Fluidity - a glass half full?

A snowHead

Some while ago the bold goat herding megamum kicked off a wee thread on fluid skiing. Reading the "counter" thread elsewhere I had a little thought and thought worthy of elevating for consideration. (Fatbob, you have got to be happy about all these generated-just-to-keep-you-happy threads?)

Watching a good skier descending with grace, style and fluidity is aways a joy.

In the counter thread, Fastman suggests it being good to have improving skiers squarer on their skis. Which made me think.

What makes "fluid" skiing? To me, there are (at least two but I've go to dash) elements.

a. constant and continual absorption of terrain & stable, calm upper body.

b. dynamic adaptation to terrain - counter/no counter, anticipation/no_anticipation.

Thoughts, comments, criticism?

A snowHead

under a new name, I think I'd add continual smooth movement... the better skiers I know don't have a 'stop and go' look to their turns. No hucking over - no sudden changes in body position(skis may redirect quickly) No sudden moves to plant a pole(it is there when they need it)

Also no extraneous movement(no funky chicken arms for instance)

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little tiger, yep, I'd agree with that.

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I know I say it a lot but in the case of fluidity I think time and mileage has a lot to do with it - I've seen instructor clinics trying to teach fluidity or flow but I'm not sure it can be directly coached as to me its more about being relaxed with what you're doing. A lot of elements which contribute to it obviously can be coached such as technical elements, tactical choices, looking a couple of turns ahead (the other kind of anticipation) and "feel".

I'd agree that arms can ruins a lot of good stuff that goes on with the legs (I speak as a master door opener).

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under a new name, Old? Old!!! Goat herding I don't have so much of a problem with, but hey.................all those on here older than me - you must all qualify as ancient!! Laughing

OK, fluidity - I think what contributes most to me not looking fluid is the fact that I still have a tendency to ski as physically stiff as a board. I think if I were to ski more 'floppy' I would look more 'fluid'.

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under a new name, fluid skiing is a worthy goal to strive for, and as you say, very enjoyable to witness when the rare individual is seen coming down the mountain skiing that way. You and little tiger have hit on the major components of fluid skiing.

fatbob, you've touched on the crux of topic. How do you get there, and can it be taught? Like you, I see it as more of a byproduct of a menagerie of skill development in all the sport's technical areas, than a skill in-and-of itself. A quiet upper body is very much a symbolic element of fluid skiing, but it's generally not born of a simple suggestion to do it. Extraneous upper body movements are nothing more than a visible manifestation of a deeper rooted issue. little tiger's, funky chicken arm flailing is a symptom of lacking skills in other areas. It could be an attempt to use the arms to generate a turning force to twist the skis into the start of a turn. It could also be a desperate attempt to try to remain locked in a limited balance comfort zone, flailing madly with the arms to recover to that narrow zone at any perceived sign of drifting out of it.

All that arm english stuff goes away as balance skills, and edging skills, are expanded and refined.

Well developed edging skills also play a huge role in the emergence of visible fluidity. Pivot free, clean entry turn initiations help project a unique model of fluidity. When done well the skis seem to flow into each new turn seemingly of their own accord, with the skier appearing to have done very little to make the turn happen, and with no sudden or aggressive movements ever taking place throughout the transition process.

Fluidity can be present in carved or steered turns. In fluid carved turns, edge angles rise and lower very smoothly and progressively, with no sudden spikes or reductions. In steered turns, keeping turn shapes and skid angles consistent throughout a turn, and developing those skid angles very subtly, produces extremely fluid skiing. The ability to do that comes from going back to the basics and honing one's edging skill prowess over a broad range.

Fluidity can be displayed in any balance state; fore,,, aft,,, centered,,, outside ski,,, inside ski,,, or any variance or combination. The trick is to either maintain a single state with seemingly little effort, or to move in and out of different states with progressive and smooth movements that display an image of relaxed and effortless calm. Again, the ability to do that comes from a concerted effort to build one's balance skills. The fluidity and effortlessness just come as the skills grow.

