I love Deb at the end... 'now let's see you use your ankles to pop up the hill backwards' and up she goes as if she were 20 and had trained it all season!
although this lesson is presented as a children`s ski lesson, most any adult skier can benefit from trying these drills. i did the drills in a sequence, during the first runs ,early in a day of free skiing. plow hops, traversing shuffles with hops, and then the shuffle turns. i found them helpful. the drills are not too difficult, and they are a good self check of technique, especially the shuffle turns.
Lots of exercises but no mention as to why you train your ankles and what impact this has on skiing and ski performance. Always link back to the "why" of it all. easy to get stuck telling people to do things and they do them but without knowing why, especially with young kids they won't have the confidence to ask why they are doing something or what its good for.
The instructor of the young skiers did a superb job of implicitly and progressively demonstrating why doing things a certain way is helpful. He kept their interest with brief statements and quick demonstrations followed by student emulation and skiing. The young skiers learned quickly. For an analytical description of why the ankle is important consider viewing Ron Kipp's "Flex your ankles" video. It is excellent.
@@karlk9316 The only excellence about that video is the fact that they apparently don't know what the ankle is, and what it is doing in skiing. They talk about ankle flexion as the boot makers did in the 1960's and earlier. I would agree with you and the video, if we went back to that time when the boots allowed ankle movement. It is many good reasons why they abandoned that. The angle and stiffness of the boot is there for a reason, and it is not because you should fight it with the calf muscles. Those muscles are designed for controlling our movements (producing force againgst the ground) without skis on. Controlling, not producing. When you add skis to the system, the momentum around the ankle is far greater than this design is made for. That is why we have stiff boots, to lock the body from knee down to the skis. Above the knees, we are strong enough to control this, as the muscles there are built for dynamic strong movement.
@@Huttify Maybe. If a skier is not allowing their ankles and knees to flex and extend while skiing, how can they cause the necessary edge angles and body positions during the ski turns? How can a skier at high speed smoothly land and gently absorb compression forces in a wide turn on a steep slope if not using the entire kinetic chain of hips, knees, and ankles? If, as you suggest, a person is fighting the angle and stiffness of the boot with their calf muscles, then likely there are one or more problems with equipment, the body such as weak ankles or knees, skiing skills, and/or the mind. Even a world cup skier can have problems if their boots and bindings are not dialed in properly. I appreciate your argument relative to the lateral stiffness of ski boots, but fore / aft flexibility of the boot and foot / ankle / knee is necessary. IMO this is true even if the boots are stiff and only small movements are occurring in the foot/ankle as a result. Without active shin-boot contact, or whatever term you want to use, the best ski boots in the world are not being used most effectively. How can that occur if the knees, ankles, and feet are not engaged and active?
@@karlk9316 You are the one talking about the importance of ankle flexsion, not me. The boots are stiff, so any amount of desired change in the ankle is going to fight the boot. My whole previous comment is about that we should not flex our ankles while skiing. And there is a long list of arguments why we shouldn't. From your first question, I think you misread me. I never said that knees aren't allowed to move. Knees are the obvious part here that has to move, and that was the point I was trying to make. Knees can move without any flexion in the ankles. Knees and hips are flexible and strong enough to control the forces in skiing - ankles not. Ankles are restriceted both from their design in strength for skiing and the boot. Ankles should not acitvely move - they are in a stiff boot.
Helmets do nothing to reduce the g forces when your head goes from 30mph to zero in a fraction of a second. And its g forces which will cause concussion at about 95g and likely death at 275g. An impact at 30kph (18.6mph) creates 333g. And the testing of helmets is only to show they hold together at the equivalent of 11-14mph (provided they’re less than 3yrs old, which most aren’t), whereas the speed of the average skier is 27-33mph in different studies. Helmets only serve to make people feel safer and take more unconscious risks. Plus the ear covers, whilst generally good at sound transmission, reduce certain frequencies of sound, one of which coincides with the frequency of ski edges scraping on icy snow.
"Jusing just your ankles and driving your toes down" will not produce a jump. And that is also not what anyone in this video is doing. I don't understand! @debarmstrongskistrong Even outside a ski boot, this (in the quote) won't produce a jump. Our calf muscles are staticly strong, not dynamicly. The force production ending in the upward movement of the body comes mainly from the quadriceps, hamstring and gluteus maximus. I am not saying the calfes does not help, but in a ski boot, they are heavily limited in this movement. I understand the part where our learned movement pattern from what we feel, can be tricked into doing this, but I don't see why these words are the ones that should be used here. All movements shown in the video can be done with static calfes, but none of them can be done with static hip muscles. It seems to me the kids does not understand this in the beginning either, until one of them does a jump. Then the rest just follows.
I love Deb at the end... 'now let's see you use your ankles to pop up the hill backwards' and up she goes as if she were 20 and had trained it all season!
although this lesson is presented as a children`s ski lesson, most any adult skier can benefit from trying these drills. i did the drills in a sequence, during the first runs ,early in a day of free skiing. plow hops, traversing shuffles with hops, and then the shuffle turns. i found them helpful. the drills are not too difficult, and they are a good self check of technique, especially the shuffle turns.
awesome!!!!! Happy thanksgiving.
