There’s an old saying that basically goes “That’s about as useful as yesterday’s newspaper!” The simple message is that if your news isn’t current, it isn’t really all that helpful. In skiing and riding, the situation around you changes by the moment and you’ll need to develop good mental awareness along with your physical skills. You’ll learn to know that you shouldn’t be concerned with where you are: you want to focus on where you’re going.
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Archive for January, 2006
The most unprotected body part while skiing and riding is your lips. Of all the features between your neck and forehead, the lips are the most sensitive to weather conditions and need to be protected. Lip balm is a small but critical detail in any awesome day of winter recreation.
My experience is that a great choice of lip balm is Blistex DCT Daily Conditioning Treatment. It’s got an SPF of 20, stays pliable in very cold temperatures, seems to last more than other products, and has a relatively neutral taste. At around $2, it’s a good value as one container will last a couple months of daily use. It’s a good idea to get a number of DCT’s and stage in them in several locations including jackets, the car, and daypacks. I prefer the container-style lip balm as the lid seals tightly and prevents spillage. And, inevitably, I fail to check all my pockets and send DCT through the wash, but it survives just fine.
The Snow Gods blessed the western Maine mountains with about 8 inches of new snow Monday just to spite the weathermen who forecasted “flurries with no significant accumulation”. I expect I speak for many when I say don’t you just love it when that happens?! With a sudden change from yesterday’s conditions, an unexpected powder day is a a situation where you’ll want to pay attention to how you should adapt to the new snow. A primary adaptive movement in powder is to slightly narrow your stance so that your feet are fully under your hips.
In driving, your responsibility is to avoid what’s in front of you. That’s basically the Cardinal rule in skiing and riding, too; you should ignore what’s above (behind) you and avoid only what’s below you. Unlike a road, however, there’s usually little organization to a trail and there could be skiers/riders overtaking you from any direction while you are overtaking others from any direction. With so many moving objects (and no rear-view mirror), you’ll want to make every effort to know what’s around you including uphill.
An earlier post discussed the importance of using hip angulation to create more effective edging on ice or hard snow. The use of hip angulation in the last half of the turn will improve your edge grip, especially in a longer turn. You can apply that hip angulation more efficiently if you think about your body representing the center of a clock face.
The Wedge stance is to skiing what the pawn is to chess. A pawn is a piece that’s very active and important early in a chess match, but usually has very little value late in the game. Most folks are taught a wedge on their first day of skiing, but it isn’t really the best stance to use in other situations. After all, no one’s going to be racing at the Turino Olympics in a few weeks in a wedge, right? Most skiers begin to leave the wedge behind early in their skiing career, so just how can working on a wedge turn improve an experienced skier?!?
Downhill skiing is surely a sport and there aren’t too many sports where you don’t need to apply some level of athleticism. While learning to ski doesn’t require more balance than the ability to get out of bed, the nature of the fixed binding and boot combination makes it possible for a skier to lean on their equipment to make it go where they wish. This “lean” requires the skier to contort their body in ways that they couldn’t without falling down if they were wearing other footgear. You won’t need the “lean” tool to control your skis if you learn how to stand tall while moving down the slopes.
When was the last time you checked the tightness of the screws on your snowboard bindings? The last time you snowboarded? Last week? Last month? Ever?
Ideally, you should check the tightness of each screw on your snowboard bindings every time you snowboard. This applies not only to the baseplate screws but also each screw on each snowboard binding strap. If you can’t manage to do this every day at least do it once every four or five times you snowboard.
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If you’re going to ski and ride, it’s going to be something you’ll want to do safely. Things can change quickly on the slopes and keeping an eye on your environment is just common sense. You’ll contribute to everyone’s safety if you pay attention while on the slopes, all the time. It isn’t enough to know where you are and where’s you’re going; you’ll also want to focus on everything that’s around you and where it’s going.
Skiing in icy conditions doesn’t require MORE edging, it requires MORE EFFECTIVE edging. In hard snow conditions, using knee angulation alone may not be enough to give you a confident grip. And using more angulation may be self-defeating as higher edge angles require a higher balance and that’s going to be difficult on harder snow. One technique to generate more effective edging is to apply the hip along with the knee to improve your control on ice.