Vailsteve wrote:PSIA does highlight "upper and lower body" separation as part of the teaching progression.
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And I have taken clinics where the goal is to keep your jacket zipper pointed downhill while your skis are steering underneath your torso.
BUT, and here is the key but, PSIA is all about steering or twisting the skis ....... Another "upper lower body separation" video has a guy lying on his back, legs in the air, and the instructor twisting the guys feet left and right. I guess the goal is to feel the hips rotating. Stupid video.
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yes this is what they think and teach and its stupid. They have the false notion that your upper body can somehow be stabilized while you turn your legs this way and that under a "stable" upper half. Laying on your back per that video, of course, stablizes your upper half. But when you're right side up, its not stable at all...it will naturally face whatever direction your skis are trying to take them, UNLESS you counteract to prevent it. They do not teach counteraction, I never heard it once. The best you might get are some double pole plant drills which essentially can fool someone into subconsciously counteracting, not necessarily correctly or optimally, but at least some form of it.
You can usually fool them by using counteraction, they can't tell the difference as long as they see upper lower separation they can think whatever they want to think, they will think you're steering the legs rather then counteracting to achieve it.
But some of them are so hyper focused about watching the hip sockets for steering movement of femur that they literally do look for an extra swively leg turning thing, which by they way can only really be done on flat skis....so there's that too....... They have taken that false premise about how it all works and turned it into countless drills and lessons and tasks or whatever you want to call them to enhance that debilitating idea and movement pattern and they are looking for extreme success at it...which in my view is failure at skiing.