Uncle Tony Knows

I have always struggled to be balanced skier.  

I was talking to River about this a few weeks ago.

He said:

"Harv, I was a intermediate." One time a wise person said to me always remember: Uncle Tony Knows."

[UNCLE] TOE + KNEE + NOSE

Remember this simple idea when you are skiing.  Vertically align your: toe, knee and nose.

Today was the first time I've skied since hearing this advice.  The thing is it DID stick in my head, and it DID help me stay aligned and in greater control. Granted I was on blue terrain most of the, but I really felt it helped.

Thanks River!

I would think that this advice would make your skiing rigid and less dynamic.
Rather your skiing starts at your toes and flows to your knees and ends at your nose which should be pointed down hill.

Try this simple exercise, in your stocking feet on a hard surface floor (I use the tile bathroom floor), get in a relaxed (loose) athletic stance looking straight forward, pivot your feet side to side while your nose and shoulders stay pointed straight ahead. This is the range of motion (side to side) you are going for in skiing and will make your skiing less rigid and more dynamic. If you were staying stacked straight from nose to toes your whole body would swing with your feet, this will prevent you from making quick turns as you need to move your entire body mass.

When carving add in the pendulum motion at the hips and compression of the rib cage from side to side and you pretty much have the whole picture.

Maybe CoachZ can add something here.

Nice, Harv. I have never tele'd before and figured stance issues would be different with tele. Glad it worked for you!

DackerDan... how could having vertical alignment of the toes, knees, and nose make skiing rigid and less dynamic? Fluid and dynamic are two aspects of my skiing that I consider myself strong in regards to. The point isn't to be rigid but to get your knees and upper body forward. That tip combined with squaring the shoulders with the fall line and angulating the knees changed me from a terminal intermediate to a fledgling racer and eventually to a ski any where, any time skier.

I can't imagine this all working for tele turns but alpine turns on tele is probably about the same, I guess?

Edit... perhaps you are imaging someone with straight line alignment of toes, knees, and nose while turning without angulation of the knees? In that perspective, your concern makes sense but that isn't the spirit of the alignment issue at hand... differentiate between horizontal and vertical planes.

@riverc0il,
I had not considered tele in my reply, so that could all be different.

There are many ways to break someone out of a rigid stance, what I described is a way that worked for me years ago - to get the body square with the hill and starting the turn with the feet and coiling upward. Instructor have students do the picture frame with their ski poles, I have seen some use cafeteria trays - keep it level and pointing down hill, all various means of teaching the same thing.

What I envisioned Harv as describing was exactly what you stated in your edit, toes, knees, nose all pointing in the same direction, it does not make for dynamic alpine skiing.

Here is Coaches 2 cents on all the comments here from an Alpine skiing perspective

You want a tall athletic stance with flex coming form the the ankle and knee - if you nose is over your toes and knees that will not be tall

your hips should be stack over your arch to ball of your foot and your shoulders over your hips - if you move your nose too far forward you will likely rock your pelvis backward to accomplish this leading to a more backseat stance

angulation is not really a function of stance - it is edging or tipping but your knee has a very limited range to create angles - the primary angulation should come from your hip joint which is the strongest joint in your body and is fine tuned with the knees

Maybe Matt could pipe in on the Tele aspect of this