Indoor off-snow lecture
The title of the indoor lecture that I attended was, "Bridging Dry Drills and On-snow Skills in Nordic/Alpine Skiing"
Delivered by András Végh, Szende Lilla, Dr. Ágoston Dosek, Peter Dalos & Viki Ross
One of the fantastic things about Interski is the build up to the congress and seeing the massive amount of work that some nations do to prepare for the event. And Hungary were one of those nations. In addition to their demo team training, they have put a lot of time into looking at this area of bridging dry land drills with alpine and nordic skiing to make sure that natural and functional movement patterns are transferred from the gym to the snow.
The concept of dry-land training for skiing is something that I have been interested in for many years and in summers gone by have participated in many activities where the movements of skiing can be mimicked away from the snowsport environment. Activities like in line skating or rollerblading are a great example of this. Just take a look at Reilly McGlashan on YouTube to see what I mean. But we have also seen a lot of development in the gym work that ski athletes do such as Mikaela Shiffrin in order to train their physical fitness for skiing. But what is great about this work by the Hungarian Interski Demo Team is that it takes a different tack in that it explores functional movements in the gym and how they can be transferred to the slopes to ensure mobility, stability and sense of rhythm.
In their lecture they presented excerpts from their video series (see link latter in this report) including basic stance and mobility in the turn. The videos, apart from being very well filmed, by showing the gym movement alongside the skiing movement, were easy to understand, and included a little humour which helped to liven up what could be seen as a fairly 'dry' subject (if you will pardon the pun).
Basic Stance
The key message here is that the basic stance needs to have a neutral spine, with joints flexed so that centre of gravity is aligned towards the centre of the boots. This centred position means the skier's movement is ready to move and can be free and efficient. This is similar to the position when landing on two feet in an athletic stance in the gym. The natural stance width should be hip width apart to encourage a stable platform and correct alignment of the ankles, knees and hips. View the 'basic stance' video by clicking here.
To read my full report of the Hungarian indoor lecture download the Congress ebook report for your favourite ereader. This eBook report features 8 countries and includes top takeaways from the event. The report is FREE on my store, Google Play, and Amazon.com where it has been price matched to zero.
About the author
Derek Tate is an alpine skiing coach and director of British Alpine Ski School Chamonix. He is a mental skills coach, positive psychology practitioner and author. His recent books include, "Six Steps for Training the Mind", "Learn, Enjoy, Flow & Grow" and "Transformational Flow Coaching". You can learn more from his author page.
And to listen to Derek's Interski 2023 Review on The Ski Instructor Podcast with host Dave Burrows click on the relevant podcast link: