Gemma James is a keen skier having spent many years teaching, perfecting and now enjoying skiing with her own family. She is currently away with her husband ski touring and sent us this to show how small adjustments can make a big difference to a day on the slopes.
“My husband Darren is a great skier, he can ski anything anytime, but despite this on the hard steep ice moguls yesterday, he was conscious of not completing his turn going to the right making him feel a bit unstable and at risk of losing an edge. He was also aware he did something weird with his left arm!
What should happen on a turn to the right, is the weight is advanced onto the left ski just before initiating the turn and should remain the leg with the most weight on as you complete the turn to the right. As you can see on the top picture; just before he completes his turn his left hip collapses inwards and his weight is thrown into his right foot sooner, and his right shoulder tightens, this does not happen on the left turn seen in the second picture where you see a nice straight line.
Looking at his balance that night, his balance was worse on his left foot and he wasn’t using his big toe appropriately for balance, also in a single knee bend his left hip was also collapsing in. We did a little manual therapy to both his left ankle and knee and he felt better support through his toe on retesting.This then allowed him to feel more stable on a single knee bend and maintain a better alignment through his hip.
For skiing, we played around with Kinesio tape to encourage more feedback to his foot to reinforce being in the right place at the right time to give him support under his leg. If he concentrated on his foot and big toe, he didn’t collapse at the hip, was able to finish his turns better, his right arm was looser and his foot didn’t hurt as much at the end of the day.
I did try and suggest he sorted this out months ago when we were discussing his knee pain! But like every self-respecting husband, he took no notice! “
With the daily challenges we are facing, we are having a great time but I can guarantee that with the improvements that my suggestions have made, Darren will be happy to put in the work through the year to get the most out of our future adventures .
