Toppling and balance.

[Chris V.]

This thread has turned into probably the silliest 15 page debate we've ever had here. It arises from trying to load too much meaning into a couple of ambiguous words.

If embracing the concept of "toppling" improves your skiing, great. If it doesn't work for you, so be it. What would be constructive would be, if you don't like the concept, post video of someone you think is "toppling," and point out what's wrong with it. But to take, for example, Tom Gellie, a proponent of toppling, I think he's skiing well in his demonstration video. Or if you do like the concept of toppling, can you post video showing any difference between the results of applying it versus applying some alternative concept that has been time tested? To me, it's just a mental cue, not a description of something startlingly different from what has long been recognized as good skiing.

What we can or should all agree on is that there are a lot of intermediate skiers who get "stuck" inside the old turn, and instead need to learn to move more dynamically ftom turn to turn.

Likewise, trying to set up a simple dichotomy between being "in balance" or "unbalanced" is fraught. I know what a balanced rock looks like. That's in a static environment. I know what it is to ski only on the right foot, or only on the left foot. But to tell me I'm "balanced" or "unbalanced" or even "creating imbalance" while skiing is too simplistic, and undefinable. Give me detail on the movements that are in play.

 

[stevo]

But to tell me I'm "balanced" or "unbalanced" or even "creating imbalance" while skiing is too simplistic, and undefinable. Give me detail on the movements that are in play.

I have already gone into great detail already. Mostly people here have whined about having to read it. I'm not exactly sure why anyone would argue against better balance in skiing, that is just absolutely bizarre to me, but I think is coming from people that don't even realize how much better their balance could be if they worked on it. Because ideally balanced skiing does NOT come for free. If you know what it is about, then you know you have to work for it...and if you don't know, what you don't know...well there we are...

Toppling is not balanced. By definition it is out of balance. Go ahead and keep telling people to fall back and forth across their skis...it will work to a degree...but it is not balanced skiing.

 

[LiquidFeet]

@stevo, what does an out of balance initiation look like to you? What does a balanced initiation look like? What would we see as observers that's different between these two?

Toppling, or diving, are movements. They get the CoM inside the turn high in the turn, which results in the skis tipping onto new edges and which then cause the skis to turn downhill. All of this happens above the fall line, as the turn is initiated.

IOW, those words describe a body in motion which results from body movements that happen just before the CoM gets below the feet/skis. According to your view, if I'm reading you correctly, neither a topple nor a dive is a balanced moment in a ski turn.

I'm assuming we are talking about turns where the skier's CoM (somehow) gets below the feet above the fall line, and the skis catch up with the CoM at the fall line.

What movements resulting in this kind of turn entry (skier upside down on the pitch) distinguish a balanced initiation from an imbalanced one, in your view?

 

[stevo]

@stevo, what does an out of balance initiation look like to you? What does a balanced initiation look like? What would we see as observers that's different between these two?

First, thanks for humoring me with discussion! Seriously.

Secondly, I think it's a very tricky thing to explain what a "balanced" initiation looks like. we can say what it "feels" like, which is "not falling". There are obviously some blatant examples of horribly out of balance skiing, and we would obviously be able to see it, and quite possibly the skier would even fall down. But there are much lessor forms of mediocre balance which are somewhere between difficult and impossible to actually detect by looking at it. Well I should say it's not impossible. I do kind of know what balanced and unbalanced looks like, but nobody here would agree by looking alone. And ultimately balance is determined by feel. The amount of inclination, angulation, etc.. is all determined by speed, turn radius, etc..

There are some skiers such as Shiffrin who have such impeccable balance, it's clearly obvious to me, but it may not be obvious to others. People can watch that skiing and say she's toppling or falling..and someone else can say no she's not...and none of us know for sure by looking at her video, but I suspect she is not falling most of the time.

Toppling, or diving, are movements. They get the CoM inside the turn high in the turn, which results in the skis tipping onto new edges and which then cause the skis to turn downhill. All of this happens above the fall line, as the turn is initiated.

Devil is in the details. There is a difference between lowering your CoM into the turn vs dropping it, toppling it, pushing it, throwing it, projecting it, diving it, etc.. It can be lowered with more balance control then is implied by toppling and the other dramatic verbs suggested. Words matter. Toppling means falling. If you are falling, you are out of balance to the inside already. If you dive, you are out of balance even worse.

IOW, those words describe a body in motion which results from body movements that happen just before the CoM gets below the feet/skis. According to your view, if I'm reading you correctly, neither a topple nor a dive is a balanced moment in a ski turn.

correct

I'm assuming we are talking about turns where the skier's CoM (somehow) gets below the feet above the fall line, and the skis catch up with the CoM at the fall line.

