www.WaistSteering.com This channel provides various ski videos of Tommy Kirchhoff, and his now famous WaistSteering ski racing technique, as well as some fun and interesting videos related to Tommy.
For videos pertaining to Fu Style Tai Chi, BaGua, Hsing-Yi, Baji and LiangYi Chuans, visit the Tommy Kirchhoff page on RU-vid.
I'm his God son, Damon. This is all I have of him. Can you please email me for more pictures you may have? I'll share as well.i sure miss him.. and his voice.
This is a paradigm shift. You are not trying to bend the outside ski. The shovel does bend, and the ski bends slightly but the technique works differently than the old way (angulation leverage). I really try to focus ALL of my weight on the inside ski.
I will try this tomorrow. I’m all about the turn, really working that sidecut. I’m curious about this. I shake out of the turn if my uphill ski grabs hard.. I focus on riding the downhill skill but both tracks show a similar depth. If I catch a glance of my skis while turning I would say my downhill ski is definitely farther forward than the uphill. When I’m really turning on my favorite pitch I sit and twist, levering my waist I would say. You should come ski Keystone! Best groomers in Summit County!
Does this technique still apply to 30m gs skis? Also Ligety isn't winning anymore, is that because you stopped coaching him? Good luck laying some spicy arcs down soelden on the inside ski by the way.
Gee Twirp, you sound like rabid fan. I would bet any money that I would beat you on any race course. Pick a steep, nasty one in Colorado and I'll be there to teach you some stuff.
I continue to receive messages that say, 'Advancing the outside ski is nothing new. You didn't invent anything.' So for you Jurassic skeptics out there who think that, which ski do you have your weight on when you advance the outside ski? If you say your weight is on the outside ski you are living in dreamland. Post video!! I want to see it!! Stand up right now, put your weight on your right foot and now advance your right foot any way you can. It's impossible. The other thing you crusty old curmudgeons are ignoring is that I am a certified kung fu master will a myriad of body skills that you cannot duplicate. Steering from the waist takes incredible flexibility and body skill. You don't have it.
Very interesting moments by you but it is not "your turn" or Ted's turn. I have been teaching advancing the down hill ski for over 30years to instructors & to the general public. Drive the outside ski around the corner & back it up with your arm driving forward as low as you can. I developed it after a French trainer (Alexie Suddan) helped my GS turns in 1979. So you cant lay claim to this. It has been taught for 50 years that I know of.
You are focusing on one part and not the concept that the steering comes from turning the waist. And when you advance the outside ski is your weight on the inside ski? I doubt it. You do not have the body skills to even assess what I am doing.
Yuo are full of Sh....! Advancing the outside ski during the turn is as old as1980.... You have not invented anything. You however look like can ski not to bad. I liked the release for the crossing.
Show me a video of it. Keep in mind that I am doing this with my waist; yes, I invented this. Also, you cannot advance the outside ski if your weight is on it. Video!
What's the % weight distribution between uphill/downhill skis at various points in the turn? can you overpower the centrifugal forces at will in a turn at high speeds? I'd say there's a reason your outside leg needs to extend(not just the wider outside arc) to be able to maintain edge pressure. Can the average skier or a world cup skier really get tremendous edge pressure on uphill ski when pretty much fully compressed to the ground? It's a terribly weak position to maintain much pressure at all no matter what level.
In WaistSteering the inside knee does not compress as you assume it does. After stance training the racer can "stack" on the inside ski even more effectively than on the outside ski. I'm sorry, Friend, but as I have said so many times, if you don't possess the stance skills and waist turning skills, it's like assessing the flight quality of an airplane without ever flying it or even possessing a pilot's license.