@@DebArmstrongSkiStrong thanks, the food was good! and i got in a few turns before hand
Great drill. Nail on head. Not just popping with ankles, but angling them as you did going backward and releasing from pressure under balls of feet.
Your last drill is crazy but I love it.
2:40 Hey I can see snow maker in action. 😁
ankle skills, yes mam...
cooooooool
Lots of exercises but no mention as to why you train your ankles and what impact this has on skiing and ski performance. Always link back to the "why" of it all. easy to get stuck telling people to do things and they do them but without knowing why, especially with young kids they won't have the confidence to ask why they are doing something or what its good for.
Don't be "that guy"
The instructor of the young skiers did a superb job of implicitly and progressively demonstrating why doing things a certain way is helpful. He kept their interest with brief statements and quick demonstrations followed by student emulation and skiing. The young skiers learned quickly.
For an analytical description of why the ankle is important consider viewing Ron Kipp's "Flex your ankles" video. It is excellent.
@@karlk9316 The only excellence about that video is the fact that they apparently don't know what the ankle is, and what it is doing in skiing. They talk about ankle flexion as the boot makers did in the 1960's and earlier. I would agree with you and the video, if we went back to that time when the boots allowed ankle movement. It is many good reasons why they abandoned that. The angle and stiffness of the boot is there for a reason, and it is not because you should fight it with the calf muscles. Those muscles are designed for controlling our movements (producing force againgst the ground) without skis on. Controlling, not producing. When you add skis to the system, the momentum around the ankle is far greater than this design is made for. That is why we have stiff boots, to lock the body from knee down to the skis. Above the knees, we are strong enough to control this, as the muscles there are built for dynamic strong movement.
@@Huttify Maybe. If a skier is not allowing their ankles and knees to flex and extend while skiing, how can they cause the necessary edge angles and body positions during the ski turns? How can a skier at high speed smoothly land and gently absorb compression forces in a wide turn on a steep slope if not using the entire kinetic chain of hips, knees, and ankles?
If, as you suggest, a person is fighting the angle and stiffness of the boot with their calf muscles, then likely there are one or more problems with equipment, the body such as weak ankles or knees, skiing skills, and/or the mind. Even a world cup skier can have problems if their boots and bindings are not dialed in properly.
I appreciate your argument relative to the lateral stiffness of ski boots, but fore / aft flexibility of the boot and foot / ankle / knee is necessary. IMO this is true even if the boots are stiff and only small movements are occurring in the foot/ankle as a result. Without active shin-boot contact, or whatever term you want to use, the best ski boots in the world are not being used most effectively. How can that occur if the knees, ankles, and feet are not engaged and active?
@@karlk9316 You are the one talking about the importance of ankle flexsion, not me. The boots are stiff, so any amount of desired change in the ankle is going to fight the boot. My whole previous comment is about that we should not flex our ankles while skiing. And there is a long list of arguments why we shouldn't.
From your first question, I think you misread me. I never said that knees aren't allowed to move. Knees are the obvious part here that has to move, and that was the point I was trying to make. Knees can move without any flexion in the ankles. Knees and hips are flexible and strong enough to control the forces in skiing - ankles not. Ankles are restriceted both from their design in strength for skiing and the boot. Ankles should not acitvely move - they are in a stiff boot.
The most important thing is wearing a helmet 😉😆
Not when you are setting up training environments or gates
Helmets do nothing to reduce the g forces when your head goes from 30mph to zero in a fraction of a second. And its g forces which will cause concussion at about 95g and likely death at 275g. An impact at 30kph (18.6mph) creates 333g. And the testing of helmets is only to show they hold together at the equivalent of 11-14mph (provided they’re less than 3yrs old, which most aren’t), whereas the speed of the average skier is 27-33mph in different studies. Helmets only serve to make people feel safer and take more unconscious risks. Plus the ear covers, whilst generally good at sound transmission, reduce certain frequencies of sound, one of which coincides with the frequency of ski edges scraping on icy snow.
"Jusing just your ankles and driving your toes down" will not produce a jump. And that is also not what anyone in this video is doing. I don't understand! @debarmstrongskistrong
Even outside a ski boot, this (in the quote) won't produce a jump. Our calf muscles are staticly strong, not dynamicly. The force production ending in the upward movement of the body comes mainly from the quadriceps, hamstring and gluteus maximus. I am not saying the calfes does not help, but in a ski boot, they are heavily limited in this movement. I understand the part where our learned movement pattern from what we feel, can be tricked into doing this, but I don't see why these words are the ones that should be used here. All movements shown in the video can be done with static calfes, but none of them can be done with static hip muscles.
It seems to me the kids does not understand this in the beginning either, until one of them does a jump. Then the rest just follows.
Which ski area was this?
Howelsen hill steamboat
@@DebArmstrongSkiStrong Thanks Deb!