Mental Blocks

A snowHead

Yesterday our coach was unavailable for our regular training session, and no alternative was available, so muggins ended up taking the session. Most of the rest of the group (about a dozen) are reasonable intermediates, but have been skiing a while and hang on to their old skiddy style with a grip of varying strength. We generally do quite a bit of mobility and balance exercises - hopping, jogging, one foot straight running and upper/lower body separation exercises - so I decided this time to have another go at getting them to carve more, following a few sessions we had on this a month or so ago.

I started off with trying to get them to edge a bit more in linked parallels by pushing the knees into the turn with their hands. Some were making a fair attempt, but most were still pivoting way more than edging, and some commented with problems about initiating the turn without a pivot. The problem there is that you have to commit to putting the ski on its downhill edge - quite an unstable position (as is clear when you try to demonstrate it standing still) and quite difficult to commit to. So we stepped back to doing single turns into the hill starting from a short straight run downhill to get enough speed. This did start getting somewhere, and the improvement was marked, but the edge angles they were getting were mostly miniscule, so there was mostly insufficient grip to hold onto the turn, and very large radius turns (hence the reason they revert to pivoting to get their normal radius turns). As a result, I ended up most of the time yelling "increase the edge angle" and "big toe, little toe" around the slope, along with the expected "don't twist the ski, just let the turn happen". (And which bit of "ONE" didn't they understand when nearly half of them tried linking into a second or third turn rolling eyes

)

After a bit of this, we did move to a bit of the hourglasses/crazy legs/wobbly parallels exercise, allowing each ski to carve 'S'es opposite to each other, so your stance periodically moves from wide to narrow. It's a fun exercise (almost impossible to do with a straight face) - although potentially a bit iffy if you go too fast - but if you can get the edges to engage properly it's great for loosening up the leg muscles and improving lateral flexibility in the knees.

Thinking about this afterwards it struck me than the edge angles they were getting were little more than the angle of the slope itself, i.e. their skis were effectively still flat. So why couldn't they increase that angle any further? Thinking about this a bit more I think I may have found the answer. As the average recreational skier, skiing "normally" - wide swishy turns, turns in soft snow or slush, pivoty-type turns, gentle sideslips etc. - what's supporting us as we do this? Our skis of course. When trying to carve a turn, we're supported by the same aren't we? WRONG - what's supporting us is our ski EDGES. For doing this we're effectively standing the sides of our feet, NOT the soles - a radically different feeling. Easiski is vey keen on saying that skiing only involves movements we make in "normal" life, but this strikes me as a notable exception; in the absence of our ski-boots trying to stand with any weight on the sides of our feet like this would causes us sprained ankles, or worse. I suspect that this is the basic mental block that was impeding the group from committing to any higher angles.

So how do you get to overcome this mental block? I don't really have much in my personal armoury to relate here - I have pretty decent willpower so once I know what it is I'm supposed to be doing (and provided I've been convinced that it's the right thing to do Wink

), I just do it, however uncomfortable/illogical it feels until it does start feeling right. I had demonstrated the position, with quite a bit of upper body angulation prior to the exercise, but hadn't explained the "big toe, little toe" mantra before we started. Also it may help to think of trying to push your ankle into the slope. (I'm fully aware this kind of question marks a difference between a trained/experienced coach and someone like me who's just winging it).

And what other skiing movements do you think may have similar blocks? The other one that springs immediately to my mind is leaning out from the hill when starting to do steeps - your brain screaming out at you to hang into the slope for dear life.

A snowHead

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

i personally think it is harder to commit to the edges on plastic as opposed to snow. The edges dont seem to get the same level of bite and to me the skis feel a bit more out of control when edged on plastic making it harder to initiate, hold and commit to carved turns.

I'm not so sure getting over this particular mental block is mainly about developing or demonstarting higher edge angles but rather focusing on fore aft balance and getting people onto the front edges of the skis early in the turn. To get over the block you need to get people to feel the shovel of the ski "bite into the plastic" when it is edged correctly. This doesnt neccessarily require a large edge angle or making turns across the fall line with big angulation and high edge angles.

