Do you need a hearing aid for your foot?

In a recent post (about The First Turn http://www.j2ski.com/ski-chat-forum/posts/list/2636.page ), I mentioned doing a kind of body posture inventory. At the time I was going to spin off into a long aside about feet (not ala Pavel’s Wipes) but I thought that might dilute the message, however I still think that there’s a chat worth having about feet.

There seem to be two types of skiers:

1. The one who sees their equipment and the mountain and as some wild beast to be mastered through pure strength of will, determination and physical effort.
2. The second type is the more sensitive one. The one who makes a request of their equipment (and the mountain) and upon receiving a response makes further requests, entering into a dialogue like when two people meet at a party and through social chit-chat try to find out about the others strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes. Push too hard at the beginning and you might loose the chance to enjoy a pleasant evening at turn one.

Ok, so back to feet.

In skiing your feet are your lips, mouth, tongue, voice box and lungs all rapped up in one. They are your means of communication with both your equipment and the mountain. Admittedly your eyes can give you some help and a well trained ski pole planted at the right moment can tell you lots too, but it’s your feet that can shout the loudest and listen the most keenly.

The secret is in the title of this post, it’s easy to go shouting at the mountain about how great you are at skiing but amidst all that shouting are you listening when the mountain talks back? Well, much like learning to speak a new language you need to understand some of the vocabulary, grammar and syntax. The same is true when learning to listen to your feet. They will be babbling away at 10 to the dozen and you may only understand a few words in every paragraph. But the fact that you are listening at all makes your task infinitely more achievable.

I guess step one is to try to get into the mindset of talking and listening through your feet. Perhaps talking is the wrong word, perhaps communicating would be more helpful. I can think of several examples of humans using their bodies to communicate without speech, for example, I can tell instantly when I’m in trouble with my wife! And she won’t have said a word. Or how about a simple handshake; we read a lot (consciously or otherwise) into the firmness, strength, length and texture of that contact. A dry, firm, brisk 1-2 second shake with a rough hand tells me one thing, whilst a damp, limp, indeterminate, shake with a soft, podgy hand tells me quite another.

What does talking with our feet sound like? Well thankfully it’s a silent noise! And unlike normal speech which is sequential i.e. one word follows another (unless the schnapps has been flowing!) a “footspeak” sentence is communicated all at once. The response will also be returned as a single chunk i.e. all the words will be said at once. If this sounds like a nightmare, relax, our bodies manage this task in a wonderfully natural way. All we have to do is to make sure we are paying attention to what we are saying and then listen to the response.

Let’s take a practical example: standing upright in ski boots on skis on a horizontal surface. If you concentrate very carefully on your feet you will realise that you are chattering away without being aware of it. You may be able feel your weight shifting from the ball of your foot to the heel, then maybe to the toes and back to the heel. Perhaps your toes are curling up slightly or the outside of your foot is taking more of your weight than the instep. These are all aspects of the conversation. Now listen to your feet. When you shift your weight towards the heel you feel more the boot push back more at the heel. You may also feel your toes and the upper part of your foot lift slightly or if not, the pressure on them may increase. Now notice that this conversation happens all at once. Your speech and the replies are all happening on top of one another.

If you spend some time trying this and you will notice that there are subtle layers within this communication, some macro (large, broad or LOUD) and some micro (small, specific of quiet). Shifting your weight towards your toes shouts out some LOUD words like: pressure the balls of my feet; increase the load on my toes and relax the muscles around my ankles. But there are also some quiet words being muttered like: adjust the load between the inner and outer part of the foot and splay or close the toes. Recognising the way you are speaking through your feet is an essential first step.

Separating out the part where you are listening with your feet is the next step. Following the previous example you will now be receiving a whole load of chatter back about where your Centre of Mass is in relation to your foot. The further forward your CoM the louder your toes and ball of foot will be saying “Hi I AM HERE!” whereas your heel will be all tongue tied and shy, not having much to say at all. Shift your CoM back and suddenly you heel has loads to say. But notice that even though your heel is shouting the loudest the rest of your foot is still talking (and all at once). Your task is to grow enough ears to be able to hear everything your feet are saying.

