What's "Hip" in PMTS and Harb Ski

[Harald]

At the 2000 International Congress of Skiing and Science there was a presentation that included a vague reference to the forces about the hip socket on the inside or free foot side of the body from the inside ski on the snow. Dr Robert Hintermeister, who holds a PhD in Biomechanics and worked for Steadman Hawkins as Director of Research, for seven years and I were intrigued by the introduction of this reference, to our understanding.

We had been considering this as a possibility for poor performance in skiers with a wide stance. A wide stance can cause more leverage at the hip, which can apply higher forces and perturbation to the hip socket causing balance disruption. Our idea is that the wider the stance width, more torque can to be transferred up to the inside hip, which potentially could throw skiers more easily out of balance, on the stance leg side. I still believe this has merit, yet we have not pursued it.

What Diana and I have noticed, as we are very tuned into the actions, positions and angles about and around the hip, relative to balancing and body angles, is an inconsistency of positions demonstrated by a range of skiers.

In this article, we want to demonstrate those inconsistencies, which are based on continued investigation, analysis and diagnosis with skiers. We would like to offer our preliminary findings and summations for reaction and discussion. Although they are not specifically about the torque around the hip socket and stance width, they are definitely linked to that area.

We are more interested to find the cause of certain positions, and angles we see frequently at the hips, in skiers, that have never been addressed or remedied. We want to find a way to increase awareness and possibly flexibility and also range of motion for this part of the body for skiers. This article includes a self test, if you are so inclined, we would like to hear from you about your abilities and findings in this regard.

If you are comfortable post them on the forum or PM me directly.

Here is the link to my article which is on the Harb Ski Systems web site: http://www.harbskisystems.com/harald.htm

[dewdman42]

Great analysis!!

How does the old saying go about "feeling the pinch" in the outside hip?

I didn't completely understand the part about the torque where you have the rotational arrow drawn around your left leg(acting as stance leg in that case). I need to try this experiment and try to feel it.

[dewdman42]

I wanna point out something else I notice in your comparisons with Max. Can I see a subtle articulation around the area of Harald's ribcage, in addition to at the hip?

At a recent PSIA conference I attended, Deb Armstrong was pointing this out in some photos of WC guys. Her comments were that she is observing skiers these days have spread the articulations to include higher up the torso, as opposed to simply bending forward and/or sideways at the waist. She actually had all 200 of us stand up and try it. I guess what I'm pointing out is more of a curved comma look in Harald which includes articulating up the torso to some degree, not simply at the waist. She implied that modern racers are able to ski with less blantant articulation at the waist, but they obtain counter-balancing by a long curved articulation..some of which is at the hip and some more all the way up the torso to the rib cage. Sorry if that is a little bit off-topic.

To my eyes, Max may be just a smidgeon earlier in the turn than Harald. But its easy to see that if it were one frame later, his hip would indeed be tilting inside slightly more than Haralds, when I look at his waist line, similar to the white band in Harald's dryland experiments. He has none of the aforementioned curvature higher up the torso. To me that seems more blatant than the difference in the hip.

[patprof]

Absolutely brilliant stuff Harald!

[patprof]

More specifically: I find it hard to see the differences in Harald and Mac's skiing on a video clip; it is easier on the stills. But Harald's demos without the ski clothing on really bring out the differences. Hope there are lots of these in the new book.

[Harald]

There are many considerations when determining what is happening at the hip and lower back. It is a very complicated area of flexibility, ligaments and muscles. Have a look at some of these pages. http://images.google.com/images?q=core+ ... s&ct=title

In the set of slides on the web page below look for slide 13 and 14 that demonstrate the muscles and how they affect the area, Look at slides 51 through 60 for the exercises that build core control and flexibility. Most people think core strength is about sit ups. That is old high school stuff. We know how sophisticated you need to be these days to prepare properly, it's no longer just sit ups or crunches.


If you see the photos of Rick on the Harb Carvers you see a similar angle of the pelvis as with Max. Although Max is a Black level skier in PMTS rating and can ski all terrain confidently, he still has improvement potential. At this already high level of skiing, a coach can spend lots of time with nit picking and trying little changes or tips, but overall they do little to change a skier like Max, as his greatest improvements will come with very focused, directed movement changes.