Hmm. you are stating things relative to gravity rather then the path the skis are taking. That alone just suggests a sky diving mentality, falling into wherever gravity is letting you fall. It's not balance on the edge of the ski. Skis catch up to the CoM at the fall line? That statement doesn't make sense to me. Please explain the physics you think are happening....

I prefer to think of things in terms of the path the skis are taking and the path the CoM is taking. The CoM takes a shorter inside line. And if you are balanced on the inside edge of the outside ski by some force vector, then there is some certain exact amount of inclination of your body where the CoM will be inside of your ski path and will have to be lowered into the inside to some degree in order to develop inclination and develop bigger and bigger edge angles while retaining balance to match the developing pressure. The question is whether you can do that effort without falling or throwing yourself out of balance to the inside.

What movements resulting in this kind of turn entry (skier upside down on the pitch) distinguish a balanced initiation from an imbalanced one, in your view?

I explained this a bit earlier in the thread already. You can use angulation to counter balance, while using your legs and feet to initiate edge angles. The counter balancing is what prevents you from toppling out of balance. At any point in the effort of lowering your CoM gently into the inside, you have something much much closer to a state of balance, then you have from toppling or diving with your CoM to the inside, which is blatantly out of balance and will require a recovering action to avoid even falling onto the snow, but while you're out of balance your edge will not be performing optimally and often during the "recovery" you will also jam your edges and they will not perform optimally for that either, and also this will often cause you to be crammed timewise into the next transition because of the recovery action. You get a much smoother transition when you have maintained balance from the top of the turn...yes upside down as they say! You have momentum, creating centripetal forces on the engaged ski edge, which is developing greater and greater as the turn develops. You want to find ways to lower your CoM inside at a rate that matches that developing rate of centripetal forces. If you topple or dive inside....well..you're probably not. And the word topple even instructs you not to be.

 

[Rod9301]

A lot of words, but i read that you advocate counterbalance instead of inclination in the first part of the turn. Which is contrary to what most racers or good skiers do. They incline without angulation, then add the angulation around the fall line.

 

[stevo]

no, that is not what I am saying. Inclination and angulation can be used together in coordinated fashion. counter balancing starts in micro doses from the very first moments you start tipping your skis on edge into the turn, which is also only the beginning of inclination. Inclination and angulation develop over time as you progress into the turn.

If you incline without some amount of counter balancing efforts....you are likely out of balance to the inside. What I am explaining is what good skiers and good racers do. but, well there are some racers and good skiers that ski out of balance. so there is that. Could they be better if they improved their balancing skills? I say yes.

 

[James]

If you are falling, you are out of balance to the inside already. If you dive, you are out of balance even worse.

Not necessarily true. All that matters is what happens when you land, or when the weight “comes back on”. There’s the float. Technically you’re falling even if it’s vertical, over your skis. But that float or light time can be used for going inside or inclining. Then pressure/turn, release, and repeat.

Shiffrin “falling” into the turn on e the pitch and speed pick up.


This is very slowed down. There’s a normal speed of this and it’s fast.

 

[LiquidFeet]

First, thanks for humoring me with discussion! Seriously.

Secondly, I think it's a very tricky thing to explain what a "balanced" initiation looks like. we can say what it "feels" like, which is "not falling". There are obviously some blatant examples of horribly out of balance skiing, and we would obviously be able to see it, and quite possibly the skier would even fall down. But there are much lessor forms of mediocre balance which are somewhere between difficult and impossible to actually detect by looking at it. Well I should say it's not impossible. I do kind of know what balanced and unbalanced looks like, but nobody here would agree by looking alone. And ultimately balance is determined by feel. The amount of inclination, angulation, etc.. is all determined by speed, turn radius, etc..

There are some skiers such as Shiffrin who have such impeccable balance, it's clearly obvious to me, but it may not be obvious to others. People can watch that skiing and say she's toppling or falling..and someone else can say no she's not...and none of us know for sure by looking at her video, but I suspect she is not falling most of the time.



Devil is in the details. There is a difference between lowering your CoM into the turn vs dropping it, toppling it, pushing it, throwing it, projecting it, diving it, etc.. It can be lowered with more balance control then is implied by toppling and the other dramatic verbs suggested. Words matter. Toppling means falling. If you are falling, you are out of balance to the inside already. If you dive, you are out of balance even worse.



correct



Hmm. you are stating things relative to gravity rather then the path the skis are taking. That alone just suggests a sky diving mentality, falling into wherever gravity is letting you fall. It's not balance on the edge of the ski. Skis catch up to the CoM at the fall line? That statement doesn't make sense to me. Please explain the physics you think are happening....

