In my book, Tipping rules!

[h.harb]

In which book, all of them.
One and one half days of Super Blue Camp are in the books. I’ve been fortunate to observe some of the most remarkable turnarounds in skiing occurring in my group. To begin with, I had skiers with, tail pushing, to up extension movements and even upper body full rotation as part of the mix.

I keep things fairly simple, so I began with tipping exercises; as lack of tipping, is a main cause for many of these ailments. Lack of tipping understanding or tipping ability forces a skier to use less efficient movements to compensate. Literally, most skiers don’t know what tipping is or how to do it.

I don’t send much time on flexing because a good tipping progression and series of exercises has to be done with flexed lags. Tipping can’t be learned or achieved if there is leg extension, leaning, rotation and tail pushing. I teach tipping therefore with legs already flexed. In these two days, I covered tipping with individual foot movements, and simultaneous foot movements, and since you can’t tip without being flexing we stayed flexed through the tipping exercises.

Tipping depends greatly on relaxation, in and around the hip joint. The skiers soon discovered that they we limiting their tipping range by creating tension in a hips. We worked hard to loosen up this area with various tipping exercises. After many runs and intertwined free skiing, we added a counter acting focus by using the inside pole push.

I used varies ways to create tipping requirements and standards, from keeping skiers in my tracks, to one turn at a time building blocks. After I saw that balancing and riding tipped skis was happening, I jumped up a level and had the group following me in ski turns. This is almost immediately intimidating, but once the thrill of the experience is over, solid turns were realized and skiing with new energy, due to the speed and turn radius was achieved.

I’m leaving out some of the refinement drills we did, that added to tipping familiarity, but there is nothing new, except for the Knee Rail tipping exercise I incorporated with resounding success. Coming soon on a post near you.

The bottom line is, as I’ve been saying and writing for some time. Tipping is the most important movement in skiing. Tipping and flexing have to work together and my approach is to teach flexing through the proper tipping actions.

Numerous comments were made by the skiers, which included, "I can't tip without flexing", this convinced them, and they automatically got into their tipping, flexed mode, without much prodding.

So what did I see in the group? I saw profound movement changes in these skiers, with a skidding tail pusher turing into an advanced bullet proof short turn skier. I saw up extension movements disappear, and skiers using rotation fall into a natural countered upper to lower body relationship, using the inside pole push.

These are remarkable changes, also easily acknowledged by the members of the group and through video. The message here is clear, Tipping first, then add-on other ‘Essentials’ as tipping improves.

[dbntina]

This is very helpful to me especially since I have been leaning to the inside of turns due to a lack of tipping. More tipping drills for me. Very helpful post.

David

[Baja1]

Harald, I know you may have mentioned this before, but do you get many camp participants on straighter, wider skis? Does it affect their performance and progress, particularly with tipping?

Occasionally, I'll ski with friends or acquaintances who want to know how I get into such "deep angles," and just one look at their skis tells me how hard a time I'll have introducing tipping movements in their skiing.

Any thoughts or advice on how you handle this?

[Ken]

Harald...Knee Rail exercise?...please post soonest so I can use it tomorrow.

I teach a group of kids in a six day program. I go through the essentials as far as they can go. Some have a deeply ingrained wedge while skiing on their heels, and getting the others to yell at them, "Pizza is for lunch,not for skiing," is some help, along with the exercises in the books and anything else I can conjure up. At the end of the program I always ask what thing I showed them was the most help to improve their skiing. The answer is always, "Tipping."

Anybody have some good suggestions to get kids off their heels? As poorly as it works, it is their comfort zone and a hard habit to break.

[grambo]

Harald...Knee Rail exercise?...please post soonest so I can use it tomorrow.

I attended the tech camp in November, in which we did an exercise I believe is the one to which Harald is referring. Harald, please correct me if I'm thinking of the wrong one.

Anyway, we were on a gentle slope and held our poles together and placed them just above our kness across our quads. As we started moving, we would tip from one set of edges to the other with the poles held in place. The key was to keep the poles still with the knees moving back and forth across them as we tipped. In other words, don't move the poles with your hands across your quads instead of moving your quads/knees through the tipping range of motion.

How far from one side of the poles to the other your quads go gives you a good idea of your tipping range, especially since your legs are flexed. As you pick up speed, you'll notice CB/CA coming into play as the inside end of the pole moves forward and the outside one back. I found this to be a fantastic exercise and still use it to warm up with to get my balance working properly. I find it especially challenging on moderate to steeper terrain.

Anyway, hope I'm referring to the right exercise, but Knee Rail exercise sure sounded like it. Otherwise, I'm all ears.

-Jay

[François]

"The skis are designed to carve an arcing path through the snow when they are sufficiently rolled on edge, and when sufficient pressure is applied to bend them into reverse camber."
"If you stand correctly on your skis, they will turn for you. If you apply correct edge angle and pressure to a ski, the ski itself will provide most of the required turning force."...Warren Witherell.

I might have left the word most out of it.

I don't understand how tipping can have been kept a secret from ski instructors for so many years, despite Warren's book letting the cat out of the bag in a big way back in '72. And good skiers knew about tipping Long before that.