I spent the entire day today clinicing with some of top instructors in the country. The focus was on the tibialis anterior and aligning the center of mass over the the ski through the transition. I could discuss it here, but it was very advanced, and frankly, I'm afraid of boring everyone to tears if I mention the tibialis anterior yet again. So instead I'll answer a question another instructor asked as we were heading back inside.
Why is angulation a good thing?
Angulation refers to the angle between your skis and the snow. The higher this angle, the more turning force the ski creates, and the less work you have to do physically rotating the skis underneath you. Look at this picture of Bode Miller's medal-winning run from the 2010 Olympics:
Look at the skis contacting the snow. See how the skis are practically on their edges? Nobody's saying that you need to ski like that, but imagine for a second the immense forces those skis are generating. We don't want that much angle, but the more angle we get, the less work we have to do to turn the skis.
Why is banking a bad thing?
Good question! Banking is the tilting of the entire body, especially the upper body, into the turn, in order to absorb the centrifugal forces created by the turn. Look at the photo below. Notice how the skier in leaning to the inside of the turn while he completes a left turn?
Clearly he needs to lean that direction to avoid falling to the outside, right? When you take a fast corner on a bike, you lean in to avoid falling to the outside, right? Well, yes, of course. For the physics majors out there, the sum of all forces acting on a skier, applied to the center of mass, must draw a line down to the skis, or the skier will fall. For the non-physics majors, he's leaning in to avoid falling over.
But let's look at that photo more closely. Notice how the upper body (green) is angled at almost the same angle as the lower body (red)? This is what we call "banking". I've also drawn a center of mass symbol near the approximate center of mass. Remember that a line drawn down from the center of mass along the sum of centrifugal force and gravity must run down to the skis.
Now let's look at Bode again, with the same annotations.
That's a big difference, yes? Notice how Bode has kept his upper body upright, while his legs are sharply angled? Now look at the red lines that indicate angulation, and the center of mass. The banking skier almost aligns his center of mass with his legs, giving him a stable platform. Bode, on the other hand, keeps his upper body upright, raising the center of mass. This allows him to angulate his legs further while keeping the center of mass aligned with the skis, preserving that stable platform.
To summarize this, banking reduces your ability to angulate your skis. Keeping the upper body upright lets you drive those edges further into the snow, reducing the work you need to do to ski effectively.
And no, you don't have to ski like Bode Miller to take advantage of this!