I would think when trying to develop carving and higher edge angles on plastic it is more effective to work on getting on the edges earlier in the turn by getting forward as opposed to leg steering, lateral movements or highly angulated body position so the students can feel the edges. The ones that had trouble with initiating the turns without a pivot may be sitting back a bit and doing railing or lateral movement drills dont really address this problem.

When turns are done correctly with weight forward and on the front of the ski at the start of the turn it is very evident on plastic and easy to "feel" BUT, hard to achieve. This to me is the mental block. Doing lower speed turns from edge to edge on plastic in the fall line has helped me feel my edges better on and quickly shows up skids.

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Mental blocks can happen at every stage of learning something new. For me, at my early stage in skiing, this is a big issue. The main barrier is fear of falling & possible injury. When learning a new physical skill, you have to launch into the unknown using whatever guidance is available and experience what that new skill feels like. Only when your body has done this, and knows what getting it right feels like can you begin to replicate it on demand and then refine the skill. I'm going to try out the Realli-ski simulator on Friday and hope it may offer me a way to feel what a parallel turn is like in an environment in which the fear of falling is removed.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

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Terrain choice is extremely important in overcoming that block, and to introduce edging. I suspect you are rather limited on plastic.....

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GrahamN, An interesting question. Can't say I'd ever thought about it. As above I suspect that being on plastic has a large impact, as my recollection (this was a few years ago and my skis were somewhat straighter than they are now) while you could use the side cut to get a turn on plastic it involves way more skidding than on snow. But I do also still recollect being able to achieve quite high edge angles.

At the risk of being controversial, there's at least one thing that we do while skiing which I think (IMHO) unnatural - sliding. So that immediately triggers defensive responses - arms behind, weight back ,etc. Which may have some effect on your questioin.

Plus, although while edging you are being supported by your edges, you're actually standing on your ski boot soles, which hopefully are maintaining your edged situation with lateral force. So I don't think you're losing your platform, it's just arising from somewhere else.

However, on a dry slope. it's difficult to edge effectively - and so if your angulation isn't great you'll lose your edge and fall over.

In conclusion, I would think that working exercises to improve lateral balance and angulation might help?

After all it is free

skimottaret, fair points, and to address that I made a big thing about starting the turns with a push forward from the knees before the sideways roll onto the edges. They didn't manage to do it of course, but it did stop most of them from sitting back. So while it's a possibility I don't think that's the major problem here. david@mediacopy makes the other point I forgot to mention though - my skis were probably way sharper than any of theirs, but I think even mine would have slid with the low edge angles they were getting.

NewSkier, yep that was the first mental block I ever came over: the feeling that you're sliding forward and there's no brake pedal/lever to hit when it all feels a bit out of control (bit like overcoming the desire to push the bell up with the rope when it hasn't quite got to the balance Wink

). Fortunately it didn't take me long - and you will find yours before long. That Realli-ski sounds a brilliant idea for someone in your position.

veeeight, we're fortunate at our slope in that the top half of our main slope is very steep, but the bottom is pretty shallow, and contiguous with the beginners' slope, which is what we were doing the exercise on, so we had a double width slope on which to run the turn.

David Murdoch, yep, there wasn't a huge amount of angulation going on, so that certainly does merit some work. Thinking-cap time. Actually the thing that triggered the better edge angles for me (following on from the ankles/knees/hips thread and veeeight's vid of his "freak of nature") was trying to lay my ankles, and even my knees down on the matting (not of course that they get anywhere near it). I do tend to find every now and again though that my ski edges have gone off a bit quicker than I realised, when I do then end up on my side.

It was interesting that the stiffest of all the group were the two trainee instructors (going for their disabled certs, and joining in with us to up their general skiing level). In discussion with one of them afterwards, we did sort of agree that the imperative to do the perfect snowplough demo does tend to produce an unhelpfully robotic body dynamic Sad

.

