So shoulders down the hill. When you see good skiers in the moguls and short turns, it kind of
looks like the shoulders are down the hill. They are, but actually, all the work is coming from
the leg rotation, and naturally, as a result, the shoulders are down the hill.
So this tip can be very useful for some people but can be misinterpreted by a lot of skiers.
People get super fixated on shoulders down the hill, and actually what happens is they
rotationally separate somewhere from the sternum. So actually we end up turning the rest of the body
underneath, here, so all of my hip has gone around my spine has gone around,
but I still feel that I'm separated because I've got my shoulders down the hill. And then, we do
the same on the other side like this, so actually, the skis just end up washing out a little bit.
It's extremely important to understand where we actually separate from. We want to actually use
more separation from the legs so the femur in the hip socket is what we're focusing on here
and not getting all twisted up underneath the shoulders. What we don't want, is to start the
turn by turning the hip. Okay so now I'm gonna go and find some nice gentle terrain and show
you a drill that will really emphasize the feel of the femur turning in the hip socket. Let's do it!
Okay so now we're gonna do a drill called the ‘Plow wiggle’. It's important to note that there
are lots of drills to work on leg rotation, this is just one of them. Now key points to this are
that we're going to have a fairly small plough, we want some flat terrain. We want to allow the the
edge in a snowplow to turn the leg, as we would in in a short turn. So important, try and keep the
hips over the feet as much as you can, and then we're just going to go in some small wiggly turns,
that's why it's called the plow wiggle. Okay so I’m here letting the ski come underneath me
but, not turning too much with the hip, and I really feel that internal-external rotation of
of each leg, you should feel the muscles actually working. Remember that it's just a drill, to help
you feel the lower leg turning and not turning too much with the hip, and therefore upper body.
Okay a couple of variations on this drill, we can kind of get the poles
like this and put them in the belly button and feel the legs just turning underneath
while we keep the poles pointing down the fall line. It's important not to start to go like this,
any Doctor Who fans who don't want to be a Dalek, but trying to keep them down the
fall line. What we really want to experience is the legs turning underneath us, and the feeling
of that leg rotation. Here we go, so poles in the belly button and I'm going to let the skis turn
underneath me keeping the poles down the fall line. Another variation on this drill, is we
can ditch the poles, and actually put the hands on the pelvis, feel the bony bits in the pelvis
and let the legs turn underneath us. And there's a couple of variations, go off give them a go!
After you've tried these variations, we are then going to go and put it into our
normal skiing and short turns. Okay I'm just going to give you an example of bad shoulders
down the hill, so this is me getting so fixated on my shoulders down the hill and everything
else turning underneath, the skis are not really working, and now I'm going to let the legs turn,
and this is a good example of allowing the legs to turn in the hip socket
which allows me, to do these nice rounded turns, allowing the ski and the edge to turn the leg.
So that's a wrap for today's lesson. I’ll see you next time!