Bottom line; skiing with fluidity does not come from simply trying to ski that way. It comes from learning the skills of the sport.

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Megamum, sorry, typo, I meant to type BOLD

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little tiger, Obviously mileage alone doesn't do it: garbage in, more confident garbage out. But under my definition a series of skidded or pivot turns can be "fluid" as I don't equate the term with carved technically perfectly. I think of a line through trees that progresses at a constantish downhill speed without hesitation, significant traversing moves or emergency stops. Its actually formally judged in freeride contests.

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fatbob, Me neither - the difference between a high level and lower level steered turn is often in initiation(in terms of flow)... it is very common to rush initiation - often as a result of a poor finish... due to a rushed initiation... Shocked

Well you get the picture...

under a new name, did you hell!! Laughing

FastMan, very encouraging - thank you!! Very Happy

What I have noticed is that I've tried more different things in the last couple of trips - Off piste deep stuff (just a little), fresh tracks in a foot of new powder on piste in the dark under floodlights (amazing), 50 yards or so of various bumps between pistes (interesting!), steeper stuff (got all the way down Aiguille Rouge in Les Arc on an afternoon after it had been very well used - proud of that I was Very Happy

), sheer stuff with all the loose snow blown off, a bit faster etc. and what I am finding is that, although I am still more than lacking in technique, there is much less fear than there was. However, there must still be some reservation, because I would think if I wasn't scared I would be more fluid (less stiff). Or is it that I'm still thinking too hard? As I ski I still think about it, sometimes I am even conscious of the 'cogs turning'. I think it's a bit like that cycle they teach you about in management courses:

"The Four Stages of Learning are an explanation of how people learn something, progressing from 1. Unconscious Incompetence (you don't know that you don't know something), to 2. Conscious Incompetence (you are now aware that you are incompetent at something), to 3. Conscious Competence (you develop a skill in that area but have to think about it), to the final stage 4. Unconscious Competence (you are good at it and it now comes naturally). " - culled from wikipaedia so I don't have to type it again.

Maybe to be fluid at skiing you need to be at the unconciously competent stage, and maybe that's why I'm still stiff.

You know it makes sense.

But I don't think every competent skier is also "fluid", which implies a degree of grace. Fastman might remember the dancer who tried to teach a group of us salsa. She was "fluid" - it would be easy to find examples of people who know all the steps, and are very nimble and accurate, but not fluid/graceful.

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

pam w, You could be right, the contestants in strictly come dancing find that don't they? They often teach someone all the steps, but they are not graceful with it and don't do so well. Some of that seems down to physical ability (which could be linked to physical fitness)/physical form - Joe Calzaggi was never going to be a naturally graceful dancer due to his build, but I think just as much with graceful dancing is down to natural ability. This is what bothers me with skiing - I want to do it well and I want it to look natural, but I don't know if I have any natural ability I can tap into. Dancing I am fine with - I think I dance naturally - I have rhythm, balance, flow etc. The same qualities that helped me ride horses. But I don't know if I have any natural skiing ability - I might be a skier that can ulitmately learn to make all the right moves, but I might never ski 'naturally' and therefore I doubt I will ever look as fluid as someone with natural ability.

FastMan, how much of fluidity will be down to inherent natural ability?

A snowHead

Megamum, I think you're being a little hard on yourself. You haven't spend that long on skis yet - and it's not an activity that comes very naturally to most of us. You seem to have made a lot of progress, given how little time you've had - many people never try off piste, for example. I know you have rejected the suggestion in the past, but if you are a good dancer you might find skiing to music does help with the fluidity. (Just don't tell parlor).

A snowHead

pam w,

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

pam w, Ah, but it come naturally to kids and when you think about it whilst they are somewhat uncoordinated at times, most kids seem inherently fluid even if they are not skiing technically well. It might be useful to consider kids in the fluidity equation as well - what makes kids fluid when they ski?