I latched on to Tommy's ideas about 5 years ago while trying to improve my ability to double carve. I just couldn't get the power I wanted on my inside ski. It drove me nuts. I was PSIA certified and a relatively strong skier but wanted more. I stumbled upon Tommy's ideas when I searched for who knows what on the internet. I wasn't looking to "steer" anything. I just wanted to carve the snot out of my inside ski, but what I read opened my mind to the simple idea of using my hips in a much different way. It was backwards from what everything I had learned. At least that's what I thought at first. But it gave me an idea, a possible solution to my problems. The simple act of advancing the outside half of the body moves the center of mass forward on the the inside half, i.e. inside ski. This is what I took away from the pages and pictures I had read. I had to try for myself. If this proved to be true then waist steering could be just what I was looking for. Visualize the pelvic girdle. If you rotate your pelvis around the top of your inside femur, you'll advance the outside femur and thus, the CM (located some where in between these two points) will also advance. This will move the balance to the center of the inside ski (whereas counter rotation puts you on the heal of the inside ski). This gives your the ability to have a very powerful inside ski as you ramp up edge angles. A byproduct of this hip rotation or waist steering is that it really drives the inside lower leg into the front the the inside ski boot. Some people with try to achieve this by pulling the inside foot back under the hips, but if the hips are countered too much, the CM will still lag behind the inside ski. I often describe this as a fulcrum turn where my inside foot and hip are a moving pivot point that I'm actively trying the pull the outside foot and hip around. The goal is to get the outside half to "keep up" with the inside half (which has a shorter distance/arc to travel.) You can still counter you hands and shoulders with upper/lower body separation occurring around the sternum while the hips and midsection are actively "steering". Furthermore, this internal pelvic rotation causes the outside hip flexor to extent or open. This hip extension creates a powerful outside ski. This is can be achieved by pulling the outside ski backwards in a turn, but that act by itself does nothing for the inside ski. Actively steering your waist is actually a very efficient movement that helps control dynamic balance and leverage. Iv'e found that by focusing on the inside half, the outside half pretty much works no matter what. Since first discovering the concept spent a lot of time working through some movement patterns to improve the transitions. And then realized that these movement patterns work anywhere in any condition. Short skidded turns, long skidded turns, double carved turns, bumps, powder or ice. Short skis, long skis, skinny skis and fat skis it works. Hell, I pull out 20yr old slalom skis and I feel like Marc Girardelli (who may have been waist steering himself). It's particularly awesome in the race course. Imagine going through an icy course knowing exactly where you inside ski and knee are at all times as it carves through the ice with nearly the same power and edge hold as the outside ski. Imagine confidently shinning every gate without fear of hooking a ski and blasting through flushes chanting "inside, inside, inside..." See where I;m going here? It works for me and the kids I coach. And it's so simple really. Simply point the pelvis (belly button for the kids) towards the new inside ski and tip the inside knee to initiate the turn (rotary steering works too!) Then use the waist steering to manage the balance on the inside ski throughout the turn. The pretty much turns into something very similar to the classic "counter into/counter out of" turn. The outside ski pretty much takes care of itself. Fine tune your turn with rolling of the ankles, dropping the inside knee or by using the leg/long leg concept. It works with up unweighted or down unweighted turns. But the key is start with the inside ski and trust the outside ski. START WITH THE INSIDE DAMMIT! (99.9% percent of adults can not do this!) So, I believe that waist steering is real. I believe it complements almost every skill you've ever learned. I believe in an open mind. I believe in trying things for myself. I believe the worlds most powerful skiers of the past might have been doing this. I don't care who invented the wheel I'm just happy to have wheels. I believe shaped skis revolutionized skiing. I believe shaped skis have allowed us to learn how ski a little bit more like our heroes, but we still have a lot to learn. I believe snowboards are responsible for shaped skis and I'm grateful for that. You can believe what you want. Tim Me? I coach racing, though I don't really race myself and I wouldn't call myself a racer. I'm just a coach. I'm there to help the kids. I've never met or talked to Tommy. I'm so grateful for his ideas. I took them and ran with them. Made them mine so to speak. If you are skeptical you should try it for a while. Maybe you can make them yours too.
