The Wisconsin Skier

 
 
 
When listening to ski commentators or read someone write about skiing, they will often say something like: Ooooh, and Anilik is in the backseat and she is now offline. What is meant by backseat in this context?

Quite simple, it is being off-balance to the rear of the skis. Often times, it happens when one hits an unexpected and unnoticed bump and that bump forces one backwards. Being in the backseat is not a good thing. Why?

• It is never good to be off balance on skis
• The pressure is on the rear of the skis and one drives & steers with the tips of their skis
• Having the weight on the rear of your skis puts one at greater risk for knee injury

Skiers initiate turns by engaging their tip’s edges into the snow. If your body is not in a well-balanced position to work from it will be hard to direct the skis in a proper fashion and it is near impossible to do from the backseat.

Skiers often appear to be in an unbalanced position as their butts are often behind their feet. Note, those skiers are often in a squat position, and their center of mass is in balance, with shins driving into the tongues of their boots; whereas, backseated skiers have their calves engaging their boots (or more likely their boots are driving their calves).

 
 
 
Not too long ago I put up a couple of videos from YouTube. The first video is of a semi-pro with a helmet camera, but it is a pro setup. The video comes along with commentary from the announcers. The skier runs a downhill race course and catches every bit of air one would expect.

The second video is an amateur skier with a handheld video camera skiing down the same ski run. He is not running a course but is free skiing. However, watch the video, you can see how is skiing by watching his shadow. In addition, he includes the raw audio, so you can hear him verbally react to the jumps (on top, he doesn’t seem to catch much air down course), and has he starts off down the serious headwall.

Notice how the perspective changes as he is skiing through the terrain park and the headwall. The terrain park appears flat, while the headwall is noticeably sloped downhill. Neither portion of the course is flat, but it takes the extreme slope of the headwall to show up on the camera. Another measure you can use to figure out how steep the headwall is, is the shadow he casts, notice how far down the headwall that shadow reaches.

Even after all of that, the ease by which he handles that run and by the flattening affect of the camera, I sit here thinking I can handle that run. I know I can get myself up to it, but it would take some work, and I need to learn to let loose on steeps, and not not be defensive.