I prefer to think of things in terms of the path the skis are taking and the path the CoM is taking. The CoM takes a shorter inside line. And if you are balanced on the inside edge of the outside ski by some force vector, then there is some certain exact amount of inclination of your body where the CoM will be inside of your ski path and will have to be lowered into the inside to some degree in order to develop inclination and develop bigger and bigger edge angles while retaining balance to match the developing pressure. The question is whether you can do that effort without falling or throwing yourself out of balance to the inside.



I explained this a bit earlier in the thread already. You can use angulation to counter balance, while using your legs and feet to initiate edge angles. The counter balancing is what prevents you from toppling out of balance. At any point in the effort of lowering your CoM gently into the inside, you have something much much closer to a state of balance, then you have from toppling or diving with your CoM to the inside, which is blatantly out of balance and will require a recovering action to avoid even falling onto the snow, but while you're out of balance your edge will not be performing optimally and often during the "recovery" you will also jam your edges and they will not perform optimally for that either, and also this will often cause you to be crammed timewise into the next transition because of the recovery action. You get a much smoother transition when you have maintained balance from the top of the turn...yes upside down as they say! You have momentum, creating centripetal forces on the engaged ski edge, which is developing greater and greater as the turn develops. You want to find ways to lower your CoM inside at a rate that matches that developing rate of centripetal forces. If you topple or dive inside....well..you're probably not. And the word topple even instructs you not to be.

This amount of detail clarifies a lot.

 

[stevo]

Not necessarily true. All that matters is what happens when you land, or when the weight “comes back on”. There’s the float. Technically you’re falling even if it’s vertical, over your skis. But that float or light time can be used for going inside or inclining. Then pressure/turn, release, and repeat.

Shiffrin “falling” into the turn on e the pitch and speed pick up.


This is very slowed down. There’s a normal speed of this and it’s fast.

do you understand what it means to fall off the edge? Ever seen video of Shiffrin practicing up and over drill? that is the topple stopper drill FWIW

 

[Chris V.]

Inclination and angulation can be used together in coordinated fashion. counter balancing starts in micro doses from the very first moments you start tipping your skis on edge into the turn, which is also only the beginning of inclination. Inclination and angulation develop over time as you progress into the turn.

This is a good topic for discussion in itself. I can give an example in the contrast between styles of two top level instructors I ski with. The first favors relatively slow speed short radius turns. He uses a lot of angulation early in the turn, right out of the gate. Not micro doses. In fact, a favorite exercise of his is reversing angulation, edges, and foot to foot balance while standing still. The other favors much longer radius turns, at bat out of hell speeds. She makes a big inclination move to the inside early in the turn, and yes, angulation in more than micro doses waits until later.

At higher speeds, we can make the big early inclination move, and the angulation later on will result in the skis catching us. At low speeds, a pure inclination move will fail, because while the body is still moving inside the turn at a steady clip, it takes too much time for the skis to come around, relative to that.

The slomo Mikaela video James posted is a pretty good illustration. There's a strong difference in body mechanics, between when she's going slower and when she speeds up.

 

[Chris V.]

Or video or strobe series, actually.

 

[stevo]

This is a good topic for discussion in itself. I can give an example in the contrast between styles of two top level instructors I ski with. The first favors relatively slow speed short radius turns. He uses a lot of angulation early in the turn, right out of the gate. Not micro doses. In fact, a favorite exercise of his is reversing angulation, edges, and foot to foot balance while standing still. The other favors much longer radius turns, at bat out of hell speeds. She makes a big inclination move to the inside early in the turn, and yes, angulation in more than micro doses waits until later.

At higher speeds, we can make the big early inclination move, and the angulation later on will result in the skis catching us. At low speeds, a pure inclination move will fail, because while the body is still moving inside the turn at a steady clip, it takes too much time for the skis to come around, relative to that.

The slomo Mikaela video James posted is a pretty good illustration. There's a strong difference in body mechanics, between when she's going slower and when she speeds up.

just to be clear I am definitely not trying to endorse some kind of hyper angulation early in the turn. whatever you are talking about with your instructor friend is not what I was trying to say.

I have said several times, using language of "counter balancing" and "micro doses"...and counter balancing does not always necessarily mean "hip" angulation. Angulation is usually referring to that, but you could be talking about any kind of comma shape so to speak...inclination that has a counter balancing aspect.

Sometimes when you start to tip the skis you can make very slight shifts to the uphill ski, people might not even be able to see it visually, but you will be in those early stages using very small counter balancing movements to avoid toppling. As the turn progresses, you develop more centripetal forces, with in theory the inclination matching the developing centripetal forces as you go, however if you incline directly first, you will be out of balance to the inside.