N.B. I think I did get as far as singing to myself once or twice this year. Toofy Grin

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Megamum, trouble with singing is that you can too easily sing in time to your turns, rather than vice versa. Like playing a piece of music without a metronome; you slow down in the fast bits. wink

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Hi All - Newbie to Snowheads here...

The thing that's helped me become more fluid over the past year is concentrating on breathing whilst letting my shoulder tension go. All my movements in life not just skiing tend to be tense and done by brute force and that's something I've been trying to change. After 15 years of one on one lessons my Instructor (Italian) got a bit more "yogic" and it does seem to have helped me significantly. I've still got a lifetime's worth of ingrained movement patterns to unpick though. Still... it'll keep me busy.

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Daviamo, welcome to Snowheads!

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Fluidity (IMO) comes from practice and a solid base of skills; when I'm teaching at higher levels I always talk about aiming to ski like we walk (ie. not thinking about it). We are looking for smooth movements that you can make without thinking about it.

It comes from confidence, trusting your skis (back to confidence), trusting your skills and being happy with the threat levels and conditions.

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thirty06, that all sounds very sensible. You do indeed see the WC racers doing all sorts of stretches before they start, and I dare say we just see the tip of the iceberg. Because I ski to music and am old enough not to feel self-conscious about making a dick of myself, I often get warm on a nasty morning by doing great big up and down movements, to the music. Up with arms outstretched above my head, down with hands near the snow - holding sticks in the middle (whilst skiing - I don't stand in one place and do all that). I also muck about with "Saturday Night Fever turns", jumps from leg to leg, all sorts of rubbish. Dancing down the piste. A particularly good use of easy runs such as our almost 5km run home. I do sometimes try to persuade beginners I'm with to try the Saturday Night Fever turns - they often find it difficult to move their arms more than a couple of inches. The Macarena might just get them going. That and/or a large vin chaud. wink

Most people would do well to stop faffing about "how they look" and focus on how they feel. If they feel apprehensive and tentative that's how they're going to look. A bit more fun is what's called for.

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pam_w

Sounds about right.

I guess half of it is physical. Cold muscles really won't move as well and deliver. The other half might be characterised as loss of inhibition. Not to the extent that those Austrians do who seem to get featured skiing in the altogether, but there is nothing like being self conscious about your skiing 'style' to create a skiing style that everyone will stare at wondering "Who has stuck that Moss Bros dummy on a pair of skis".

I think karate classes are a fair comparison. Standing in a pair of white pyjamas on a wooden floor while a bunch of seriously keen folk beat seven shades out of a punch bag can make you feel kind of a nana. Especially if you've changed styles and are wearing a pristine white belt. Eventually you get used to summoning up some spirit and can lose the inhibition sufficiently to get stuck in. A darned good running and jumping session before hand helps. If you don't have to think about what to do, but just respond to "Ich Nee San Yon Go" it gets easier.

Likewise I felt quite unfluid the forst time I went to race training. I went from being one of the best skiers in a holiday group to being a total beginner among a bunch of rubber legged youths who carved figure 8 GS turns on Dendix before the warm up started. I blew out every run for fear of whacking into one of those painful looking poles. The noise of my hand gaurds hitting the poles was even more alarming. Then I was competing and managed to beat one of the race team. I remember weaving round th poles of the verticale and momentarily thinking "Strewth, I am standing just like the people I wished I could ski like". Admittedly my opponent in the dual slalom was hampered by the lack of wax on her 110 Minnie Mouse skis.

The intermediate class really do need to be made to realise that standing around feeling cold is holding back their progress and possibly putting them at risk. One skier did do a few bends and stretches after I related how I used ot not bother with a warm up until I put my back out on a "warm up" run on an easy blue at Tignes. The one from the free chair at whatever it is that isn't Le Lac. One moment I was an averagely bad cold skier, the next I was a rigid lump of agony who couldn't turn right. Three days of skiing lost and the indignity of being hoisted into a minibus taxi by my wife and the driver convinced me to prevent this in future. I couldn't bend enough to get into a seat, so they positioned me with my hem hem against the side of a seat and then grabbed my feet and shoved me across the seats like a roll of carpet.

