A matter of anticipation

This “anticipation” has nothing to do with Carly Simon’s song. We’re talking today about anticipation as it relate to skiing. At first, this consideration may go against the concept of the all-powerful feet discussed earlier, but we should only look at it as a little nudge, a mere complement to the master work feet are supposed to accomplish. Look at it this way; the feet alone have to turn a pretty significant body mass, and this is not a small job. The idea is to help them a little by anticipating a change in direction by turning the upper body towards it as we get ready to initiate the turn. Our bodies don’t like to be twisted indiscriminately and like the lowly rubber band they’ll respond by springing back to their neutral position. This means that if the skier anticipates the turn by twisting the upper body into it, the legs and the feet will want to follow quite naturally as they become under pressure to stay square with the upper body. As some unweighting takes place and the feet pivot at slow speed or are on a centrifugal path that brings forth the edge change at higher speed, this “spring-effect” goes a long way to facilitating the job. From that point forward, the rule is simple; the angle of anticipation (α) will be greater as the turning radius is shorter and as the slope is steeper. For instance, a long radius on a gentle slope will only require a tiny bit of anticipation. Conversely, a series of very short radius turn executed on a steep slope will require maximum anticipation, meaning then that the upper body will remain facing the slope while the legs and feet do their respective work underneath. The only challenge with anticipation is that it’s totally counterintuitive and requires a generous amount of practice before it can come a bit more naturally, and still, it remains one of these motions that never really want to fully become second-nature. The reason is that we always have a tendency to over-rotate after a turn and we often end up with our torso facing the wrong direction. The word of wisdom therefore is to anticipate continued anticipation in order to pave the way to easier turns…