Author’s Note : I owe much of the following to a close personal friend. This is wholly my interpretation of his observations, it does not necessarily reflect or deny his views.

In France

In the 1940s/50s France and Austria began competing for increasing skiing tourism. The rivalry was both commercial and political. Each wanted a national “product,” supposedly better than their competitor, that they could differentiate and sell.

At that time, the French believed they had the answer to the question, “What to teach?” They needed a product that trainee ski instructors could be trained to deliver in ski schools.

JCK embodies the French style in 70s Head ad.

Remember that the instructor training systems were nationalized. The Ecole de Ski Francais was a government monopoly. Its name is frequently mistranslated into English, as the “French Ski School” but that is not what it means: it means the School of French Skiing. A product.

They offered the “Rotational Method” which they claimed exemplified the physics involved. What you were to do was to slightly crouch as the “turn” approached, then extend the legs rapidly to unweight the skis, and at the same time rotate your torso in the direction you wanted your skis to go.

This transferred the angular momentum (the twist if you like) of your “upper body” toward the impending new direction, down to the legs and skis. From a physics viewpoint that was “Transference of momentum from part to whole” , your body can only twist so far before it imparts that twist to your legs via your pelvis.

Some of SeniorsSkiing’s respondents to my earlier contributions insisted on this being “the way to ski” and were critical of my introduction of the concept of “arcs” instead of “turns”. Which does not reflect badly on them, but it does illustrate the power of inertia and how susceptible we are to Confirmation Bias.

In Austria

At the time, a leading figure in the Austrian National Ski Instruction System was Prof. Stefan Kruchenhauser. He had been studying, photographing, and filming Austrian racers as they went through the racing gates.

Unlike the French, he observed that as they approached the gate po they turned their shoulders away from the intended “turn” and had their back toward it as the direction change occurred.

Kruckenhauser was a ski photographer as well as a pioneer of the Austrian technique. This photo is by him.

Other writers picked up on this supposedly “New Austrian Technique”, explaining it via Newton’s 3^rd Law of Motion (every action has an equal and opposite reaction). It became known as the Counter Rotational Method, conveniently providing a different “product” to that of the French, and endless column inches to the magazine writers.

Because both were governmental, political projects, they each quickly developed their own followers in the ski schools, and woe betide anyone who thought any different. Austrian instructors, attempting to find analogies to help their pupils, began teaching “point your skis across the mountain, and your chest down to the valley.”

In fact, the Austrian racers were not employing Newton’s 3^rd Law, they were simply trying to avoid whacking their shoulders into the slalom poles which back then were tree branches cut off the pine trees and bedded very firmly in the snow. Had the good professor filmed his skiers changing direction when not racing round sticks in the ground he would have found they did not “counter rotate”. Be careful what you think you see!

The Austrian concept was exported comprehensively to the USA because Austria provided back then a great many instructors to the newly expanding American ski school industry. The system satisfied ordinary recreational skiers, if it’s making money why change it?

Prof. Georges Joubert.

In late 1960’s early 70’s, Prof Joubert of Grenoble University stood both the French and Austrian instructing methods on their heads. Note that it is academics who are making the discoveries not the ski schools, which simply followed the “official line”, and pretty much did so until their monopolies were broken. Monopolies are not innovators and not good learners.

Still sought after book by French team coach Georges Joubert

What Joubert proved was that racers ski with Independent Leg Action. Racers never skied with their legs together. The legs do NOT act as a single unit. Each rotates independently in its hip socket unless the feet and legs are jammed together, which inhibits such free movement and necessitates throwing your torso about one way or the other.

What this means, and it is very significant indeed, is that the “upper” body is not defined at the waist; it is defined in the pelvis. The leg rotation can be either active or passive, but it happens in the hip socket. There is therefore no need for either the Rotational nor the Counter-Rotational concepts which were not based in physics after all.

To his credit, Prof. Kruchenhauser was one of the first to recognize and adopt this new realization that all that is required is effective balancing (not “balance” which is different and static), accompanied by independent leg rotation with accompanying leg flexion and extension. He called it “Beinspiel” or “leg play”.

Those earlier concepts still facilitate getting folk down skiing pistes, but not in a way that can can now be classified as skillfully. It either matters to you, or it doesn’t. Shakespeare observed “nothing matters, but thinking makes it so”.

It is regrettable that even after 50 years much of the ski school industry has not recognized either the change, or its significance. Though of course, a few have.

[For more thoughts and videos on ski technique, as well as links to Bob’s books, visit https://www.bobski.com/]