Friday, March 4, 2011

A Great Coaching Cue for Hip Dumping, Twisting and Leveleing of the hip in Skiing


We flipped on the video camera while Liat, Alisa and I were having a conversation about how a day on the snow practicing a coaching cue for hip movements really helped me understand how to move my hips more precisely and more efficiently in the turn.

Rick Vetromille, lead trainer at Aspen Mountain gave me this very interesting coaching cue to try to get my hips to move into the turn without twisting. Remember, this is a coaching cue, a concept to think about while you are practicing.

When you are skiing, it is very difficult to feel the pelvis moving, because your proprioceptive awareness around the hip joint is quite low. Many of us struggle with dumping, setting, tracking of the hip (if you do, you've probably heard those words and gotten that feedback), bracing, hiking, over-lifting, or twisting of the hip.

We tend to be good at moving it, just with large, imprecise movements. Since the hip can be the heaviest part of our body (hello, ladies...) its a really important piece to move with precision.

Keep in mind that the lower you get over the snow, you path you take to move back across with have a bit of a "sine wave" to it. But the intention, the concept, the coaching cue, is the same.

This helps tremendously with dumping of the hip, hips tracking with the skis, one hip coming around in one turn, an inability to level the hip, a contrived hip leveling (through lifting) and all kinds of other hip issues.

If this coaching cue works for you, go practice the drills and see how it might affect your accuracy in your lateral or tipping movements in your more dynamic turns!

(By the way, if the coaching cue works well for you, try it in all the turns, pull it through all your skiing: Wedge, Wedge Christie, Open Parallel, Short Turns, Medium Radius Dynamic and so on)

The discussion about counter, being over the outside ski, and all that can flow from here is also interesting, but lets focus on the hip position in the conversation that follows. That's the main point.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

YES! Next time I'll film this in white pants or in front of a white sheet! Whoops! But I think you see what I mean...

Scott said...

Very nice vid. You present very well...easy to understand. Time for me to take it on the snow! Thanks for sharing your expertise. What are the chances of you putting up more of these videos?