That is what they call putting the cart before the horse.

Counterbalancing is needed from the very start of the turn. You may not realize you are using some micro dose of leg angulation of some kind or tipping from the feet first, etc...later on in the turn as the angles get bigger it will show up as hip angulation.

The downside of lost balance to the inside is loss of edge engagement until a later recovery happens.

 

[James]

do you understand what it means to fall off the edge? Ever seen video of Shiffrin practicing up and over drill? that is the topple stopper drill FWIW

She’s falling onto the edge.
But go ahead and enlighten me.

The Burke video? That’s not Shiffrin, fwiw. She’s just explaining. It’s unclear whether she saw the video or Burke just pasted it to her audio.

It’s a drill. Notice how in she’s not skiing like that Burke girl in the up and over drill, in the vid above or any other slalom.

 

[stevo]

She’s falling onto the edge.
But go ahead and enlighten me.

The Burke video? That’s not Shiffrin, fwiw. She’s just explaining. It’s unclear whether she saw the video or Burke just pasted it to her audio.

It’s a drill. Notice how in she’s not skiing like that Burke girl in the up and over drill, in the vid above or any other slalom.

so are you saying Shiffrin never actually did up and over drills?

as I said, that drill is the toppler stopper.

 

[James]

so are you saying Shiffrin never actually did up and over drills?

Why would I say that? She’s explaining the drill. She’d rather do drills than ski powder. I'm saying Shiffrin is talking, someone else from Burke is drilling.
Let’s address the slalom skiing rather than the drill. The slalom skiing is nothing like the drill. Esp the way the Burke girl does it in ski jumper position.

 

[stevo]

At higher speeds, we can make the big early inclination move, and the angulation later on will result in the skis catching us. At low speeds, a pure inclination move will fail, because while the body is still moving inside the turn at a steady clip, it takes too much time for the skis to come around, relative to that.

The angulation does not cause the skis to catch you when you go weightless through high-C. It's the fact that your CoM is still heading in a certain direction kind of straight line-ish and the skis curve around and become a catcher's mitt for your CoM. That is what catches you. Often that involves a neccesasary pivot, as is the case with some of the turns of Shiffrin James shared. And by the way, I'm not trying to say that can't be useful part of skiing too. But I am saying that teaching people to "topple" their transitions will encourage them to ski out of balance and lose any possibility of getting high-C edge engagement. In that Shiffrin video above it's quite clear she is getting high-C engagement at least half the time, maybe more. she is earnestly attempting to be balanced on the inside edge of her outside ski from the very start of most turns...but occasionally, due to race course, she isn't balanced on it and has to pivot back into position. its happening very fast on tight course...ok... fine.. still...I see someone earnestly trying not to "topple" as much as possible. you're getting way off track now.

Anyway, i'm kind of bored with this conversation now, I have repeated myself at least 5 times already, some of you just don't want to pursue balanced skiing, that's your perogative... topple and dive to your heart's content, as long as you are having fun I really don't care. But still...the word topple is not encouraging balance..and your POV's being expressed here just exemplifies how much that meme like a mind virus has infected thought.

peace out

 

[stevo]

Why would I say that? She’s explaining the drill. She’d rather do drills than ski powder. I'm saying Shiffrin is talking, someone else from Burke is drilling.
Let’s address the slalom skiing rather than the drill. The slalom skiing is nothing like the drill. Esp the way the Burke girl does it in ski jumper position.

I disagree, I can see her numerous times in that video endeavoring to get over her new outside ski. that is exactly what that drill encourages. It's toppler stopper.

Ok, really I'm turning off watch for this thread. Believe what you want.

 

[mister moose]

I'm going to take a stab at this, apologies if I'm repeating something said earlier.

I see a lot of detailed clarification on toppling and balance.

Isn't there a difference between dynamically balanced (you exert movements to achieve continuous balance as the forces dictate) and toppling (not my favorite term, but I infer this is unbalanced, and we then need to move to achieve dynamic balance)

In other words, in the former you stay balanced, in the latter you move out of current balance, and towards a place that will be balanced in the very near future.

 

[James]

Ok, really I'm turning off watch for this thread. Believe what you want.

A slo motion video of Shiffrin is posted and you red herring/straw man it with something else. That’s not convincing.

 

[geepers]

There is a difference between lowering your CoM into the turn vs dropping it, toppling it, pushing it, throwing it, projecting it, diving it, etc..

So if an instructor described it as "The idea is to collapse the new inside leg and relax the hip area, so that you can let your body fall into the turn..." that wouldn't be something you agreed with?