By this time anyone who’s watching you standing there in your skis rocking back and forth will have probably alerted the authorities so let’s not linger on this for too much longer. Before we go, however, we should notice that so far the chat has been pretty much a monologue. The good ole mountain has just been there taking the load and otherwise keeping it’s thoughts to itself.

Well let’s give the mountain a chance to talk! Let’s start to move!

This is where all that rocking about and listening to our feet gets serious.

Why? Because now when we talk, the mountain can talk back. We can’t just yell and scream at some dumb ole mountain without the very real likely hood that it’ll yell back.

As we start gathering speed in our straight run down the flow line we can hear the mountain talking to us about how it feels today. It might be saying “Hi I’m real cold and crunchy” or “I’m melting!” or “Hey, you’re the first skier I’ve seen today” but whatever it’s saying won’t matter if you aren’t listening. In our everyday lives we probably find things go best when we are aware of how those around us are feeling. Being sensitive to the mood and feelings of others allows us to interact with them in a way that works for all of us. The mountain is the same. Listen to its chatter and then decide what line of conversation is most likely to be rewarding.

Here we are back at that First Turn moment. Now without going through every single type of turn let’s just say that you are going to start saying stuff with your feet and now, and here’s the important bit, the mountain has the chance to let fly with all its repressed poetic language, it can really start to talk back. Let’s say you chose to turn left well immediately the first words left your feet the dialogue started. The mountain will be saying stuff like how slippery it is, how much resistance it can take today before the crust gives way, how solid the piste ribs are and so on. It will be doing all this through your feet. Now this conversation will be going on at the same time as your equipment will be talking away to you. Without the long physics bit, as you turn you generate a g-force which you experience through your feet. The harder you turn the more “weight” you feel on your feet. But not just in some amorphous lump of flesh we call the foot but in special areas: on the underside of the big toe; on the inside of the heel; on the outside of the little toe and on the instep. The biggest question in your life right now is – What do you do about the tons of information flashing to you from your feet? Well if you fit into category 1 (remember that bit way at the beginning of this post?) then the answer is probably that you won’t do anything with it. You will continue to fight the mountain and will probably complain at the end of the day that the guy who charged you over the odds for fitting your boots was a cowboy. If, on the other hand, you fit into type 2 then you will be immediately adjusting your speech to fit the conversation. You will realise you can shout like mad and the mountain will cheer with you, or, you will back way off and whisper to the mountain meekly. I will leave the details of the practical responses you might make to any given skiing situation to you and your ski instructor, your coach or perhaps just experience because that’s a whole different story.

Being aware that you are talking demonstrates a wonderful personal understanding and is a fantastic ability; it opens the door to learning and understanding and makes us the amazing animals that we can be. Recognising that communication is not all about what we say, in this case opens the door to the mountain in a way that once experienced will never be forgotten.
So next time you are fighting with the hill, remember, it’s not all about you and what you have to say but more about how well you can listen and interpret the mountain chatting to you through your feet.

Happy chatting,

Jan

This is a very Zen thread.

We have two ears and one mouth as it's more difficult to listen. We must have two feet as when the earth speaks it is dufficult to listen.

The feed back from our feet, ankles, knees tells us if we are walking, skiing or falling. I'm reminded of a song by Lori Anderson - Walking & Falling from her Big Science album. A strange medative song about the subject.

I love what you've said about feeling the mountain.

I'll watch to read the rest thread of this today.

:D hi all i agree jamesA the snow and mountain terrain speak volumes to the feet....they must, as a blind skier (having a fully sighted skier behind giving directional instructions) would have not have the the ability to ski so fluidly downa mountain with nothing more than the feel of the snow beneath them. :D

Hi Jon,

I doubt I will find a more eloquent example of my theme :)

Thank you for reminding me that some are blessed with an insight and connectivity that the rest of us can only aspire to ...

Jan

All,

For reference and to help me improve my future posts, is this type of post too long, too complex, too off-the-wall or just not applicable to the good people of this forum ...

All input welcomed :)

Jan