Anyone whose looked for advice about how to ski cross-country will have heard: “If you can walk, you can ski”. This makes skiing sound accessible to all.

Many ski instructors have a rejoinder of: “if you can walk, you can walk on skis”, because skiing requires movement skills that are different than walking. The lack of friction under foot when on snow or ice is a major challenge to movement and coordination. No one would say if you can walk, you can ice skate.

At the same time there are those who are born skiers or athletes, and these gifted people master a sport seemingly without effort, while most of us have to work at it with varying degrees of dedication and success. Count me among the latter.

For that reason and many more, I find skiing is filled with cues and similes that are hard to understand.

Confounding cues

A ‘classic’ example is when a beginner lesson in classic technique  will include the advice to move “as if you’re kicking a soccer ball”. This happens to be a useful simile that does have applicability to cross-country skiing. But what if you never played soccer?

This cue loses a lot of meaning if you’ve never played soccer in the US or football in Europe. It applies to me as a US-born person of a certain age. It also applies to a lot of women who grew up in Europe, because football was very much a male-only sport until recently.

Other cues and visualizations I’ve heard and understood to varying degrees:

• Falling uphill
• Athletic stance
• Nose, knees, toes
• Soft ankles

Based on experience, my interpretation of the soccer simile is that it’s about ‘dribbling the soccer ball’, or as a student of mine (who actually did play soccer) said: ‘keeping up with the ball’. The coordination implied uses hips, knees, and feet to drive both body and ball forward. 

A newish Nordic skiing-only cue

The more curious and nerdy XC skier may have encountered the term ‘high hips”.

This curious visualization and coordination cue has floated around for a while, and I have long been curious what it meant. For me, explanations are important, and visceral understanding can be hard. So I was always confused by this one. I think I’m not alone in that regard.

Now comes this article ‘In Good Standing—Fundamental Elements of Ski Stance‘ in by Ned Dowling, in FasterSkier. Dowling breaks it down into the positioning of different parts of the body for balance, glide, and power on skis. Dowling calls out another of my nemeses, leaning side-to-side instead of using the hips for stability. He even asks the question itself: “what does [high hips] even mean?”, before going on at some length to answer it.

Even better, he shows exercises that can help develop the muscle memory and strength to do it.

Offseason practice

Cues need the reinforcement of simulation that’s close to actuality. As the point of training and practice becomes more specific, each person needs cues that cut through unique quirks or needs to hone technique for effectiveness or efficiency. Having a set of meaningful cues and exercises, or specific simulators (eg roller skis or Ski-Erg) there’s another saying that applies : ‘skiers are made in summer’.

I’m starting a pretty late this year. Got a lot of work to do!