Leg Lean/Angulation

The next topic in our Ski Technique Lab, Leg Lean is all about how we lean our skis over on to their edges. Our ability to move laterally and lean inside a turn is one of the areas we see a big deficiency in recreational skiers. If we cannot create enough edge angle on the skis our ability to grip and tighten the radius of a turn is greatly limited. In an ideal scenario to be in our strongest position we would just lean with the whole body so that we maintain full body alignment from the feet up through the body, this can work with enough speed or can be a good movement at certain times in a ski turn, we can call this Inclination. The problem is we cannot always create a position of balance against the amount of edge angle we need for the grip required at lower speeds. So we still need to lean the skis but we cannot maintain balance if the whole body moves inside with the legs, the balance equation would not work for us. Imagine riding a bike, at high speed we can lean in a lot, if we did the same thing at low speed we would just fall over, the same thing occurs in skiing. With bikes we can turn the front wheel, with skiing we can rotate the skis with leg steering but we still need edges if we wish to deflect or skis around a turn. In this situation the best place in our body to create differing angles is in our hips, we can lean our legs but have our upper body at a more upright angle so that we can maintain balance. Doing this in the hip joint, where this movement is able to happen is our best bet over bending in the spine where we would be unevenly stressing our back, we call this Angulation or Leg Lean. How much we use depends on how much we need to maintain balance.