I have just sat through a lecture and the lecturer, a sports coach, digressed inot an anecdote about a court case where a sports coach lost his case because a participant in his class turned up late and was told to join in. With no warm up the latecomer suffered injury anf it was decoded that the coach had breached his duty of care by noy saying "get yourself warmed up and then join in". That rang a couple of bells with me. My karate instructor would always tell latecomers to warm up before joining in, in ski classes people turn up late, clip in and just join in.

I reckon I'll have to stop the lifts for the warm up and tell the class to leave their skis in a line. Then I'll announce a rce to the top and back with a Le Mans start.

We do a full warm-up routine at the clinics we run at Hemel. General warm-up to get CV system working hard, dynamic stretching and then clients put their skis on and do a couple of runs to get a feel for their skis. Useful physically, but for me the best outcome of the warm-up is the psychological readiness to ski. People are more "up for it". Quite simply people ski better from the outset with a warm-up and than they do without.

You know it makes sense.

rob@rar. Totally agree. Once you summon up the blood, you can say "What the hell!" and chuck yourself down a slope.

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

For me though, fluidity isn't about being "up for it" or gung-ho. It's not a confidence issue. I have to make a conscious effort to let the tension out of my body whatever I am doing. This can be whether I am doing gentle big turns (parallelo) turns on a nursery slope, buzzing the trees off piste, standing at home cleaning my teeth, or trying to improve my picking speed on the guitar. I am naturally tense and try too hard. Sometimes less is more.

A snowHead

thirty06, hmm, I disagree. I don't warm up for skiing. Doesn't affect my fluidity, or possible lack of it.

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under a new name, but you're not a middle aged inactive female near-beginner, are you? And you ski a great deal.

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

pam w, hmmm

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under a new name.

Nor did I. Instructorsand the like had the group doing bends and stretches that were way too easy and I could drop into a box split with no warm up.

Then a few years passed and one day I decided to take it easy at Tignes. I started late and went for a warm up run on an easy blue. My back went out and I lost three days skiing. After that I decided that a warm up was needed.

If I just ski then it takes about half an hour to get moving properly. The class I'm assisting with are like a stack of 2 by 4 until we're halfway through the lesson.

I'd still make you drop down and give me twenty just to see if it helped.

Daviamo, it depends on the source of the tension. If it's nervous then I ask people to breathe out and relax down, feel for their centre and try to be loose, alternatively, an imaginary glass of gluhwein helps a bit. If the tension is because they've just stepped out of a car and are visibly clenched from the cold then I think that ten minutes of exertion might help.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

look bigger, not at the next pitch change you are skiing too, nor the tree you are aiming to get to in 200m, nor the next turn in the gnarly icy bump field you find yourself in but the bottom of the run, the bottom of the mountain. Imagining your whole descent from top to bottom will let you make the most natural use of the terrain features available, let you ride the mountain rather than the little bit of slope in front of you.

Especially relevant when people try to move into terrain outwith the pistes is the ability to look bigger. To ski the mountain and not to be limited by the slope immediately in front of you. If you look to bigger freeride lines there are points where the top riders, Julien Lopez/ Henrik Windstedt/ Aurelien Ducroz, would be unable to stop if asked, they are reliant on the run out zone where the gradient lessens and they can scrub the speed acquired.

Fluidity in my opinion requires a larger view of the line being ridden, that lets the rider smoothly gain and lose speed, change direction gradually and adjust their balance in respect to the slope as a whole and not just a drastic movement to deal with the immediate terrain feature in front of them.

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eclectic, The importance of the "line" taken is one reason why the right kind of "follow my leader" ski lessons can be very valuable - I've followed some instructors, closely, at speeds a fair bit higher than I would take myself on the piste in question but that's partly because I have stopped having to decide for myself where to go to avoid endangering anyone else. On my own I'd have to ski slower (though not slowly) to be fully safe - we don't want people on pistes aiming for the bottom and unable to stop half way down, do we?

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Fluidity - a glass half full?

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