Video of World Cup Stars displaying Fundamental Skills

As we start the season working on our fundamentals, I happened on this video clip that shows some World Cup stars skiing some pretty good turns. We saw a couple of these guys at the World Cup at Lake Louise this Thanksgiving. (THAT was an exciting race!) I am always amazed at how easy these guys make it look. But then when breaking it down, it really comes to mastering some pretty easy fundamental skills and doing them VERY well. It DOES TAKE discipline and practice to polish those skills to the level that we will see in the Video clips.

To begin with, you see very little body movement in any of these skiers. Using a balanced athletic stance with good hand/arm position, ankles flexed forward and knees flexed; their turns begin at/with their feet. The turns start with a subtle (and hardly noticeable, but still very dynamic) rolling of the ankles. Then the legs become more involved and you can see the rolling of the ankles and knees as the turn develops. The feet and legs are allowed to move outside the body to promote lateral balance, but the body remains quite(and still in that balanced athletic stance), with the majority of the work done with the feet and legs. In all cases a strong pole plant is used. Didier Cuche uses a somewhat unusual style of arm movement, but it works well for his body type. The other clips show a more usual pole planting mechanism.

You will also notice the balance change from one foot to the new foot at the beginning of the new turn. This is especially seen in Thomas Grandi's second clip. In each turn the inside foot will work to mimic the movements of the outside foot, but the outside foot of the turn IS the more dominent in order to best control the turn shape and maintain balance throughout the "ARC" and be prepared to easily move into the next arc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTboYL8CjaU