The easiest thing for a coach to do is point out what is not happening. A coach has the luxury of seeing many skiers who are doing it right or seeing skiers to determine how skiing works best, so it is easy to make the comparison and point out what is not happening.

The real coach comes up with ideas, strategies, most important he comes up with solutions.

Skiers like Max can still improve by continually challenging their technique through terrain and balance approaches, but I am trying to save skiers time and effort. I want to get to the source of the issues.

With the hip and pelvis angle experimentation done so far in our system , there appears to be a perfect combination of hip counter, lower back muscle relaxation, free side transversus abdominis stretching, basically torso side stretching, needed to achieve proper hip tilt.

Now, this isn?t some miracle position that can only be seen or observed rather than felt. The ability to achieve the, I call it the Coupled Hip, depends on relaxation of the correct combination of muscles and contraction of the proper combination. This is not easy to explain as there are so many smaller muscles around the hip that create tension and holding of the pelvis, some of the wrong holding, maybe subconscious and restricting the correct hip coupling. We need to become comfortable with and flexible, as well as strong in this area.

Check these slides
http://www.hope.edu/academic/kinesiolog ... sld007.htm
If you look at my dryland demonstration on my web site, try the hip angle range of motion exercise with a belt attached across the hips. Lower the foot from a platform and then raise the foot again on the free dangling side. You can watch in a mirror or you can have someone video you moving through the range. I also recommend adding weight to the foot for more emphasis and awareness of the muscles used, to create the lift and dangling in ht e lower position. Make sure you keep the stance leg the same length and keep that side stable. Use a wall or ski pole of support if you need it for balance.

More on this topic coming, I?m out for now.

[Max_501]

Very interesting analysis and great visuals. Now that I see it I think I have a much better chance of performing the movement. No problem performing the pelvis movements in front of a mirror. Can't wait to try it on the snow.

[ChrisSSBB]

Excellent, excellent! I do my best at incorportating what I learn from this forum and the ACBES books and it has helped my skiing quite a bit. This is something I will be working on and provides more motivation to do that hard work to improve core strength.

I coach soccer and have noticed that a key physical component that seems to separate elite players from others is not only hamstring and quad strength, but in particular, hip flexor strength and general hip flexibility It looks like it may not be a whole lot different when it comes to elite skiers. (disclaimer: just my own personal hypothesis based on my own nonexpert observations).

Chris

[milesb]

Harald, I'm a bit confused on what kind of data you want here. I will do the exercises and post pictures if that will help, but do you have a list of questions that we could answer?

edit: I did the exercises. other than making sure that my stance leg didn't flex or extend (I looked straight down at the knee and tried to keep it right over a line on my shoe) I didn't have any trouble manuevering the hip up and down. When I tried the second one, I couldn't make my inside hip go up, no matter what I did. I went back to Haralds' pictures, and I noticed he is using his inside hand to support him, I was resting my outside hand on a table. After searching my house for an appropriate spot where I could face a mirror and use my inside hand for support I was only able to move the hip up to picture b and that was with ALOT of effort. I also had to take care to not rotate the stance leg to try to get the hip to appear raised.
I don't think I'll be able to get pictures as the only area of my house where this is possible is too small for it.

[dewdman42]

I finally got a chance to try this dryland experiment. I do feel the inside-to-out torgue on the stance side of the hip. It is pretty natural for me to use it.. But I totally get the torque factor that Harald and Diana are talking about.

The interesting thing you guys should try when trying this dryland experiment. Look down and make sure that when you lower your free foot and see if the higher stance hip juts forward a few inches as the other foot lowers. Now try to do it without allowing it to jut forward.

I would be very interested to see where you go with this Harald, in terms of on snow exercises and/or dry-land training to strengthen the proper muscle actions.

[jbotti]

I will throw in my $.02. The first thing that goes through my mind is whether focsing on counter balance over the stance leg will produces part of or all of the result. I know that when I first looked at the picture of Max and Harald my initial analysis was that Harald had superior counter balance than Max. For sure, now when I am focused on counter balancing I will as well focus on my pelvis angle.