I think your timing is a little off. To balance against a lot of pressure on the outside ski, it is helpful to have our hips face the outside of the turn. If a skier is skilled enough to pressure the outside ski early in the turn, their hips will rotate toward the outside of the turn before the fall line. When you finish that turn, your hips will still be facing the outside of the turn. To speed up the transition, and transfer weight/pressure to the new outside ski, it may be helpful to think about rotating your hips. Some people think about pulling a foot back or pushing the other forward. An effort to rotate the hips to the inside of the turn only makes sense to me in the very bottom of a turn, approaching the transition. This would result in a stronger position to begin transferring weight to the new outside ski while it is still on its uphill edge. As an instructor, I have found very few athletes that would benefit from thinking about standing on their inside ski in the middle of a turn and trying to rotate that hip to the inside of the turn. The reason we rotate our hips is because it is required for powerful balance and stability over the outside ski. After thinking about this for many years, I have decided that teaching people good balance and stability under heavy weight will naturally solve hip rotation issues. What do you think? Are we trying to say the same thing?
Definitely not saying the same thing. You should first know that a "hip" is the joint between the femur and the pelvis; it is not the pelvis. Even so, I am prescribing rotation into the turn, not the opposite as you prescribe. My way carves both skis at the same time. Counter-rotation with outside ski weight bias will always skid the inside ski. Analyze your tracks. You will always be skidding.
Interesting...Waist steering looks great as long as the timing is right which Ted clearly demonstrates....allowing the hip or waist to follow thru can be very powerful as long as the athlete remains in balance throughout the turn sequence or else you get rotation. I can see it for GS
Peter, "twisting" rotation is the no-no you mention. But coordinated or "whole-body" rotation actually keeps the athlete in balance. The classic ski teachings muddy the waters for this technique because ski racing has no movement-pattern foundation. On the other hand, kinesiology demonstrates that the best movements use coordinated rotation to create "The Serape Effect"-- which ain't just for throwing or kicking.
Ortniuf Makes a lot of sense! ..... does the same method apply for SL turns where there's only time for lower body steering? I imagine Ted could mix it up where ever needed. Ha-ha!
Peter Dowse Yes, WaistSteering applies the same to slalom turns, but the stance is taller and more narrow, which lends to the quickness. I can't wait for the new "painless" AirKipp gates to become the new standard.
Based on your website and what I see here I am not sure what is cause and effect. Yes you use your waist and the weight on your skis to steer. However one point on your website is off. You state that the inside ski must skid to make the same corner. That is not true at all, because you have different weight on each ski. The outside ski could have less weight on it and therefor people are really flexing the uphill ski more. Watch more of Ted's skiing videos. There are lots of difference between his uphill and downhill ski beyond what you think he might be doing with his waist.
Sorry Sandy, but your comment makes no sense. If you put your weight on the outside ski to bend it then what is bending the inside ski? The only way to keep the inside ski from skidding is to stand on it. I'm not wrong. I am lightning fast in a race course.
It's so funny to me that you say that. You think the body must be fit; but if you met Master Fu, you would declare that his physicality is patently superior to your own. Waist circumference and BMI are indicators of fitness. Master Fu's system is far more developed than "fitness." His balance, power, speed, and endurance are superior, even at age 70.
Yes but that is not the point. Point is you have to switch weight to a ski that is forward. You have to retract that ski before you can put weight on it/balance over it.
daniel janssen The new inside ski isn't "forward" in the way you imagine. The skis are convergent, so the outside ski never actually catches up to the inside ski. Shifting weight to the new inside ski is much more simple than you think.
I was doing this type of turns in the 80s with my 209cm Spaulding Squadra Corse skis. The book "Pianta Su (up unweight)" was pushing this technique. Very powerful way to turn especially in the days of long boards.
