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What’s inside

The contents were developing after my observation during the years and what is significant – they stay still actual. The reason is that even the ski equipment has been changing the mechanics is the same. Average speed on a race course Gravitational path analysis Ski bending Inclination Anticipation Hitting poles Edge dynamics Center of gravity movement Closed gates

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Average speed on a race course

is not an arithmetic mean of partial speeds over individual sections How simple intuition can fool us, let’s quickly solve the elementary task: “The cyclist ascends up a 10 km mountain for 1 hour, i.e. at an average speed of 10 km/h. There, he turns back and descends to the starting point for 0.5 hour, which gives him an average speed of 20 km/h. What is his average speed on the entire route?” Most of…

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Gravitational path analysis

Gravity is the strongest force that gives skiers speed. This is what accelerates the skier, but it is also the reason of difficulties in the slalom course and pulls him “down” when he needs to pass through the gates properly. During the turn, the force of gravity, always directed down the slope and towards the snow, has a component vector superimposed on the centripetal force, always directed towards the center of the turn. Let’s assume…

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Ski bending

under the influence of centripetal force the skis bend in an arc During the turn centrifugal force acts on the skier. To balance it, the skier puts the ski on the sharp edge, which cuts into snow and ice. The centripetal force that balances the resulting centrifugal one, flows from there. The skis put in a turn, bend in an arc. Cutting into snow and ice, the ski curve marks the course. Tensioning the firing…

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Inclination

various ways of implementation 4.1. What is the inclination? The skier, like a cyclist in the turn, leans in the middle of the turn to resist centrifugal force. The greater this force is, the greater the inclination of the cyclist and skier is needed. A drawing showing this relationship would certainly be useful here. It would also be useful to recall the formula for the amount of centrifugal force, showing how it depends on the…

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Anticipation

synchronizing the movement of the legs and torso Anticipation is an old and well-proven way to implement a ski turn. It is another, different in time, turn of the skier’s head and torso, as opposed to the turn made by legs and skis. This non-simultaneity gives significant possibilities to perform some compensation of stress and instability at the moment chosen by the skier , i.e. when it is the most favorable for his turning technique.…

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Hitting poles

what to do to make them stop as little as possible How to hit a slalom pole to lose the least speed! The racer, looking for the fastest possible track, gets very close to the poles marking the slalom route. One of the attributes of competitive riding is hitting these poles so that only skis and feet cross the gate. The “rest” of the racer goes over the pole, placing it forward or pushing it…

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Edge dynamics

Proper use of edges is one of the most important problems that a rider has to solve while skiing. Decisions must be made dynamically, bearing in mind the general principle that the milder the edgeing, the faster driving will be. I don’t want to be considering to what angle to sharpen the edges, although that’s definitely a necessary fix. I want to focus on the intensity (aggressiveness) of the edge in the different phases of…

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Center of gravity movement

among slalom and giant gates in a plane perpendicular to the slope During the club discussion on skiing technique, I was reminded of a certain interpretation of the known principle of striving for the smoothest possible movement of the skier’s center of gravity. Its mechanism is known to everyone, it is discussed in the basic courses of assistant trainers and ski instructor courses, it is present in many skiing manuals. The point is that the…

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Closed gates

Flush passed over from the side, Grange’s hairpin The passage of closed gates in slalom is a struggle with very quickly consecutive poles. A competitor goes past them so fast that they often cannot, and even maintain the smoothness of the ride, should not react to them. I want to draw attention to 2 situations in which the slalom technique tries to make it independent of the mass inertia, to pass the closed gates with…

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