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If You Could Fix One Thing In Your Skiing, This Is It!
PSIA Nordic Demo Team Tip
Fundamentals, they carry the success of all athletes. Same goes for XC skiers.
The fundamental skill that will unlock your full potential is very simple: body position("ing"). Since your equipment and the terrain you ski are never static and always changing, your body position is really a body position("ing"). You rarely get into one position and just stay there, instead you master a few fundamentals in order to adjust and compensate for the changes in terrain and equipment position.
So let' start with what good body position is.
You know the look: rounded shoulders, rounded spine, knees bent, ankles flexed, hips over your ankle bones, weight just behind the ball of your foot.
Easy to do when you're not skating up a steep hill!
The key component of mastering the fundamentals of Body Position is mastering the idea of functional tension. Functional tension allows you to flex and extend, climb up hills and switch gears and zoom over variable terrain with the greatest of ease. Functional tension puts the "ing" in body position
ing
If you can do this on dry land, how do you translate it into actual skiing? Easy, ski backwards.
Stand backwards at the top of a moderate hill. Put your skis in a "V," just like your normal skate stance going up a hill. Start sliding backwards a few feet and stop. Don't use your poles. Stop by widening your stance and smearing your skis in a reverse snow plow. Put one hand on your butt and another hand on your stomach. Bend your knees and flex your ankles and sink down. Feel your butt resist pushing backwards. With the other hand feel your stomach muscles tightening. Slide down the hill and stop as many times as you can. Every time you stop, check your stance. You've got to make sure your butt isn't back!
Remember, you CAN'T lie to the hill. If you're not in an efficient body position, the hill will tell you. If you do it correctly, you won't get any wobble, slipping or pitching forward.
After mastering the backward slide, try a backward slide and stop. Then, ski up that same hill forward, keeping your hands on your stomach and butt. Maintain that same functional tension. Now stop, slide backward. Stop, ski forward. Stop, backward. Stop, forward. You get the idea? Ski several cycles of this drill till mastery.
Good body position means applying functional tension as you pole and climb, resisting the urge to let your butt fall backwards or your upper body to pitch forward. The ultimate goal is to maintain a dynamic body positioning. Everyone can duplicate a good stance while they are standing still, but it's much harder to maintain great body positioning while skiing.
Leave Boring Behind!
David Lawrence PSIA Nordic Demo Team
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