the reaction distance if you lose grip and have to get your skis back under you.

If you want more edge angle you therefore want more angulation. However, you run out of joint movement and end up, at the margin with more inclination, but by that point you're running serious gates and can deal with it (and have massively more speed).

You need to Login to know who's really who.

@under a new name, I'd agree.

On the plastic, where there is much less side grip than snow there is not much evidence of inclination. Much the same applies to powder where most find it hard to carry enough speed to allow for a lot of inclination.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

You'll need to Register first of course.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

@jimmer,

After all it is free

But coming back to the original post. If a skier is experimenting with achieving high edge angles then they are likely to be skiing at moderate speeds and that is likely to mean quite a lot of angulation or hip/upper body displacement I'd have thought. I know that when I was first trying to get high edge angles I started by trying to make the tightest possible carve at fairly low speed on helpful (fairly firm but not really hard) snow. Under those conditions it amazed me how tight a turn I could make but it required a lot of angulation to keep balanced. Seems to me this is a better route to learning about high edge angles than attempting to ski high really high speeds!

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

Getting the high edge angle is only one part of the equation though; getting off it in a timely fashion is also really important.

For a recreational skier, the high edge angle can be a really "deep" position and can often lead to being in the back seat as the ski accelerates from the fall line.

For the racer, in SL particularly the difference between the top quartile and the rest of the field seems to be the speed at which they get off the ski (or transition into the next turn) rather than how big an edge angle they manage to build. An alternative way of expressing this is how @jimmer, was talking about it, ie where the pressure is in the turn. This is only irrelevant if you are looking to do a single turn!

Help!!

How to generate bigger edge angles ?

snowHeads Forum Index >>> Bend ze Knees