Another thing I will throw into this is core strength. We can see what Harald says, but my guess is that if you are having trouble getting into this positioin while skiing it indicates a lack of core strength. I know that two years ago when I was working with Diana, I was struglling with maintaining my counter and counter balance throughout the turn and it was definitely due to poor core sterngth. After two years of focus on core strength (and even more since my knee injury in April) I found this position easy to get into in front of the mirror (which is not to say that I can do it on the snow). Of course all of this assumes that one has the flexibility to achieve this position (as without it all the core strength in the world won't help).


It still seems to me that agrressive focus on counter balance should move one in this direction. As one squeezes the oblique on the stance side while keeping the CM over the stance leg, this should raise the hip on the free foot side getting much of the result. I would love to hear Harald's and anyone elses take on this.

[HarveyD]

I believe that the contraction of the gluteus medius over the stance hip causes the pelvic elevation on the free leg side. There are a couple of sites that you can check this on, by hitting gluteus medius exercises. Harald's description is much more eloquent, however. Comments, anyone?

[ChrisSSBB]

I believe that the contraction of the gluteus medius over the stance hip causes the pelvic elevation on the free leg side. There are a couple of sites that you can check this on, by hitting gluteus medius exercises. Harald's description is much more eloquent, however. Comments, anyone?

Here is a quote from a core training bulletin on the gluteus medius:

"Situated on the upper edge of the hip, the gluteus medius is responsible for lifting the leg away from the body (abduction), helping it to rotate inwards and outwards, and, crucially, keeping the pelvis stable in certain situations, including the stance phase of running. During right stance phase, for instance, the muscle contracts to slow the downward motion of the left side of the pelvis so that the pelvis doesn?t tilt heavily towards the ground. If the gluteus medius is not functioning well enough to achieve this control, the athlete is said to have a ?Trendelenburg gait?."

Hmmm... dropped hip is Trendenlenburg gait? So maybe a level pelvis portrays the symmetry of the ... Brandenburg Gate? Never mind... super lame.

[Harald]

Dewdman, second part of your PM, I though this part would be interesting to post.

I?m not sure what the guys on Epic are talking about, but there is definitely a lot of merit to ankle eversion, which is the correct terminology, the term pronation is a condition, not usually used to describe an forceful action. With foot and ankle eversion, the ankle bone moves toward the boot wall. I have described this in my books and we get into great detail about this movement in our alignment tech courses. This movement in skiing can be adjusted and fine tuned in any part of a turn. Every high level skier I know understands the importance of ankle function in the boot. Erich Scholpy especially is a user of ankle lateral movements within the boot. The ankle may not actually move very far in a race boot, but the mere effort of eversion exerts pressure to the boot side and control over the ski edge.

Muscle contraction for ankle eversion (peroneal muscles) is continuous through the whole arc while the ski is on edge. If a skier knows and uses this movement, counter acting movements of the hip are relatively easy, as the ankle takes the leading role in edge angle maintenance and grip. The hip can then easily adjust to countering needs. If foot and ankle activity is not part of a skier?s formula, all kinds of adjustments and corrections are necessary at the hip, which throws the whole body out of whack. I can?t believe the PSIA boys get this, I tried to introduce it to them over a decade ago and they were oblivious. In addition, they are always talking about leg rotation and steering, which defeats hip counter and ankle control.

[Harald]

Miles, I think you have the right idea. Watching your hip change angle on the horizontal plane is the key realization for the exercise. If you can relate this movement to a ski turn, you may have a new counter acting and balancing hip.

The inside hip in the turn is hiked up and the outside hip is cocked lower and back. In the second series of dryland photos, I stand on the stance foot and I demonstrate that position. The furthest right photo has extreme counter acting and counter balancing. This is to demonstrate the range. I can achieve this on snow and I am aware of the hip movements that lock me into this strong position. The idea for the post is to release the idea and open discussion for proper hip engagement in skiing. It is an area of the body that few skiers or instructors can address. But it is absolutely crucial. So is the relationship of ankle eversion to unlocking tightness and incorrect movements around the hip, to increase the proper countering movements.