Tipping Pub

Tipping is actively rolling the feet from one side to the other to make the skis roll on edge⁸ - the first primary movement in the essentials framework, driving the focus on the specific movement of tipping the inside foot.

Tipping the inside ski

Most skiers are "outside foot dominant", meaning they focus more on tipping the outside foot (eversion), while a few are "inside foot dominant", meaning there is a stronger action of and more focus on tipping the inside foot (inversion).

Tipping the inside foot is more important², to activate the kinetic chain from the bottom up, maintain parallel shins, have the skis at the same angle and, more importantly, through the the phantom effect, it will also cause the outside ski to go on edge as well.

Many racers and high performance skiers have a keen focus on the inside foot - which is often lifted and tipped strongly into turns and this focus on the inside foot is now more and more a part of performance skiing, especially carving, at the higher levels.

Issues with inside foot tipping

In the first frame in the following montage, you can see the skier is late to tip the old outside foot, for various reasons. In the frames 3-6, we can see the tipping into the new turn. Notice the active inside foot in frames 3-5 and parallel shins - for contrast, from frame 6, the skier gets lazy with tipping instead of tipping continuously throughout the turn:

Biomechanics of tipping the inside foot

Movements | discussion

See Skiing - a philosophy of movement for a detailed comparison of the different movement frameworks.

Learn more

• Start tipping
• Tipping not hipping
• Tipping and keeping the feet underneath
• About ankle eversion and inversion
• We ski with the feet and ankles

Drills:

• Rollerblades
• Tuck turns
• The Phantom
• Edge hops

Articles:

• We ski with the feet and ankles

Start improving your tipping

References:

• Essentials of skiing, p29 ²
• PMTS Instructor Manual, Harald Harb ⁷
• blog ⁸