Tipping-only wiggle
Pub
The tipping-only wiggle (or very quick tipping-only turns) is the quintessential skill for all great skiing, which requires precision and balance, and good foot movement awareness. It looks very simple, just an advanced form of Rollerblades, very similar to the Expert Rollerblades, but as you'll soon see, with a focus on clean turns, using the feet and a fair bit harder to execute well. The one and most important movement for this is foot tipping, enabled by flexing.
This is one of the quintessential tipping drills and a prerequisite for good skiing, from the snow up. If you can do Expert Rollerblades consistently, you can contemplate this, even more advanced, version and bring those skills into your regular skiing.
This used to be called "the heel wiggle" but tipping-only directs the focus in the right place. While a lot of skiers do rollerblades by pointing the knees left and right, this specifically focuses on foot tipping only as the mechanism to edge the skis. You should have no knee-pointing mental cues or muscle action during this drill. Just keep a deeply flexed leg and tip the feet left and right.
Get on a green or light blue run. The speed control should not be a challenge, as we're now looking for the precision of movement. Narrow the stance and focus on keeping it narrow.
Initially, do this drill with the boots unbuckled: open the top two cuff buckles, leaving the strap on. This will allow more range of movement of the lower legs.
Prepare for this drill - start gliding and:
- flex your knees a lot
- bring your feet together
- keep your feet underneath your hips:
- relax the ankles and the core as you can
As you start to go down the run, roll your ankles and tip both boots from side to side, as quickly as you can. The aim should be around two per second or more but start slow.
The most important is that this is achieved with tipping only, with no steering, skidding, hip usage etc.
Make sure the shins are parallel throughout the drill or that the inside shin leads (O-frame).
This is the video: youtu.be/Tvkue-DcNnM
Correct execution is paramount. Here are some of the cues for this drill:
- hips and shoulders level throughout
- hips are not moving up and down much at all
- maintain a narrow stance throughout
- shins are parallel throughout the drill or the inside shin leads (O-frame).
Here's the video:
It is hard or rather impossible to do this in a wide stance or with long legs, once you can do this drill reasonably, you can explore those and see the difference. This drill is an absolute prerequisite for skiing at the performance level.
Biomechanics
This drill (assuming you can do it well) will allow you to explore a lot of biomechanics and relationships.
The actual movements you're doing are Inversion and eversion - these are movements of the whole foot and ankle.
To see more on this topic, you need a membership. (Gold)
Tipping-only turns
From the quick wiggle, you can progress to the "quick tipping only turns", executed at a higher performance level:
It drives home the point that the focus during this drill should be on the tipping of the foot - no upper body or steering or anything else interfering with the tipping.
Ramping it up
Ramp it up as much as you can, as long as you keep it clean... here's an example - not so clean, but from an 8 yr old, wow:
Take the tipping-only wiggle into skiing
As with all drills, it is important to carry what they teach into your regular skiing. Start runs with a tipping-only wiggle and continue allowing the legs to get longer and longer to the side, developing bigger and bigger angles, carving your way down the slope like in the first video sample above.
This will allow you to carry all these biomechanics elements into your skiing. Do this often - not even as a drill, but turn it into how you start a run! After all, you want to ski with all these skills:
- narrow stance, focused on keeping the feet together
- pull the heels back
- dorsiflexion
- relaxed ankles and feet
- tipping and more tipping
If you're having issues with this drill, the progression to get here is below. Go back and forth between these drills:
Related drills:
Reading topics:
- Release untip to skis flat
- Focus on ankle tipping and untipping
- Foot tipping vs femur rotation - performance skiing 101
Sessions to work on carving:
Start improving your tipping, with a tipping workout!
You need to log in to post a comment!
