by
Jack Heggie
Do you have trouble with balance with you ski? Feel tight in your spine,
hips, and thighs? Here is an easy exercise series that will make you feel
like a different person on skis.
In the early part of this century, physiologists studying movement in animals
discovered a group of reflexes they called the tonic and self-righting mechanisms,
which affect the way individuals stay in balance and deal with gravity.
Almost 80 years later, we are discovering how important these mechanisms
are for active sports like skiing, and we are learning ways to use them
to improve our performance.
The tonic mechanisms are those responsible for muscle tone- this is, the
state of muscle contraction before the muscle is activated. If you lie down
and relax, you will find that your muscles do not become completely slack
but retain some residual contraction This is called tonus. And when you
are standing-even standing completely still-the tonic mechanisms keep enough
tone in the muscles to help you remain standing. if that tone weren't there,
you would collapse in a heap.
The self-righting mechanisms are those that bring us back to an upright
position when we lose our balance. If you slip on a patch of ice, for example,
the self-righting mechanisms take over automatically to help prevent a fall.
Like everything else about human beings, the tonic and self-righting mechanisms
are complex. However, their purpose is clear: to keep us in balance.
Here is a simple experiment you can do right now to get a feeling for how
these mechanisms work: continue reading, and as you do, shake your head
quickly let and right so that your nose move an inch or two to each side.
You will find that it is still possible to read like this. Now stop shaking
your head and instead shake the magazine quickly left and right. As you
can see, this makes it almost impossible to read.
What is he difference? When you shake your head, the semicircular canals
in the inner ear measure the position (actually the acceleration) of the
head and cause the eyes to turn in the opposite direction just enough to
remain focused on one point. When you shake the magazine, on the other hand,
there is no such mechanism at work, and your eyes can't follow the movement.
A somewhat more dramatic way to experience this connection between the inner
ear and the muscles that move the eyes is to spin yourself around for several
seconds, then stop suddenly This confuses the inner ear and causes the eyes
to involuntarily turn-even after you stop- in the same direction as the
spin.
Now that you have a basic understanding of what the tonic and self-righting
mechanisms do, let's take a look at how you can use them to improve your
skiing performance. At first glance, it doesn't look promising because these
mechanisms are almost completely automatic and involuntary, causing muscles
to contract - when needed for balance - without our conscious control. But
it turns out there is a way to improve our use of them in an indirect way
by doing specific movement with the eyes and head. This is particularly
valuable for skiers, many of whom stiffen the muscles in the neck when they
ski and hold the eyes rigid in their sockets, interfering with the proper
operation of the tonic and self-righting mechanisms. This causes the muscles
of the spine, pelvis, and thighs to tighten and makes most of the movement
required for dynamic skiing difficult, if not impossible.
So before you begin skiing, work on the connections between the muscles
of the neck and eyes and the rest of the body. The following exercises,
adapted from the Awareness Through Movement® system of the
Israeli movement therapist, Moshe Feldenkrais, will not only improve your
skiing dramatically, but will reduce the effort required to ski.
1) Before you begin skiing, put your skis on - but leave your poles aside
- and find a flat spot on the slope. Slowly, begin twisting your whole body
left and right. Make it an easy swinging motion. As you turn, let your attention
go down to your feet, then move it up to your knees, hips, shoulders, head,
and finally your eyes. As you move your attention up, try to feel that each
part of your body is moving with respect to the other arts, that the hips
are turning over the feet, the shoulders over the hips, the head over the
shoulders, the eyes in the head (far enough so that you look behind you
to the left and right as you swing your body). Continue turning left and
right, but don't strain; pay attention to the quality of the motion rather
than the quantity. Let it be an easy twisting motion that goes on almost
by itself.
2) Keep swinging left and right, but now shift all your weight to your left
leg. Scan your body with your attention as before. Do you turn more or less
easily like this? After a minute of this, shift your weight to your right
leg as you swing. How is this different from your left leg? Finally, shift
your weight to you left leg as you swing left and to your right leg as you
swing right. do this for a minute or so, then go back to the basic easy
swinging motion you started with. Does this motion feel easier now?
3) Rest for a moment, and the begin to turn left and right again - but with
this change: Fix your eyes on something at head level, right in front of
you. Notice how this limits the motion of your head. The head can still
turn left and right, but not nearly as far. Continue to do this and scan
your body as before from foot to head. Does the fixing of the eyes change
the body motion? Do you hold your breath?
As you swing, note what else you can see in your visual field without removing
your eyes from the target. Try to pick out some objects on the extreme left
and right, top and bottom, of your vision. They eyes should not turn, just
the head, but you can still see other thing - though without trying to make
out the details. If you move slowly and easily, without strain, and pay
very careful attention to yourself, you may be able to find a connection
between your awareness of your peripheral visual field and the amount of
effort required to turn your body. The effect is subtle, and not easy to
feel, but it is there.
4) Now let your eyes be free and turn the body easily left and right as
before. Notice how the turning radius of the body has increased. Can you
feel what has changed in your body to cause this to happen?
5) Continue swinging left and right, and now make another change: Hold both
the eyes and the head still in space and let the rest of your body continue
to turn left and right. Holding the head and eyes fixed will limit the turning
motion of the body considerably. Again, scan your body, noting all details.
Notice your breathing and pay attention to your entire visual field. Think
of your head and feet, which are still, while the rest of your body turns
between them.
6) Continue this for a few minutes, until the motion feels easy, then release
the head and eyes and let them swing left and right again. Notice how the
turning radius has increased even more.
7) Now pick up your poles and find a wide, easy slope. Try these same swinging
motions while skiing very slowly across the slope, first in one direction,
then the other. If you hold both poles by the middle in one hand, they will
not interfere with the turning motion.
8) After you have spent about an hour doing this entire routine, put the
exercise out of your mind and just ski in your normal way.
When you succeed in improving your use of the tonic and self-righting mechanisms
using this exercise, you will find a surprising improvement in your skiing.
The feeling of lightness and ease is almost indescribable. You may feel
as if you had been wearing a heavy suit of armor for years without knowing
it. Suddenly it's gone, and at last you feel like the skier you always wanted
to be, graceful, light on your feet, and relaxed. That's definitely worth
an hour of your time. |
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