The SkiFlow Journey Begins

I am very proud to finally present the SkiFlow project. SkiFlow marries over 20 seasons of ski teaching and coaching experience with the cutting edge sport and movement science espoused by Circular Strength Training and RMAX.



Although the SkiFlow project will eventually envelope the entire spectrum of skier development from General Physical Preparedness to tactical decision making, for the moment much of the material will be especially relevant to what can be thought of as the Activity Specific Preparedness (ASP) phase of development. I like to use the phases as broad descriptors of approximate periods of development throughout the year and further break them down into conditioning, skill and tactical development. Initial posts here at SkiFlow will be devoted mainly to the skill development portion of the ASP phase for now.

Since the content of the SkiFlow project will be posted every few days of time, I recommend that you subsribe to the blog using the "Subscribe in a reader" button to the right.

Enjoy! And don't hesitate to ask questions, provide feedback and generally interact with the process...

Finding your Flow

The most amazing feeling in any sport is when you enter the Flow zone. Although there are many esoteric and enigmatic ways of describing a state of Flow in sport, I like to use a very down to earth approach. For me, you know Flow when you achieve the greatest possible result in any task using the least possible effort. The harder you have to work to achieve a given outcome, the farther you are from your Flow.

As this blog evolves, I hope to share with you, incrementally and progressively, some of the ways that I have found useful in helping my clients and students find their Flow. I hope you enjoy the process and benefit from the advice. Allowing yourself to enter the Flow zone is about the most amazing thing that could ever happen to your skiing.

Originally, much of the material you will receive in this blog was to be part of a DVD production in collaboration with Circular Strength Training and RMAX, which are the originators and masters of all things "Flow." But since virtual delivery of media is the future. And because I agree with RMAX that the last thing the environment needs is more plastic wasted on DVDs, more gas wasted on delivery, etc, I have decided to repackage the entire project as an online endeavor. What you see here is entirely free. Please enjoy it and take full advantage of it. As we speak, a member based website is in the works and the full project and unabridged project will continue to unfold there at some point in the future.

So without further ado, to get the ball rolling, here is a little clip which gives a birds eye view of the roadmap to finding SkiFlow. It sets the stage, if you will, for what is to come.

Strategy #1: Use movement to create structure

In our previous installment of SkiFlow(tm), I outlined in a video clip the idea of developing a paradigm for skiing using the elements of Doctrine, Strategy, Tactics and Technique. This arrangement is a hierarchy and one element flows from the previous one. Here is a quick overview of the first two elements in my paradigm.

Doctrine: Skiing should be effortless, fun and efficient.

Strategy: Understand and apply a small number of simple and universal principles. Which are...

1. Use movement to create structure.
2. Play your angles.
3. Joint mass center.

Following is a clip explaining the idea of using movement to create structure, the first of our three broad strategies. One of my oft repeated tenets is, use structure to hold you up and use your muscles to hold your structure in place. In other words, if you feel like your muscles are holding you up, you are far from your SkiFlow(tm) zone. You know when you are using your structure when you feel that the superfluous tension in your body is "zeroed-out" and you are using the least amount of muscular effort possible to fully achieve the task that you have in front of you. This does not mean that you necessarily are not exerting great effort at any given time. It means you are exerting exactly the effort you need to succeed and no more.

The following quotation from Eric Dalton, PhD, is an interesting take on the "purpose" of structure in relation to gravity. Mr. Dalton is a bodyworker, but the principles are easy to apply to skiing if you give it some thought.

If, for a moment, we assume that posture is the result of the dynamic interaction of two groups of forces acting on the human body—the environmental force of gravity on one hand and the strength of the individual on the other—then posture could be considered as the ideal expression of balance between these two groups of forces. Therefore, any deterioration of posture indicates that the individual is losing ground in the contest with gravity’s unrelenting power.

In Skiing, to gravity we must add the inertial forces of the turn. This increases exponentially the importance of stacking the structure to deal with the forces which "oppose" it. The clip lays the groundwork for understanding how movement informs structure. Future installments of SkiFlow(tm) will explore specific exercises for building this quality in your skiing.



