Energy Efficient Skiing

Hi everyone and welcome to a new post from your favourite blogging Méribel (and Courchevel) ski instructor. A few weeks ago I skied with Chris, and we were chatting about all sorts of things during our time together: life stuff, sport, food, and skiing of course. We spoke about the four different 'Performance Threads with skiing', something I wrote about on this page just before the winter. The four 'Threads' are listed as Physical, Tactical, Technique and Psychological. I won't go over these 'Threads' again, but you can find a link here to the first of these two articles. However, one thing I do want to talk about this time is energy efficient skiing. As ever, I've taken all of these photos over the last few weeks.

Here's a question, "Hands up who gets tired when skiing?". Oooff, that's quite a show of hands there everyone, including two of mine!?! The first thing to recognise and understand is that skiing IS tiring. It's a sport that takes place at high altitude, something that most of us don't have in normal life. Skiing is a holiday where most people participate all day for six days of the week. Granted, many of you are pretty fit and active, but you know, skiing is skiing, and skiing is tough work sometimes. Not that I'm saying feeling tired is a negative thing, it's a healthy way of being active that's for sure. But do you think there's an efficient way of skiing? You betcha. And many skiers on the mountain haven't quite maximised their potential in this way.

Sometimes when I'm teaching I'll talk about how our skiing brain will quite often tell us to do totally the wrong things on skis, in fact the opposite to what we should be doing. Many of us will be having internal conversations going on when it comes to thinking about ski technique.

I'm going to go off at a slight angle here, and then attempt to bring it back to these internal conversations. There's a psychiatrist called Professor Steve Peters who has worked with many elite sports people over the years as well as in fields away from sport. His resumé is interesting, he worked with British Cycling for a while helping many cyclists win Olympic gold medals. He has helped Ronnie O'Sullivan, a multiple World Snooker Champion. And he has also helped the Liverpool Football Club. The list is endless. He has also written four books, including one called 'The Chimp Paradox' released in 2012.

In the book, he talks about the relationship between the 'Chimp', who dominates the irrational and emotional thoughts areas in our brain, and the 'Human' side of the logical area of our brain. Confused? Let me try to simplify and bring our thoughts back to skiing. It will be the chimp within us that tells us to rush a turn when we see something challenging, this is usually an incorrect thing to do. It will be the chimp that tells us to lean up the mountain at the end of the turn when the piste is steep, this is also an incorrect technique. It will be the chimp that commands us to lean (our weight) back on the skis much of the time, this is of course incorrect technique.

Can you see where I'm going here? It's not our fault, but our damn chimp tells us all to do the opposite to what we should be doing on skis. And guess what? This chimp is a stubborn little chap that needs to be recognised and silenced. Skiing, like golf and many other sports, is an activity where if the chimp tells us what to do, we will end up skiing in a messy manner and finish each day in an extremely knackered state!?! We all, even very experienced skiers, have this chimp inside us.

So what will help us become more energy efficient on skis? This is where I will try to simplify things again. There are two things that can help us be energy efficient: steering and balance.

What I mean by steering, is how we make a turn, how we change direction. Everyone on the mountain changes direction by steering their skis. But it's the manner of how we physically steer our skis, and the patience, or lack of patience, with the speed of steering. If skiers are rushing their turns (which the chimp tells us to do), there's a higher chance that there's less control of the line taken down the piste, and also less control of speed. If there's less control than we would like, our body can become tense which in turn means we are burning more energy. Feeling tense is tiring. If our steering is more patient, we will be more energy efficient. Sounds easy doesn't it? The reality is sometimes different however, depending on the steepness of the piste, quality of snow, and amount of visibility available.

Then there's balance, which can have a huge affect on our energy efficiency. Balance can be broken down into three planes of movement: rotational, lateral, and fore/aft. Rotation can also be called twisting, normally of our upper body (and sometime hips). If we over-rotate, or counter-rotate our body too much, our balance will be off kilter. If our balance is slightly out, we will be using too much energy.

Lateral (sideways) movement is really important. Earlier I mentioned skiers leaning up the slope at the end of a turn, this is an example of an incorrect lateral movement. Unfortunately our chimp tells us to do this, especially when things get gnarly. If we lean up the mountain at the end of a turn, we lose grip between our skis and the snow, which in turn gives us less control of our speed and line (direction). This loss of control will also make us feel tense, and lead to fatigue.

The third and final part of balance is 'fore and aft', or in simple terms, backwards and forwards. This area is probably the most talked about part of skiers balance. Most skiers talk about the importance of not leaning back on their skis. And yet............. the numbers of skiers on the mountain that are still leaning back is huge. The list of positives for skiers being centred on their skis - some people call it leaning forward - is long. But I can't think of a single positive for leaning back on skis. So why does our chimp get us to do this? In short, leaning back on skis is utterly exhausting, and very inefficient!

I've barely scratched the surface with balance in this article. It's a really important part of ski technique, and can have a significant impact on energy efficient skiing. And I guess this has a significant affect on a skiers enjoyment of this sport. Let's face it, feeling knackered on skis isn't fun.

You know how in raquet sports people talk about having a sweet spot. If you are able to strike a ball (or shuttlecock) on the sweet spot of the racquet, it feels amazing and there is so much more control. The same for a golf club apparently with a golf ball! The good news for skiers is that there is definitely a sweet spot with our skis. If we can direct our body weight to this sweet spot, then life is great and we will be skiing efficiently.

You know when you watch good skiers, or catch a glimpse of a ski instructor free skiing, they look as though they make skiing look effortless. Effortless in terms of control over their skis, but also physical effort. It's a thing of beauty.

I really hope this article has reminded you to think about how much fun skiing can be, but also helped you understand that we can actually ski with energy efficiency. I hope you all get the chance to practise this again soon. This has been quite a techy article this time, and I hope it all made sense? I'll probably revert to my usual waffling next time. By the way, my website people have just added a Testimonial page, and I've added a few already that I've previously received. If you have skied with me before and would like to write a testimonial, please feel free to send one through via email or via this contact page. Many thanks in advance. Right, that'll do for now. Don't forget to Live With Passion. Martin.