Category Archives: Ski Instruction

Pelvic tilt

Incorrect pelvic tilt has interested me for years. It often goes undiagnosed and can be the cause of many technical problems for skiers. And it’s not just a beginner’s problem. I skied around for years with exactly this issue. I must have disguised it pretty well – none of my coaches, trainers or examiners picked up on it. I knew I had a problem: my left turns skidded more than my right turns. I’d figured out that this was due to my right hip pushing out when I tried to angulate in left turns and this flattened the ski causing loss of grip. But try as I might to angulate more, it seemed to make the problem worse. I knew there was a blockage somewhere, but couldn’t isolate the cause. Then quite by chance, while I was working on pelvic tilt in another context, I noticed my hip problem had gone away! It also cured a peculiar left arm position that I had – kind of hanging out to the side and back when turning left – but I never connected the two. The moral of this story? If you have a problem with pelvic tilt, you may find it difficult to diagnose, even with video feedback and help from an instructor.

Pelvic tilt is rarely mentioned in manuals and books. Ron LeMaster’s update to The Skier’s Edge, Ultimate Skiing now has a brief treatment of lower back posture (pp 62-3). Lito’s Breakthrough on Skis has always mentioned a relaxed lower back as a pre-requisite for separation of upper and lower body. And R Mark Elling’s The All Mountain Skier has a paragraph tucked away at the back describing hollow back syndrome and “dinosaur arms”. But by far the most rigorous treatment is in John Sheddon’s 1982(!!) book Skillful Skiing. I’ve always been impressed by Snowsport England’s approach to skier analysis, and John’s book still leads the way – 30 years on!

So what is pelvic tilt and why is it important? Your pelvis connects your legs to your upper body:

The angle of the pelvis is controlled by the muscles in the lower back. Excessive tension in these muscles causes the pelvis to tilt either downwards (anterior) or upwards (posterior) relative to its neutral, relaxed position, thereby blocking independent movement of lower and upper body.

 

 

 

A skier with excessive downwards pelvic tilt. Note the hollow back, shortened arms and pulled-back shoulders. This skier will tend to move torso and legs together as a unit and will not be able to angulate properly to edge the skis, causing excessive skidding.

 

 

 

 

Excessive upward pelvic tilt looks like this. It is less common than downward tilt. This skier will tend to sit back, causing excess pressure on the back of the skis, making it difficult to turn without using the whole body.

 

 

 

But it’s not always as obvious as this.

 

Does this skier have a problem? Look out for odd arm positions, asymmetric left/right turn performance, and outside hip sticking out.

 

So, if you think you might have incorrect pelvic tilt, how do you cure it? It’s all about relaxing the muscles in the lower back. Imagine someone has just whacked you in the stomach – oof! The resulting posture – stomach pulled in, shoulders and arms forward, lower back relaxed and rounded – is a great ski position. And if you don’t have enough imagination, get someone to whack you for real …

 

Phases of learning

Some useful descriptions of the learning process:

[Fitts & Posner 1967]

Awareness (Cognitive) 1 Early I think I understand, but …
2 Late Aha! I get it
Practice (Associative) 3 Early I can’t feel it – is this OK?
4 Late It works if I think about it
Acquired (Autonomous) 5 Early I don’t have to think about it
6 Late I can trust it when the going gets tough

[Whitmore 1984]

1 Unconscious incompetence
2 Conscious incompetence
3 Conscious competence
4 Unconscious competence

Beginning turns

Ask a beginner (especially a child) how they think they might turn on skis and they will usually crank both knees to one side, imitating what they see on TV. Ask them how they might turn in a snowplough and they will crank one knee inwards. Ask them if they can think of any other ways to turn in a plough and they might say “press on one ski more than the other”, or, if prompted, “turn the skis”. It’s always seemed to me that, of the three mechanical ways to cause a ski to turn (edge, pressure, rotation), rotation is the least intuitive to the early stage learner. And yet it is the method of choice for introducing plough turning in most ski teaching systems.

Watch a skilled instructor demonstrating rotation and you will likely find it difficult to see what movements they are actually making, involving as it does a subtle rotation of the femur head in the hip socket on both legs. Perhaps this is partly the reason why the Snowsport England system recommends rotating the outside ski more than the inside ski. The rotation of both skis in a plough at the same time is also difficult to achieve at low speeds on a dry slope due to the amount of friction, which is another reason to push the outside ski round more. The disadvantage of this is that it widens the plough and reduces glide.

A further problem with teaching rotation first is that it can lead to skiers who prefer it over the other techniques of pressure and edging, and end up as “twist and skid” intermediates.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with teaching pressure as the first plough turning technique. The advantage is that it is intuitive, uses simple, obvious movements, and promotes a nice turn shape, particularly in the crucial control phase (CSIA phase 2) of the turn, from initiation through to fall line. Turn shape is something I explore in other articles, and it is proving to be one of the most important focuses in my teaching. Get a good turn shape and everything else follows more easily.

As long as you ensure that the skier doesn’t make a hip movement out over the ski to press on it (thus losing edge angle), pressure is a very effective way to introduce turning and avoid storing up problems for later.

 

 

Skier assessment & development

All teaching systems incorporate a model for assessing the performance of a skier who is carrying out a task. In BASI, there is the TIED model. CSIA has skier assessment and development. Most systems do not give too much detail about the actual fault analysis process. Below is a method I learned during a CSIA level 2 course (my thanks to Steve Young, CSIA examiner, for sharing this).

Turn shape: (turn shape = speed = balance)

  • is there snow from the side of the turn?
  • what is the skier’s speed at each point in the turn?

Symptoms:

  • are the skis lifting?
  • are they parallel?
  • does the tail follow the tip?

Causes: (planes of balance – start by looking at lower body then work upwards)

  • fore-aft movement
  • lateral movement
  • up-down movement
  • rotational movement

Specific skill development:

  • which part of the turn? (phase 1,2,3)
  • which part of the body?