One really useful thing that came out was for one of the other guys who does do regional and CN races. His son (who is extremely good) tears his hair out trying to get Dad to ski with more carve and less skid. What I noticed doing this single turn was that he starts every turn with a small up-unweight, barely-perceptible but just enough to release the skis from the matting and get the skis sliding - and of course he had no idea he was doing it. I believe that once the skis are sliding sideways it's actually then much harder to stop them doing so and start carving forwards. On snow that's essentially the ski failing to cut the platform and trough david@mediacopy referred to, and on plastic I think it's the ski riding nearer the tips of the bristles rather than cutting deeper towards the base. So with a bit of luck, he'll work on getting rid of that, and should find it earier to hold a carve in future. As he's one of the two genuine (Cambridge) physicists in the group, though, he did pick me up when I started spouting about analogies with the differences between static and dynamic friction (and rather tied myself in knots as I knew it was not a technically correct explanation). I do think there are some similarities there though, and I think I just about convinced the two of them in the discussion afterwards.

BTW, I really quite enjoyed being in the hotseat, and it was very rewarding experience, but did bug all for my own skiing. So it sort of confirmed what I'd been coming to - I rather fancy becoming a coach at some time, but not for a few years yet, as I have too much I want to do to my own skiing first.

GrahamN, You might find that starting doing coaching courses helps you with your own skiing.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

rjs, I was wondering who'd be the first to say that Wink

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GrahamN, being taught how to teach does wonders for your own skiing.

For anyone who is scared to use their edges ask them to side slip down a slope then engage their edges (slip and grip), using the smallest joint up in sequential order.. eg. ankle, then knee... until they come to a stop... stand downhill from them and grab their pole.. ask them to resist you pulling them down the slope... the greater the edge angle they have and the wider the stance the harder it will be to pull them down the slope... they will soon grasp the concept... Little Angel

snow reports

Oh, tips, right. Put tape across the top of the ski. Label the tape with numbers: 12345678987654321. Then say "Put the number 4 in the snow".

You know it makes sense.

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

I ended up in the hotseat again today, so got the chance to work out some of the above. After explaining my thoughts on the base/edge differences, we got to working on edge support and angulation. First exercise was just standing on the ski edges, with as much angle as possible, and feeling the hip/waist angulation required to maintain lateral balance. Then sidestep up and down the slope maintaining that angle as much as possible - and checking fore-aft by whether the ski was coming off the matting tip or tail first. Then back to the turning across the hill, initiating the turn by concentrating on tilting the skis and moving the hip in with angulating. I know we should be thinking about working from the base up, but that lateral balance is the physical blocker to achieving this, so that angulation needs addressing up front. A bit of a forward push ("circling the kness" from the CSCF, and easiski's "snuggle and squeeze") helped as well. The improvement in the amount of edge angle they got was remarkable. OK there was still a bit of sliding, particularly in the weaker skiers, not helped by, as mentioned above by skimottaret and david@mediacopy, a) slope (and therefore horribly blunt) skis and b) sitting back. A couple also have deeply ingrained rotational movements and that will take an age to overcome. But they were pretty much all making way more effective turns, even those riddled with other problems.

We followed this with some linked turns working on as wide as possible within a specified vertical drop - i.e. keeping the angulation going. I intended them to do just 2, so a single "S" turn, checking the return to a centred balance position on the turn exit, with the stronger skiers linking in more, but I couldn't really stop them from carrying on to link to the end of the slope - but the session had already been pretty intense so they just wanted to ski more, so that was fair. This was a bit too much for the weaker skiers and they started backsliding on technique a bit. The better skiers though made huge improvements - and I think a couple of light bulbs went off during the session. In particular the BASI instuctors changed completely from rather stiff and skiddy turning to dynamic racing edged turns. I think that shows that it was a mental thing: the better skiers will have the physical control to do what's needed, but not realised they're not doing it (and the instructors probably spend all their time giving rather than receiving feedback).

comprex sent me this link, from his skating background: http://www.nettracing.com/step1.htm . Very interesting. On skis I actually regularly do stuff like their steps 4 two-footed (although of course only getting the skis and feet parallel when on both outside edges) and 5/6 one-footed (although of course keeping the other ski parallel to the slope). He did make the very fair point that you need serious muscle training to do what's in there - I've only been on ice skates a couple of times in my life and committing to the outside edges feels very precarious as it's not something my ankle is practiced at doing. It does feel very different though, and nowhere near as intimidating, when supported in skiboots.

