Reducing Risk of Ski Injury - Natasha Richardson's tragic death following ski accident

British actress Natasha Richardson took what probably looked like an innocuous spill recently while skiing at Mont Tremblant, here in Quebec. Following the accident, she reported feeling ill and was taken to hospital in Montreal, and then apparently transfered to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. This unfortunate accident will undoubtedly serve to propagate the popular myth that skiing is a dangerous sport.

[Note: I've since learned of Ms Richardson's tragic death. My sincere condolences go out to her family and friends.]

Skiing already gets a bad rap as far as injury goes. The cliché of ski vacationers spending the week in a cast after their first day on the slopes is a favorite of Hollywood writers. But the truth is, statistically skiing is much less dangerous than many other popular recreational activities. A quick look at statistics shows higher injury rates in sports such as softball, swimming, basketball and bicycling - sports that most would consider quite benign.

But like any open-skilled activity, of course there is some risk associated with skiing. Taking a few simple measures can go a long way to making sure you stay safe on the slopes and get the most out of a beautiful sport.

1. Wear a helmet
Especially when you are out of your comfort zone, make sure you protect your noggin. This means ALL beginners should don their lid. When you are learning a new skill, you need to think about every move. This means you are more mechanical and prone to falling. I rarely wear a helmet, but when training in gates (racing) I always do. That’s because I don’t do it often and am out of my element. Every beginner is in this situation.

2. Use well maintained, well fitting and well adjusted equipment
Boots that are too big, skis that are two long, clothing that is ill fitting or not warm enough, and other equipment related factors can lead to accidents. They can also make the consequences of an accident more extreme. For example, badly adjusted ski bindings can fail to release during a benign fall and turn an innocent spill into a broken leg. Make sure all your equipment has been professionally evaluated for proper fit and calibration.

3. Observe the rules of the road
Knowing how to behave on the slopes can protect both you and others from injury. The Skier Responsibility Code (http://skiing.about.com/od/safetyforskiers/a/skicode.htm) lays out the guidelines for all snowsports participants. Something as simple as knowing to yield way to skiers below you on the slope can greatly reduce risk of a mishap.

4. Learn the lay of the land
There’s nothing like being surprised by the terrain to cause a fall. Careening over a blind roll to find that the trail takes a sharp turn is a surefire way to induce panic, freeze up and fall. Get a feel for the lay of the land from a trail map. Take it easy your first time down a new trail. And ideally, hire a guide or instructor to show you the ropes when visiting a new ski area. This is no guarantee, but it helps.

5. Maintain a solid movement palette and freedom of movement
The better your overall ability to move your body efficiently in space, the more chance you will have to recover from slight mistakes without falling. The more mobile and coordinated you are, the better your movement will be. The best approach for maintaining this type of movement freedom is to engage in regular sessions of joint mobility training, such as Intu-Flow, and regular bodyweight circuit training that takes you through every plane of movement, such as FlowFit®.

None of these measures is a guarantee, but together they represent a solid dose of prevention. Every sport carries it’s inherent risk of injury. Unfortunate accidents can happen. And they usually seem to happen just when you least expect them. Make sure you do what you can to prevent them and you’ll increase your chances of reaping everything physical activity has to offer while all but eliminating the risk of injury.

Bodyweight Exercises For Skiers - The CST Leg Swoop

In my ongoing mission to peel away some of the myths associated with conditioning for skiers, I want to look at a series of exercises that are well suited for ski fitness and explain why they are effective. The first is a bodyweight exercise requiring no equipment.

Skiing is truly a three-dimensional, open skilled and unpredictable sport. The skier is constantly pulled in different directions by gravity and inertial forces as they move through the turn. This means that the core is extremely important in managing those forces and allowing the skier to maintain structural alignment throughout the turn and regain a strong alignment quickly after a mistake.

But common approaches to core training are two-dimensional and ineffective for an open-skilled sport like skiing. The skier needs exercises that solicit the core through full body movements that rely on the core to stabilize and to tie the upper and lower body together in a coordinated manner.