Berwang's Ski School in Tirol, Austria says (2015), "Waist Steering is the hip and happening thing on the slopes today!" www.hotelsinger.at/fileadmin/daten/dokumente/PDF-Downloads/2014/Singer-Sporthotel-SPA_News-2014-2015_E.pdf
Pardon me for being so bold as to offer a question/observation -- there are some heavy hitters on here and I certainly mean no disrespect to anyone. Harold and I were friends with a remarkable human, one Willy Draper. Were he still with us, I am sure he would ask if pulling the inside ski back, along with shortening the inside leg might not be a more apt description of what is going on. Pushing the outside ski forward does result in keeping the hips/pelvis/waist more square/perpendicular with the skis line of travel, but isn't it going to result in moving your center of mass BACKWARDS with the concomitant results? My understanding, I admit is not on the level of all y'all -- but isn't pulling the inside foot back a recentering/ forward move? Blessings
there were skiers like benjamin raich who became famouse because he was one of the first skiers who accelerated over his uphill ski. isnt that exactly what you invented
I'm not buying it. Unless you can explain to me how you've done anything more than move classic counter rotation from the torso to the pelvis, it's equally inefficient. Ligety et. al. keep a still disciplined upper body and pelvis, and their femurs rotate internally and externally at the acetabulum. From the neutral transition zone the athlete tips the skis on edge using a combination of partial knee flexion and femoral rotation. As the skis bend and redirect into the fall line the pelvis and torso retain their original orientation toward the apex of the turn creating a strong outward facing wall. That is, corresponding body parts of the inside and outside halves of the body are all equally displaced from one another relative to the direction of travel of the skis. Ligety increases pressure on the outside ski through the fall line by extending at the knee while the inside leg flexes at the knee and coils under the hip. While the skis may be railing turns, internal torque is generated through the femurs. Leave the "waist" out of it.
***** I haven't had time to read the references you cite. However, please review Mike Rogan's take on upper/lower body separation and explain where, or if, he goes wrong according to your vision: YT search "sean warman drills for seperation" (sic).
Upper and lower body separation are not waist steering. Almost all sports prize "whole body coordination," but ski racing is the opposite. In WaistSteering the whole body coordinates. Mike Rogan et al separate. Separation is not wrong, but coordination is faster.
I've ben doing it wrong all his time. Thank you so much for the information. Can't wait to go test this tomorrow on the hill. You are such an expert! Thanks a lot again!
Tommy, you are at least 4 decades behind the curve. You definitely did not invent these pedagogy. There have numerous excellent ski teachers and coaches using this body motion during the turn since Stenmark's time. Many teachers in Europe and Canada have discussed this particular requirement of the hip rotation through the turn to generate the most power, stay in an anticipated stance for the flow into the direction of travel and to drive the skis with power down the mountain. Calling yourself the inventor is really very childish and flat out incorrect.....shut up & ski
Wrong. All those skiers are separating upper and lower body. I am coordinating upper and lower body, weight on the inside ski, and creating the turn by turning the waist. I definitely DID invent this as no one else in the entire history of skiing has ever possessed the body skills that I do from 16 years of practicing BaGuaZhang.
***** Well, I must admit I counter-rotate a lot shoulders and hips at the begining of the turn and during the entire turn, in fact. I even thought during a long time that carving was nothing but inward rotating the outside thigh a lot in order to pressure the downhill ski and carve... And I was sure that Ted Ligety carves more than anybody else only because he inward rotates more than others !!!! How your explanations are precious ! Now, I already noticed by myself that there was something wrong in my technique about pressuring the downhill ski at the begining of the turn by this way and even tried sometimes to put weight on the uphill ski instead of the downhill ski... but unable to find the solution by myself. Now my next question is : on a steep slope does your "waist steering" technique change anything abut the jumping ski, I mean the ski on which you transfer the weight to start the jump ?
I find it interesting thanks....it's a bit of a confirmation on what i've been experimenting but not really knowing if i was doing the right thing or not. thinking back about it it did feel better on my turns. Now i will try and be more aware of that movement and see what the effect will be. Aswell in some of ted's films you can clearly see he can allow himself to drop his hip in to get to the amount of angle he's capable of getting. Maybe waiststeering plays a role in this part. I do know dropping in your hips without waiststeering ends up badly most of the time.
Thanks bud! theres allready a few things i found out about teds skiing actually most things like getting on the new ski earlier and putting your inclination movement into the next turn. hopefully this will complete the sequence. Im superstoked for this winter coming! Thanks a lot, greetings from Saas-Fee
I'm still a bit skeptical will this work on smaller hills? It seems all your testing has been on mountains. If this stuff is really legit would it make me a better skier?
