I recently wrote a blog about the prevention and cure for tendonitis
where I opined that working on your piano or typing technique can
improve other activities such as skiing. Someone called me to task on
that comment and challenged me to explain.
It is not that piano
playing and skiing are that much related as much as the physics behind
them is the same. The concepts in common are gravity, alignment
(kinematic chains) and reactions to actions.
One of the most
common injuries to a skier is a torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament).
It happens simply when the femur and tibia are not properly aligned and
the torque doesn't go through the bones but is transferred onto the tiny
yet powerful ACL. The ACL is very strong when properly aligned but
break that alignment and it is as weak as a piece of paper.
Every
movement has equal and opposite movements. In playing the piano the
pianist has to play down and thusly he is required to have an up
motion. The muscles to make the arm go up are much stronger than the
arms which make us go down because to fall down, no muscle is required.
The pianist also goes up and down the keyboard so in order to play left
he has to go right. Here is why:
If I were to swing a tennis
racquet, I would toss the ball in the air and swing my arm backward,
then swing forward to hit the ball. To swing a baseball bat or golf
club, I would do the same. When I swim, in order to stroke, my arm goes
behind me, then up and in front of me, then down and behind me. If I
were to swat a fly I would raise the swatter before descending down to
smoosh its target. If I were to slap your face, I wouldn't start with
my palm on your face. I would swing backward then forward across your
cheek (and you'll let me do it seven times seventy times then turn the
other cheek).
If I wanted to jump into the air, I would bend my
knees and sink a little to the ground then propel myself upward. If I
were standing on a glass floor and wanted to break it. I would jump up
and keep my knees bent until I was close to the glass, then extend my
knees and feet into the surface for maximum impact.
I come from
the old school of parallel skiing where I keep my legs together and ski
with them as one rather than two legs. When you ski with your legs or
feet apart, you have four edges to worry about and control (dual
muscular pulls). Catching an edge on the snow can cause you to lose
balance and fall. When you ski with your legs parallel, you only have
two edges acting as one limb. The skier always keeps the inside leg a
little bit shorter by bending it slightly more. Both legs and feet have
to be turning together in the same direction at the same time much like
all five fingers of a pianist SHOULD only go in one direction at a
time. The skier needs to have his torso and head perfectly aligned and
balanced in one chain.
The parallel turn is accomplished not just
by jumping or grinding your edges into the snow but by un-weighing
yourself. When turning, there is a bend at the hip and the legs are
extended to the right. You can experience this, sort of, if you stand
sideways about four feet from a wall, lean toward the wall with your
left hand so that you are at an oblique angle. All your weight should
be in your right leg (inside the foot-radial side) and the left leg is
parallel. At tremendous forces the edge is digging into the ice (if you
ski in the east) and snow (if you ski out west).
That is kind
of what a turn feels like but not as static. This is also a left turn.
As you turn left by leaning into the inside right ski edge, your body
will feel the momentum and you would then slightly tuck both knees up
and shift your legs to the other side but when you extend your legs so
that your skis go down, you lean into the inside of the left ski edge:
These are equal and opposite motions, with perfect alignment, with both
legs going in the same direction at the same time.
This method of
un-weighing can look like the skier is jumping in the air but they are
actually just extending their legs and shifting weight from right to
left. With balance, momentum, extension and retraction, this keeps him
upright and in control.
Also, the skier needs to keep the front
of his body always facing down the hill where the fall line is or where
gravity is pulling him. If he deviates from the fall line, there needs
to be a lot of adjustments lest he catch an edge resulting in a face
plant or yard sale.
It sounds complicated but if you are a
parallel skier, it makes total sense. The skier's whole body can only
do one thing at a time, either turn left or right or coast forward.
Many skiers are taught to snowplow which is skiing on the inside edges
of both skies at the same time but that isn't skiing. It is ice making
and it puts pressure on the knees and maintains constant flexion of the
muscles. As a novice masters the snowplow they are taught the stem
Christie which is one step away from parallel but most skiers don't
progress to the next step predominately because the nature of
un-weighing the whole body is foreign to many people's concept and it
requires a leap of faith. A shy skier will never move beyond the stem
Christie. They lack the confidence that their edge will be there if they
un-weigh so they remain advanced beginners or intermediate skiers at
best because they don't understand nor trust the concept of a
closed-loop kinematic chain.
Have you ever noticed that after
somebody has a heart attack or loses a child or goes through anything
really heavy, their outlook can change overnight? They see life on a
more deep level than before. They tend to think about the bigger things
and not care so much about the color their cars are or what clothes are
in style. When your mind and body are at one with the mountain, all
the obstacles and gravity melts away.
So, like the pianist whose
arm can only go in one direction at a time, the skiers body can only go
in one direction at a time. If his body or legs oppose that, he can
still ski, just not well.
For the past twenty years ski makers
have been designing parabolic skies which are shaped to promote parallel
skiing and it is funny to see people skiing parallel without the
un-weighing of their body. Instead they are rolling the ski from edge
to edge. They still fall because they are trying to control the ground
rather than control their body and go with gravity.
When skiing
in deep powder or on ice, the skier needs this un-weighing as if they
are trying to plunge through a glass floor. This makes it so that the
ski edges can dig in to whatever they are resisting. Lack of
un-weighing is why most skiers cannot ski on ice or in deep powder.
They then complain about the mountain or the conditions.
A
skier who tries to control the ski, control the ground and control
gravity, will not be a good skier and can easily hurt themselves. If
they use the ski as an extension of their body and they go with gravity
rather than fighting it, they can control everything and it will be
effortless because they won't be static and engaging the same muscles
all the time. On the contrary. Our muscles which aid in us going up
are much stronger than our muscles that help us go down (Hamstrings Vs
Quads). Ironically, it is engaging the weaker hamstring which gives the
quads a break and allows them to work more efficiently and most
importantly - rest.
A pianist who fights with the mechanical
nature of a piano will forever be challenged by it and their own bodies
and, most likely, injured by it. The pianist is not the engine to the
instrument as much as a conduit to the music that already exists. Only
when the closed-loop kinematic chain of the body is achieved and
alignment between body and instrument coalesce into one can a musician
become an artist or a skier master the gravity of the mountain.
It
is interesting to note that true artists or true prodigies don't know
what they are doing. What they do is simply natural to them. When they
try to explain what they do they get it wrong because they explain how
they feel. Bach, for instance, taught his students to scratch the key
in a carrezando technique because what he was feeling when he played was
his fingers caressing the keys. What was really happening was as he
was lifting and dropping his arm and moving in and out onto the keys
because instinctively, he knew his fingers were different lengths and
equalizing them caused micro tension. The sensation of caressing the
keys was a result of his arm moving the fingers. That is what he felt
but caressing the keys was not what he was doing.
Another thing
teachers get wrong is when they tell their students to relax the hand.
They need to relax the correct muscles at the right time. But that is a
topic for another time.
Original slide on Tendonitis
http://www.slideshare.net/sa/8652ca32b9f25fa5adb94fe916c18599
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