On the personal perspective I have to say it was quite intimidating - a class of 16 people, including our normal coach, another BASI3, a CSCF level2 coach and a BASI trainee Shocked

. And here was me spouting my own pet theories. Actually it mostly worked OK, although I screwed up in not splitting the group in order to keep them all working and so there was too much standing around for them - although to me it was full on as I was going full out with analysis and feedback for the entire hour+. One did get the hump right at the beginning though, refused to engage with the first exercise, and the walked out (but she's a stroppy so-and-so anyway). Fair dues though, she was the person in the group who was previously about the best at what we were working on; I had planned on variations of the exercises that would address her problems, but as we had more slope space than I expected I ended up sturcuting the session completely differently from what I had planned, and I completely forgot about rethinking variations for her.

And I certainly take the point that learning how to teach others is good for your own skiing. Working out stuff for this session in my own practice has resulted in some good improvements in my own edge angles and grip, by seeing how far I could push it myself. But while actually running the session I skied about 200m total myself - so this was very much a "give" rather than "take" part of the equation, but probably not before time. If there's any more of this though I need to make sure I'm not paying for both sides of it.

A snowHead

A snowHead

david@mediacopy, It's not an exercise really - just something I tell many of my peeps: snuggle your shins into the tongue of the boot all the time and squeeze for action.

GrahamN, I've just caught up with this thread - been a bit slow reading everything that's been going on while I was busy with the PSB. Shocked

On the subject of not natural - I suggest you walk a turn on a very steep slope (that's blue for skiing), you'll find that you don't (well I don't) keep you foot flat on the ground, you will walk on the inside of your foot. Very Happy

It does sound as though you've done wonders though. It also sounds as though these skiers were never taught to edge properly in the first place. rolling eyes

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

GrahamN, sounds good but perhaps next time in a class of 16 theoretical explanations are lost on such a large group and the BASI mantra of MCA is the order of the day with some individual feedback during the exercises. (I'll let you figure out the TLA)

I can relate to this mental block as on snow my balance is okay but having to make quick dynamic turns on such an unforgiving surface is really showing up my flaws. i cant seem to commit to angulating enough and being a fat lard*ss I skid a lot and break away. Only once or twice have i felt like i was skiing properly on plastic and if you have deep rooted flaws in your skiing it think it takes time to iron it out on the dry slope.

Stick with it sounds like you are enjoying it... I can feel a L1 course coming your way.....

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GrahamN, Do you ski at Bracknell by any chance?

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

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(ickabodblue answered elsewhere)

easiski re "natural", it looks like we've both turned completely about since our last discussion on this, when you were arguing for front/sole of the foot when descending a slope and I was arguing for heel. I guess we must just be wired completely differently. Again, I think it depends on the surface; if on soft earth/scree I'd use the in-hill side of my foot, but that would still be standing on the flat platform that forms under the boot, but on a harder surface I'd use as much boot-sole as possible. Now that does mean that the ankles will be strongly pronated/supinated, but in the opposite direction to what you'd want for ski-edge grip. Same thing applies actually when traversing on skins - you want as much of the ski-base/skin on the slope as possible, rather than edge, so have to overcome mentally the ski-taught tendency to put as much edge on as possible. Also, for those of us not living on a hillside, this is still not everyday experience. So I think I hold to my contention Wink

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re not being taught properly, "you might think that - but I couldn't possibly comment". It was interesting that the most radical changes happened in the better skiers, and particularly the instructors (the one guy who was doing this perfectly from the start though, of course, was the CSCF coach). I think that's due to them spending so much time with beginners and early intermediates, and doing centred/balanced demoes, that they'd just forgotten how to push out of their comfort zone. And no wonders, but maybe a breach in the odd road-block to better skiing. One or two of them did also mention that they now see more of what they're aiming at and why sorting some of the even more basic stuff is important. Not quite got that far with one or two others though Wink