[Video has been moved to the SkiFlow Inner Circle member's area on SkiFlow.com]

The Sweet Spot Part 1 - The Balancing Act of Skiing

One of the most magical and exhilarating aspects of skiing is the seemingly gravity defying ability to hover inches from the snow as you balance against the inertial forces that are pulling you towards the outside of the turn (photo from Ron LeMaster). The feeling of laying yourself over as those inertial forces build throughout the turn is indescribable.

As a coach and instructor, I see very few skiers who have been given the opportunity to experience this piece of paradise. Most people I see on the slopes, even seemingly very good skiers, are stuck in a rut of stiff, robotic skiing that prevents them from tapping into the flow required to perform this feat of multi-planar balance.

The problem often lies in our perception of good skiing, and the way that skiing has been taught and ski technique communicated in the past. All too often our skiers are taught to ski through "positions," "poses," or "stances." I hear things like: "put your hands up", "push your arms forward", "press on the front of your boots." Please understand that I do not for an instant profess that instructors and coaches don't know what they are talking about. Each of these directions, in the moment, may indeed be valid. However, lets consider a different approach. How about looking at "why" the skiers hands are not naturally moving higher, for example. If the fundamental structure of the skier is lacking, it will be impossible to make lasting changes in the ephemeral property of stance.

A stance is a fleeting thing through which a skier passes in an instant, only to move onto and through another in a constant search for balance. Imagine balancing an umbrella on your fingertip. The umbrella is never "balanced." You must continually readjust your finger under the center of mass of the umbrella in order seek a new instance of balance. The moment that you stop moving, the umbrella will tumble. There is no “perfect stance" for umbrella balancing. The same is true for skiing. There are fundamental principles of balance and structure which, when applied, will lead to recognizable stances that are similar from one good skier to the next, but there are not perfect stances.

The "Balancing Act" Of Good Skiing

[Video has been moved to the SkiFlow Inner Circle member's area on SkiFlow.com]

Sweet Spot Part 2 - Good Vibrations

Circular Strength Training presents a whole family of vibration drills which have an incredible breadth and depth of application. They can be used for recovery from exercise, as a means of calming the over-stimulated athlete, as a way to reduce superfluous muscle tension and in preparing the body for movement. But at its most basic level, the vibration drill can be an excellent drill for discovering the use of efficient structure.

If we seek to perfect or copy a stance instead of searching for the proprioceptive awareness of good balance and structure, we will never discover a true state of Zero Position (Sonnon, Body-Flow p54). One of my favorite tools for helping my skiers to develop a sense of their own structure and to detect areas of excess and inefficient tension in their bodies is to shake things up a little. The exercise focuses on being able to "shake your hands with your legs." It is essentially an on-snow version of a CST vibration drill. The idea is to send a wave through your body to shake your hand by dropping your mass down towards the ground and then absorbing it through mid-foot into the ground. If the skier is relaxed, this wave will travel up through the body and into the shoulders, arms and finally the hands, causing them to "shake." If the skier is holding unnecessary tension, this wave will be impeded somewhere along the line and the hands will remain stiff.

SkiFlow(tm) On-Snow Vibration Drill

[Video has been moved to the SkiFlow Inner Circle member's area on SkiFlow.com]

Through experimentation, the skier can usually discover where the wave is being blocked. The natural inclination is to think that the problem is in the hand, arm or shoulder, but more often than not it originates in the trunk or lower body and irradiates from there. By having the skier experiment statically (standing still), they will discover how changing their structure affects the tension. By working with the alignment of the body segments (equal flexion) and with the fore/aft and side-to-side planes, they will discover how movement affects structure and how structure affects the tension in their bodies. In essence they are discovering true balance, where all forces pulling on the body are zeroed out so that muscular recruitment is only used to hold their structure in place, instead of to hold them upright. Structure holds them upright instead.

Once they get the feel for this statically, we can move it back into a dynamic sphere on easy terrain in a shallow arc, and then gradually increase the difficulty of the terrain, turn shape and speed. Once skiers start to integrate the concept of looking for a state of natural structural alignment instead of looking to reproduce a "stance," they are ready to start exploring the lateral balancing that will lead to the astounding and gravity-defying feats mentioned in Part 1 of this article.