One of the most common stabilizing patterns of the core in skiing is the cross-body diagonal pattern of muscle and connective tissue which drapes from the shoulder on the inside of the turning arc to the hip on the outside of the arc. In his seminar work, Anatomy Trains, author Thomas Myers refers to this as the Front Functional Line.

You can imagine this line of muscle and connective tissue working from inside shoulder to outside hip / thigh in this photo.


If this line of pull is weak or dysfunctional, the skier will end up rotated and lose traction on the snow. One of the best bodyweight exercises to train this movement or stabilization pattern is the CST Leg Swoop. Instead of trying to describe it here, you can view this detailed tutorial of the CST Leg Swoop bodyweight exercise on YouTube.

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For more ski fitness, check out my new SkiFlow Fitness blog.

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.

The Importance of Thoracic Mobility in Ski Technique and Injury Prevention

The 5 Best Mobility Exercises for Skiers: #5, Thoracic Cardinals

I would not be surprised if the title of this post made you go “huh.” First of all, isn’t the thorax an immobile cage? And second of all, even if it isn’t, what the heck does it have to do with great skiing and injury prevention for skiers?

Well, first off let’s dispel the myth that the rib “cage” is an immobile structure. In actual fact, it is much more like a rib “spring” than a cage. It has significant range of motion in every plane and is meant to store and release energy during movement. If we lose this elasticity of the thoracic region, we are prone to a whole host of health and injury risks which range all the way from problems breathing to greater risk of injury to the lower back and the neck.

But let’s take a closer look at skiing. As you will see in the accompanying photo, there is inherently a large degree of spinal flexion over the course of a ski turn. Pay particular attention to the third frame from the left and you will notice the entire spine is flexed like a bowstring. If the ribcage becomes immobile, all that flexion will be transferred either up to the neck or down to the lumbar spine. This spells injury risk but also limits performance.

The purpose of the observed spinal flexion is primarily to maintain balance over the arcing ski as forces build and lines of force change throughout the turn. In other words, the skier is working to bring the center of mass forward so that it stays aligned with the base of support (the feet). Adjoined is another photo representing this. If you imagine the center of all my mass, you should be able to follow it down and see that it intersects with the boot of my outside ski. Now picture the same point in the turn if I were to have a straight spine (no flexion). The center of all my mass would then be directed to a point somewhere behind my outside boot. This would mean greatly reduced turning effect on the ski. We need to constantly move to search for that ever elusive sweet spot where the center of mass is being pulled through the base of support. And thoracic mobility is an important factor in that movement.

Pictured here is a normal range of motion for the thoracic spine in the sagittal (fore/aft) plane. If we lose that natural movement, we either lose some of our ability to continue adjusting the center of mass throughout the turn, thus limiting our potential to optimize our performance. Or we transfer some or all of the lost range to the low back and the neck, leading to overuse and injury as well as less than optimal mechanics up and down the rest of the chain.

The ribcage is already starting to sound more important isn’t it? And we haven’t even looked at the other planes of movement yet. Take a look at the fourth frame from the left in the initial photo sequence, and notice the substantial side bend of the spine. Well, if you look closely it is actually side bend with rotation. You can almost picture the internal “spring” loaded up with energy.

In this case, the movement is aiding in lateral balance, ensuring that the skier can maintain connection with the arcing outside ski. And again, without the range of motion in the thoracic spine, we would either have a reduced ability to continue increasing lateral movement or we would transfer all the load to the lumbar spine.

The following video clip shows this coiling and uncoiling of the spine in action:


So how do we maintain natural mobility and elasticity in the thoracic spine? There are a few ways, but one of the most beneficial and portable comes from Intu-Flow (part of the Circular Strength Training system). It involves moving the thoracic spine through it’s cardinal ranges of motion in the fore/aft and side to side planes. Take a look at the accompanying videos to learn this do-anywhere thoracic mobility exercise.

Intu-Flow Thoracic Mobility - Fore/Aft: Expand your chest forward and on a 45° angle towards the sky. Allow the air to be pulled into the lungs on this expansion. Then reach your mid-back towards the back wall. Allow the air to be expelled as the lungs compress in this back position.



