Flying, yoga, and skiiing

I am a low hours private pilot, but I have done some fun things in those 100+ hours. I have flew a BT-13, flew in the company really good pilots, and done formation flying. How does this relate to skiing or yoga? Well there is a thing called spin training, where a pilot goes to learn how to hand an aircraft in unusual attitudes (spinning towards the ground, for instance), in yoga you are taught to spin to center your Chakras. Again the connection is what?

Well I have balance issues from a variety of causes and while I was standing around one day, I connected all the above together. In spin training: getting the inner ear to behave when tumbling around in the sky is huge towards understanding how to fix the spin and that takes actual spins to get the inner ear to be conditioned to the physical spinning. In skiing: dynamic balance is key, again inner ear conditioning. In yoga: spinning to 'center' the Chakras is conditioning the body to expect and accept changes in stance and balance.

So I started spinning around in a circle while at home, just walking around, 'oh there is enough room here' SPIN! as I have done this over the past month or so several things have happened. My balance is much better, my skiing is much better, and I feel better generally, partially because my inner ear is now better conditioned to changes in attitude.

Will this work for you? Probably, try it and let me know. Just spin until you are just slightly dizzy (I could only do a couple turns around at first, so keep at it), then increase the number of spins and see what happens.

Tall people and dynamic skiing

There is a battle that ensues when tall people ski. What is a 18-20" swing from one edge to the other for a person 5'8", is about 20-24" for someone 6'6" tall. This causes some interesting phenomena with edge transitions, turn initiation, and the whole bio-mechanical kinetic chain. All that said (as an engineer), what it means in 'normal-speak' is that it takes more time for someone my height to get from one edge of my skis to the other. I have to work harder to turn my 165cm skis in the 16m radius that they can produce than a shorter person does. So I compensate by rotating or 'helping' the turn happen with a stem (pushing off with the up hill ski or "big-toeing" the turn. I have been working on patience and just lets the skis do the work. Then along comes Adaptive ski instruction and keeping up with your student who is rocking their bi-ski so as not to get tension in the tethers (yanking them into the fall line) is more important than "pretty" skiing, so last Tuesday I am behind a bi-ski with Dave, my trainer, in the ski and he is screaming down the hill at mach chicken (thx Kate Howe) trying to keep up any way I can. Stemming, skating, straight run, whatever it takes and loving it!

So last night (Friday) I am out on Bull run at Sunburst doing fast short radius turns in a corridor defined my my ski poles, doing pivot slips, and hockey stops to improve my Adaptive instruction abilities so I can get signed off to tether bi-skis (step one towards my Level 1 Adaptive certification with the PSIA).