Hips High

This article was first posted on SkiPost.com on October 27, 2011.
We have heard "hips high" a thousand times, but it is always interesting to hear it again.

I'm curious on how these two technique aspects can coexist?     "Keep the hips high in classical skiing - through the whole stride" and "Initiate the skate or classical kick by dropping your weight onto the ski......"     Coaches should absolutely teach their athletes to ski with high and forward hips.  But because words can be misleading:    I think of especially Virpi Kuitunen, Petter Northug, Bente Skari, Alex Harvey, Jacobsen, Longa, Majdic, Axel, Goering, Filbrich, Angerer, Russian 1 and 2 at the Olympics and basically any clip of Andy Newell... the more I think about it the easier it is to think of the very few top skiers who are more back like Emil in that shuffle sprint style acceleration, Kowalczyc slap-running up the hills.    The hips should begin literally high in order to be in a position where the center of mass is forward and up, which is a position that it can be dropped down onto the ski.  You can't drop something from the level of the floor - to over state the point.  And to turn the question around, how can you drop your hips if they aren't high?  And in terms kids understand - you have to get up, to get down.  The same is true for double pole and V2 and V2 alternate at higher speeds where the application of force is both lateral and up and down as well as applied more quickly like a classical kick.  It is less true in V1 where the motion is much more lateral and much less or not at all up and down as well as (except in the case of jump skating) applied over a longer period of time.    Anyway back to classical, to experiment, try putting force down from a low crouch.  Measure your force with an old-style bathroom scale.  Then try from a high position.  No question what the result will be.  Try to apply force down with your weight back and low.  What force you can apply cannot be applied quickly.  Try to apply force down quickly from anything but a high and forward position and it is slow and laborious.  To apply force down quickly, maximally and efficiently in any sport the hips should begin high and forward.  If your skiers are walking around on straight legs they are closer to good technique than if they are walking around in a low crouch.  And they are less fatigued.  But in neither case are they skiing.  Through the motions of skiing in different terrain and conditions and the differences you see in body type there is a range of high and forward. Stride length is follow through.      What is (obviously) the important outcome of position, motion and application of power is the speed they ski.  This is accomplished through power / effectiveness of the kick not stride length.  Stride length can result from a powerful kick and in a lot of terrain should but does not contribute to it.  Similarly and more importantly the length of the glide should result from speed but does not directly contribute to speed.  If anything skiers are trying too hard to have a long stride and this decreases the power they can put into the kick which decreases their speed.  This mostly results from trying to ski big and long, which puts them in a back and low position.  The number one fault of most skiers is over-striding.  It is also the technical fault of most runners.  Trying to ski with a long glide generally just leads to bogging down and most skiers should shorten their stride earlier in transitions to maintain momentum rather than try to milk a long glide.