Lesson 3
The lessons have resumed!
My plan for private lessons last season got aborted by the closure of ski resorts. This season I picked up where I left off by practicing the changes Bruce introduced in the group lesson last year. And I had my first private lesson with Bruce last week. I plan to continue with Bruce for some time, so one of my goals was to establish good communication with him and teach him what to expect from me. I started by talking about upper-lower separation which we worked on some in the group lesson, that some people tell us to keep our jacket zipper facing downhill, that I will do that and then start internalizing “what am I feeling?” and translate the movement into something that is personal for me. In the case of upper-lower separation, what
I feel is the position of my collarbones. Bruce was more than receptive to the way I personalize instructions. He said what I’m doing is building awareness and creating my own cues ... cues that I can access while skiing in order to assess and adjust. That led to “what are you going to focus on for this warm-up run”. I named some things. And he said “maybe instead just be aware of what you feel first, then use your cues to fix whatever isn’t working”. That’s right … he listened to me and then used my process against me! Dammit! And that was the first lift ride up.
During the next run, I made two bad turns, each time not releasing the uphill ski at the end of the turn. I stopped, waited for Bruce to stop, and told him. He acknowledged it and we skied on. The whole lesson was that way. Bruce let me talk, listen, or process as much as I needed. I felt we established a really good foundation for our lessons. Bruce, on the other hand, may be looking into changing his identity!
In the end, this lesson was about upper-lower separation and improving my turns.
Drills we did:
Ski with both arms extended out to the sides, poles dangling down, and keeping the “T” of arms and torso pointed down the hill. I started doing this in a slow, exaggerated way, in part to better feel what I was doing, but also to start stretching those parts that don’t normally get used so much.
On a cat track, ski up the bank, flatten skis, and point them down the bank. The exercise is about flattening and then turning the flat skis, not about going high up onto the bank.
Stand on the hill, skis across the fall line, facing the side of the trail. Move torso to face downhill-ish. Stretch it farther and identify where/what I feel. What I felt was tension in the outside of my downhill thigh … maybe the IT band?
Traverse across the hill on edges, then flatten the skis and slide, then back to edges, then back to flat skis. I started the traverse with my torso facing the other side of the trail, then turned it to face downhill. This is not ideal … I was rotating my torso, not rotating my legs. I am using the word “rotating” pretty liberally there. I think I was actually twisting my torso, not really rotating at the hip socket.
Variation on Hockey Stop – Ski down the hill, rotate flat skis to the side, and slide on flat skis. Stay facing downhill. If you are rotating the skis, you can stay on line. If you don’t – that would be me – you start a turn, then flatten the skis. An exercise for this is to find a long shadow from a tree. Slide down the hill in line with the shadow, rotate the skis, and sideslip. The goal is to ski and slide down that shadow. I would end up about two tree shadows over from where I started.
[Making these notes, it felt as if we did a lot of different sliding/separation drills. And I seemed unable to slide much at all that day. (Which may be why we did so many different drills … trying to find even ONE that I would do well!) Even side slipping was ugly. No idea why. I finally had to just make a mental note to practice sliding on flat skis, forward or sideways, every time I’m out. Once I am doing that better, I will start building on it.]
Ski slowly, use edges to make a turn, then flatten the skis at the end of the turn and slide, use edges to turn in the other direction, flatten the skis at the end of the turn and slide, etc. This was to change my habit of trying to just flip from one edge of the skis to the other.
[I tried synchronizing this with some arm movements. Start with both arms extended to the sides in that "T" shape. As I turned to the left, pull in my left arm and keep my right arm extended. This helped me focus on keeping my right collarbone facing down the hill. As the left turn ended and I was supposed to flatten the skis and slide straight, I would start to extend my left arm and fold in my right one. At first, this was really helpful. The rhythm (or lack thereof) of my arms made me very aware of holding onto a turn too long or rushing into the next turn. Maybe 30 yards later, it all became a blur as if I had a data overload. It was an interesting experiment.]
Make “J” turns and, at the end, flatten the skis and let them slide, even to the point of sliding backwards some. Backwards in this case has the skis sliding on a diagonal, not straight downhill.
In addition, I should start to be aware of my hand positions relative to the slope of the hill. Having the downhill hand lower than the uphill hand helps with pressure on the downhill ski.
At the end, we skied some to put it all together and see how it was affecting my turns. The position:
- Arms/poles forward, hands at the level of the belly button
- Arms held out from the sides of the body
[I tend to keep my arms closer to my body. This restricts the spine.]
- Slightly round the back
[Without doing this, it can begin to feel like an effort to hold the poles in the correct position. Rounding the back allows the poles to hang in a more relaxed way. What I have found in practice is instead of rounding my back, if I just tighten my core, I get the same rounding effect but also get the extra stability that comes with tightening my core.]
Outcome: From my perspective, my turns seemed more consistent, more solid, and my skis didn’t seem to have a mind of their own with the uphill ski wandering off at the end of a turn. Bruce was much more positive – he said that at the beginning of the lesson, I had some extra movement in my turns. I would start to turn one ski and then have to move the other one to catch up to it. (I was not aware I was doing this.) After working on upper-lower separation, my skis were moving in unison through the turns.
Practice has been interesting. In addition to working on building muscle memory, I have managed each day to wander into form-breaking trouble … moguls or something too steep or too chopped up for me to maintain form. Those will be some personal milestones to reach for over the course of the season. Thursday was especially interesting. First, a snowboarder crashed 20-30 yards away from me, dislocating his shoulder. Then, on another run, a boy about 4 or 5 years old straightlined at high speed and clipped the back of my skis as I made a turn. He stopped by deliberately falling over as he entered trees. Later I found myself in some soft moguls. Trying to negotiate my way thru them, my skis got away from me. I managed to stay upright, which may not have been the best thing, and bounced across a couple of moguls. When I stopped, it was because my skis were herringboned around a mogul with a ski implanted IN each side. Maybe I should have a lesson (or 6) in moguls.
Given all the little events on Thursday, I kept asking myself throughout the day, "so, how are you doing?" It was usually "hmmm, ok, I guess". After double-harpooning that mogul, all I could say was "sucking like Stormy Daniels".