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skimottaret, I doubt L1 is on the cards, as I don't fancy a lifetime of backwards snowploughs at 0.1mph. Something like APC could be in the offing though - although I've got some serious technical improvements I want to make in my own skiing over the next season that will take some intensive practice. At present though I don't feel I have remotely enough experience to make anything more than the odd guest appearance, like these couple of weeks, to let the odd bee out of my bonnet. Actually related to that, it looks like a power-struggle/personality-clash we've had over the last year or so is well on the way to being resolved happily (which will be good), and one of the likely outcomes will be some coaching in coaching, which it looks like I could well be up for - provided I can work out how to get both in.

I think we probably need some of comprex's thought processes to relate Middle Coronary Arteries or Microsoft Channel Architecture to skiing technique - Make Communication Audible? The theoretical explanation was actually little different from, and no more deatiled than, para 4 of my OP, and went down pretty well. Those of us interested had a more detailed conversation back in the clubhouse afterwards. I think it's really important, particularly as adults, and most particularly as adults who've been doing stuff in one way for a long time, to understand why we're trying to do something different and some idea of what it should feel like when we're there. You can then concentrate on the particular aspect of what you're trying to achieve when doing the exercise - and worry less about the stuff that will be going not quite right at that time, which you'll concentrate on separately at a different time. In any event, it seemed to click with a fair number of them.

It was particularly interesting, as commented afterwards by one of the guys, particularly when doing the S turns, that when done right it compressed a whole load of exercises we've done over the past year or so into about 2 seconds: pedalling, "motorbike turns", "chewing-gum turns", fore-aft balance/centring, upper/lower-body separation, plus the angulation and knee drive I'd been banging on about, and ILE ( Wink

) gets in there too. We quite often do cognitive overload stuff as well (doing random stuff with batons while doing some below the waist activity), but this seems to do it quite naturally Very Happy

. About the only thing I forgot to throw into the mix was the teapot/Schlopy exercise Laughing

- which I have done on occasions in my own practice, skimottaret, but not for a while - I'm concentrating more now on trying to get a pole plant in there somewhere and work out how it'll work well for me. Actually, it sounds like it may be help in your own skiing - and from the sounds of it Emma will be throwing it at us in a few weeks anyway.

david@mediacopy, the "circling the kness" (or 'knees' even rolling eyes

) was something introduced to me a few months ago by one of Bracknell's coaches, as an anti-A-frame technique, but I was using it here primarily as a tip-engagement assist. When initiating a carved turn we normally think about rolling the ankles/knees to the side. This though does mean than one leg is adducting and one abducting, so we're trying to get the same action but from two different sets of muscles - and so it's not necessarily all that easy to get them matched, and it's easy to drop into an A-frame. If instead you push your knees and flex your ankles forward, you're starting the motion with an entirely equal muscle activity, so it's easy to keep that initial motion matched. Once you've got the joints in motion, it's then easier to also get the sideways motion matched. So at the start of the turn the knees describe the first half of a circle. Coming out of the turn you can just let them relax back to neutral, or if you want a bit of a tail-drive jet you can carry on round the circle - but being sure you recentre as you come out of it. As I said, this is a CSCF thing, so if I've missed something - or over-interpreted it in extending it - someone like veeeight should be able to supply a correction.

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GrahamN, Maximum Class Activity..... Very little discussion on the key points when on slope and then a fuller debrief in the bar works for me.....

after you and everyone else shows me up at the snoworks SL course you can take my spot on the APM course in March.... It will be going cheap wink

After all it is free

GrahamN, Ta. Smile

GrahamN, re the knees, thats pretty much it, I tend to develop it by going into rollerblade turns on gentle terrain for long distances, but obviously not easily possible on plastik. Confused

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Mental Blocks

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