Intu-Flow Thoracic Mobility - Lateral: Put your arms out to the side so they are parallel with the floor. Keep them like this throughout, with the shoulders packed down, to avoid tilting from side to side. Now slide sideways to one side, feeling as if you are sliding along a rail at the bottom of your ribcage. Then slide back in the other direction. It is more important to use strict form than a large Range of Motion. ROM will develop over time if you stick to the correct movement pattern.


So start developing your thoracic mobility today to add some spring to your turn and avoid injury down the road.

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For another important component of the coiling principle check out this post with for a look at a very cool bodyweight exercise for skiers.

Top 5 Clubbell® Exercises For Skiers - #5 The Rock-It Drill

The Clubbell® Rock-It Drill is an awesome way to develop the ability to dynamically adjust the center of mass against outside forces while building awesome lower body strength-endurance. Many trainers favor "stability training" which utilizes implements such as swiss balls and Bosu to create instability from below, I much prefer an approach which creates instability from above and from external sources such as Clubbells.

As you can see in the following clip of Thomas Grandi, retired Canadian Alpine Ski Team member, we generally ski from a very solid base of an edged ski but need to make constant adjustments to the center of mass to make sure it stays aligned with the feet (base of support) throughout the turn.
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Canadian Skier, Thomas Grandi, on YouTube
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The Rock-It Drill requires constant adjustment of the center of mass front to back in order to counter balance the mass of the Clubbells. At the same time, the piston action of the legs driving the Clubs provides an excellent strength-endurance training effect while teaching effective recruitment of the lower body architecture (proper muscle firing patterns).

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

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If you don't have Clubbells, check out this bodyweight workout for skiers.

Structure: The Magic Bullet - Loading the crossbow

One of the clients I coach told me at the end of his session yesterday that what I had done for him during the previous two hours was some sort of magic! Although it's always nice for the ego to hear something like that from a student, I had to let him in on the secret that there was no magic involved. All I did was show him how to find his naturally athletic stance where he was using his structure to support himself and absorb the forces of the turn instead of using his muscle.

One of the more common structural problems we see on the slopes is the outside foot dragging back behind the skier's center of mass. This moves the pivot point forward on the ski because the mass is not aligned with the feet, but rather with a point on the skis somewhere forward of the feet. It also means that all the skiers mass is being pulled through that point on the skis rather than directly down through the feet. So instead of holding himself up with structure, the skier is using muscular effort to remain upright and resist the forces of the turn.

This can be a very hard habit to tackle. For one thing, in a way it works quite well for those that use it. The forward orientation of the mass does create a torque on the ski which will make it turn. The problem lies in the fact that although it is relatively functional in good snow on moderate slopes, it is not a versatile approach and as soon as you run into ice, steeps, deeps or other challenging situations you run into trouble.

A drill I often use for students who need to make this structural discovery is the SkiFlow(tm) Crossbow. Essentially, it involves gradually moving the inside hand towards the outside knee throughout the arc of the turn until they touch (inside and outside refers to the arc of the turn - if you think of the arc as part of a big circle, you will be able to imagine the inside and outside of the arc...). It is important though that the action be accomplished through the use of the entire body and not just the arms. The skier needs to move from the trunk. The arms are simply an extension of the shoulder which will move as the shoulder is moved by the trunk. This drill has a couple very important advantages:

• It forces the outside foot forward so that it becomes realigned with the mass. This happens through the simple fact of reaching the hand for the outside knee. The "accordion" type action of reaching for the opposite knee will force the foot forward by taking advantage of the diagonal "sling" of muscle and connective tissue which runs across the front of the body from the shoulder, through the hip and right down into the femur of the opposite side.
• The same "accordion" movement also places the skier's upper body architecture in a more favorable mechanical position. It brings the shoulders in line with the knees and allows the skier to continue moving efficiently to maintain balance between the center of mass and the feet, both laterally and front to back.

The net effect is a skier who is optimally aligned over the feet and able to use structure (skeleton) to support themselves rather than muscular effort. They are using their structure to remain upright and using their muscles to support that structure.

Here is a clip of the Crossbow.


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