Mikaela Shiffrin Hip Hike GS

Want to beat the best in the world? You've got to learn how to move like the best in the world. Back to the basics is a constant theme at the elite level.

[MrDogonjon]

Best demo of hip leveling I've ever seen.

[elainenilsson]

One of the best instructional videos yet

[bogdanwalkowicz]

Układ dośrodkowy przyjmuje się w skręcie w celu zwiększenia zakrawędziowania nart i równocześnie zrównoważeniu siły odśrodkowej. Pięknie wykonane :-)

[trouts]

Informative, nice music and very relaxing. Just what I needed.

[shootera]

It shocks me how many supposedly qualified coaches do not talk about or understand the biomechanical significance of this pelvic bone motion / tilt. It literally is mandatory that the pelvic bone "switch" like this in transition. Deb Armstrong is one of the few I have seen highlight this motion.

Coaches love to talk about how the turn starts with tipping the ankles and feet, but that is not possible for some skiers depending on how their body works. If you do not switch the pelvic bone tilt, your feet cannot distribute pressure properly on boot board, and thus the ski. So the turn really starts with this "hip switch".

Don't believe it? Try this experiment on your own. Go to a really moderate/flat slope. Get in a proper strong centered position with good shin pressure on the tongues. Point em straight downhill. Now....FEEL the pressure on the bottoms of your feet as you slowly accelerate. Feel the pressure. Now, hike your hip in which ever direction you prefer to start with. Don't even think about which way you want to turn. Just say....from a neutral position, going straight DH "I am going to hike my left hip WAY UP" and do that exaggerated pelvic bone tilt. As you raise the left side of whole pelvic bone, FEEL the pressure distribution on the BOTTOM OF YOUR RIGHT FOOT. IT DRAMATICALLY CHANGES. All the pressure shifts to the inside of your loaded foot and the skis will immediately start tipping. The turn does not start with the feet....it starts with the pressure distribution on the bottom of the feet. But it is this hip / pelvic bone "tilt" that controls the pressure on the bottom of your feet.

I was having trouble "starting my turns from the feet/ankles up" and asked our Masters program coaches about the role of the hip..and they scoffed at actively focusing on hip tilt/hike. These were ex US team coaches (albeit in the 80s/90s)....! I guess they do not believe in biomechanical impediments that some skiers have, and prefer to just say "do this" without helping you figure out HOW to do it.

I chose to ignore them, skip gate training, and go work on this for DAYS. It has changed my skiing. Some people naturally have tight hips that do not want to move in this way. Other people, you tell them to initiate the turn by tipping with the feet, and they naturally switch their pelvic bone tilt to start the turn. I am the former. My hips JUST DO NOT WANT TO DO THIS. So I had to concentrate on it really hard, and do literally thousands of turns trying to ingrain this motion. Now the coaches comment on how dramatically transformed my skiing is. Go figure.

A really good pairing of drills is to do these "hip hikes" rapidly back and forth down the fall line like Mikaela does at 0:14 to 0:23. Then do some Javelin turns at speed while concentrating on using the pelvic bone tilt for a long time on longer radius turns. See Brandon's other video showing "early season drills", and look at the STRONG CARVING Javelin turns in that video. You literally can not do these strong carve Javelin turns without the hip hike / pelvic bone tilt. Do them fast....on GS skis, and it will teach you to get stacked and balanced over that outside ski. Use variance in hip hike / tilt and edge angling from the strong foot to adjust balance/lean. The golden moment is when your body gets ahead of the skis, and you lean in too much, and fall over early in the turn, and respond not by putting the ski down, but by increasing the hip hike and tipping from the feet to tighten the turn radius and catch yourself.

To add another challenge, switch back and forth between SL and GS skis. Do the rapid hip switch drills, then the strong carve Javelin turns on your SL skis...then switch to the GS skis....and learn how the two types of skis respond differently to input. Going from GS to SL is easy. Going from SL to 30m GS skis is tough.

[profpat]

One of skiing's "Magic Moves"

[ryanhunter]

Try snappy directional changes while running on a descending angle treadmill. Build potential energy by preloading the directional change in the hip, oblique, and core (twist like golf). This is clutch for driving hips further down the fall line. It can deliver > 1000 millesecond improvements in run time. And always, get your center of mass as low as possible while producing sufficient fall line forward lean (gravity research)

Bend zay knees. 5 dollars pleaze.

[andys]

Brandon, does this keep her from getting too inside, too early? I'm getting inside, too early kind of creating a static position throughout the turn vs dynamic. Wondering if this might be a good drill to get on top of the ski before rolling? Thanks!

[JB]

Imagine you are standing between two Barstools. You want to rest your Right cheek on the Right Barstool. Take your weight off your Right foot, lift your Right cheek and slide it over onto the Right Barstool. By lifting your cheek, you are forcing your upper body to stay vertical. By sliding your cheek over to the Barstool, you are creating the new leg angle that your left ski needs to roll it over. It is Not a movement by your knee to the side alone. So, there is no "Tipping!" Without the proper upper body position and weight change, you won't be able to balance on that outside ski with "Tipping" alone.

[JB]

That was a nice visualization you can mimic. The problem is, you can't mimic ski moves. You have to understand what skiing is because everything that comes naturally to you is incorrect. Even trying to understand what you see here will be partially backwards.

A person can learn more from reading the correct moves that they can visualize, understand and remember and take with them to the slopes, than they can from watching someone do it.