UPPER BODY MOVEMENT

Which picture best exemplifies the way you bring your hand/pole forward when skiing?

In blog post #1, I described lifting the leg without any forward motion of the body's mass is a waste of time and energy, so to is the arm lift (the male lifting the dumbbell).  If you are experiencing shoulder pain then you are lifting from the shoulder rather than pressing forward by driving from the hips (like the female with the resistance band).

When the pole(s) hit the snow we want to have our body weight on top of them so that we can maximize downward pressure.  Effective and efficient poling is based on the principle of leverage.

The further you can get your body's mass forward of your feet, the more force you can apply downward on the poles.  The beauty of leveraging your body's mass is that it means you don't need to have massive shoulder muscles to double pole up a hill.

One of the best ways to learn how to get your body weight forward (i.e., bring your hips forward) is by doing kettle bell swings.

The kettle bell is brought forward to shoulder height by the hip swinging forward, not by the lifting the arms.  In double poling you would snap your hips forward of the feet and fall onto the poles.

Leveraging should only be done in the forward direction (body ahead of the toes).  There is an old school version of offset that says to lean onto the uphill pole (shoulder goes way outside of the ankles).

I call this the "wobbling top".  The upper body mass is being thrown all over the place like a spinning top that is ready to topple.

Your spine should stay vertical.  The shoulder blades should never extend laterally past the hips.   Look again at picture of the girls offset-ing and you will see that one pole is not contributing to the forward propulsion of the skier.  Compare the girls to the skier below where both poles are coming forward so that both poles will be used in forward propulsion.  The modern offset poling resembles the double pole technique.

If you are experiencing elbow pain the most likely culprit is you aren't locking your elbows and initiating with an ab crunch.  Like the gym exercise on the ab rocker, you want to let the abs initiate the downward push onto the poles

and then finish off with pushing with the arms.

If you are not using your abs during poling (double poling or single poling), then you are pushing  solely with your arms and you will experience tennis elbow (inflammation of the tendons of the elbow caused by overuse of the muscles in the forearm).

POSTURE

A Swedish study revealed that the majority of recreational cross country skiers suffered back pains.

As someone who has broken his back and now lives with back pain, I have spent a lot of time studying the cause of back pain in skiing so that I can avoid it.  The number one cause of back pain in skiing is hyper-extending of the back.

Personal trainers do a butt toning exercise called Donkey Kicks.

You can see that her back is arched when her right leg kicks back and up.  Diagonal stride technique, if done incorrectly, is very similar to this movement.  Worse yet, cross country skiers will do hours of hyper-extension as opposed to a few sets of donkey kicks in the gym.  The end result is lower back pain.

The correct posture in skiing, both classic and skate, is not to arch the back but to do the opposite, to be in a soft "C" posture.  The soft "C" means the tailbone is tucked under slightly and the shoulders are rolled forward.  When you are lying on the ground doing crunches, you are actually in the soft "C" posture.

With your lower back flat to the ground and your shoulder blades off the ground, you have the ideal power ski posture.  If you took the drawing of the ab crunch and rotated it so that the lower back was parallel to the skier's back angle, you can see, particularly in the middle frame, that the skier has the ab crunch posture!

 



The single move that causes back pain during skiing is pulling the shoulders back.  As you bring your poles forward (double pole, diagonal stride, one-skate) do not stand up tall and bring the shoulders like the Nordic walker pictured below.  It is this move that creates the hyper-extension or arching of the back.

Look again at the 3 frames of the diagonal stride skier and you will notice that his spine angle (and thus his shoulders) is forward through the entire stride sequence.  He never arches his back!

The soft "C" posture is maintained in both skating and classic.

Enjoy pain free skiing by maintaining the right posture!

FUNDAMENTAL SKI SKILL

Ski balance is not inner peace that one finds from being on a corduroy track with the sun shining and the crisp air flowing through your hair as you effortlessly glide.  Though that is a type of balance but I am talking about physically balancing on a moving ski.

Many skiers fail to achieve balance because they do not set themselves up for success.  Inanimate objects, like domino tiles, will stand up if the centre of mass is over the base of support.  If the centre of mass is not directly over the base of support, it will topple over.

Your body's centre of mass is located just behind the belly button.

So if your base of support is your left foot, you need to get your centre of mass over that foot.  In the picture below there is no question as to the ski balance of racer #2.

But notice that there is something very different about ski balance and say yoga balance.

We are in motion!  We are not static!  As you push off one ski to stand on the other ski your new catchphrase should be "landing in balance" or more specifically "landing in alignment".  In Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS) I talked about getting the centre of mass moving so that when the foot lands on the step, the body is already over it.  So if you are mindfully practicing your FMS then the next progression is to do it in alignment.

Alignment means keeping the points of the spine - belly button and sternum, in particular - over the foot.  It doesn't matter which way your body is facing (I won't go into the rotation/no-rotation debate) as long as the "chakras" are aligned over your base of support (foot or ski)

Look at the earlier picture of the ski racers again.  Did you notice that all the skiers' shoulders were level?  That their "chakras" were vertical and over the foot?  

One of the best ways to learn to do this is with a slide board.

If you have a slide board you can practice this action by pushing off one guard (in the picture below the hockey player is pushing off his left foot and moving towards his right) and as you slide across to the other guard, you keep your weight over top of that foot.



When you hit the opposite guard your centre of mass should be over the foot already.  This is what we call "landing in balance".  Don't let the fact that the push leg (in the picture below it is her right leg)  is still on the ground because all the weight is on the glide leg (that is her left leg).



If you don't have a slide board but have linoleum floors then you can create your own "slide board" by wearing socks that will slide on the linoleum.  

Tip: you will find it easier to land in alignment if you recover the leg under your body so that the leg and torso slide across already in alignment!  Ignore the arm position but look at this hockey player's alignment as he begins to push to his right.



Do not let the foot lead or get ahead of the torso because that will result in vaulting!  If the young man in the picture below was an XC skier he would never achieve balance on his skis because like the domino tile his centre of mass is not over his base of support, i.e., his foot.  His centre of mass is stuck between his feet.



Even though all these pictures are of skating, the same concept of landing in alignment applies to all techniques that require weight transfer to stand on one ski.