There is an alternative way to get out of the back seat. My previous post talked about dorsiflexing and moving hips up and forward. The two approaches are pretty much two sides of the same coin. This second approach works better with some people than the other approach.You are on the right track, and as others have said, your skiing is impressive for a 2nd season skier. Congrats!. But being backseat is indeed holding you back. So I'm going to address that first. You said:
Tried to focus on bringing pressure to the shins but couldn't do it every time -- its hard to concentrate on downhill leg and shin pressure at the same time. Still look backseat in the video footage but maybe better than before.
1. In order to bring pressure to the shins, concentrate on keeping your ankles bent forward - keep them dorsiflexed. You probably won't be able to concentrate on anything else but this because most people can only work on one thing at a time. So practice on green terrain, which will offer less speed to distract your attention from your ankles.
I grabbed these two images from the internet. The first shows what you focus on- inside the boot lift your forefoot up to contact the ceiling of the boot. This creates dorsiflexiong.
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And here's your goal: get the angle of your ankle "closed," aka dorsiflexed, like so:
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Your shin will tilt forward inside the boot when you ski this way. That tilt will produce shin-tongue contact. Keep the ankles constantly dorsiflexed. This will be a challenge. Your goal is to make it habitual, so you can do it without thought. Practice, practice, practice. Practice on empty green terrain where the distractions are limited. When you forget and notice that you lost your focus, congratulate yourself for recognizing this and bring the focus back to dorsiflexing.
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2. As you are getting successful at keeping your ankles dorsiflexed, also work on lifting your hips up and forward. Do this by opening your knees. The farther forward you get your hips, the more shin-tongue "pressure" you'll feel, and the more weight you will be directing to the shovels of your skis. How much you lift your hips determines how much weight you put over the shovels. Once your dorsiflexion is in muscle memory, you can then learn to manipulate how much shovel pressure you want to have by deciding how much to lift your hips up and forward. More up and forward, more shovel pressure.
--Look at the shin tilt for these two skiers below. The man's shins are vertical, not tilted forward, because he is not dorsiflexing. This forces his hips and torso back, so his weight is concentrated over the backs of the skis. He's in the back seat. His quads are getting exhausted. Not good.
--The woman's shins are tilted forward. She is dorsiflexing. Her hips are up, not sitting back, and her quads are not getting exhausted. She is definitely not in the back seat. That's your goal. The key is dorsiflexion, with hips up.
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3. One more thing. Notice how the woman's upper body tilt matches the shin tilt? This is good. Aim for that, once you're dealing with lifting those hips up and forward. It will feel much more natural to get your bent elbows forward of your jacket's side-seam, and keep your hands forward as hers are. That will get your arms in a good position and help your balance, even if you are just holding onto your poles. Those arms weight something too, so their weight has an impact on how much weight is hovering over the fronts of your skis.
4. I have not addressed skiing from outside ski to outside ski, nor how to develop higher edge angles. Nor have I mentioned how to make clean arc-to-arc carves. These can be worked on after you solve the back seat issue.
Instead of directly dorsiflexing and lifting hips up and forward, pull the feet back. Pull both feet back, and keep them back as you ski. Holding the feet back relative to the hips above forces the ankles to dorsiflex, tilts the shins forward, which in turn creates shin-tongue contact, and aligns the hips forward of the feet so they hover over the fronts of the skis and weight them down. Controlling how much pressure you direct toward the shovels will still rely on how far forward you position the hips.
Below is an image that shows how to pull the feet back. It happens mostly at the knees. This demo requires the instructor to stand on one leg to show the hinging at the knee on the other leg, but in reality you need to pull them both back together to get out of the back seat. The farther back you pull the feet, the more the upper thigh tilts and the higher the hips go. I have a better slo-mo video somewhere that does a better job of showing the pull-back motion I am talking about, but can't find it.
Again, my comments are directed at getting out of the back seat. Since people can't pay attention to two things at once, eliminating back seat skiing can come first. Once you are no longer consistently back you will be so much better balanced, much more confident in your ski control at speed, and you will no longer be getting so exhausted. You will be primed to learn how to manage your outside ski pressure and how to initiate turns in such a way that you can get higher edge angles.
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