ACL Awareness CompliantSM
Contact us to discuss an ACL AWARENESS program at your ski area for employees and guests
You'll be glad you did.
cary@rideinharmony.com
Phone 970.274.0365
The teaching method and practices of RIDE IN HARMONY™, are consistent with information about avoiding the most common major injuries to the knee, and we have evolved some of our own common sense strategies, to boot. Oh yeah, that's one of them. Get the right boot, and learn your boot size in "ski talk", so you know whether you are getting a boot in your size or not.
The ski season is just around the corner, so here are a couple reminders, and where to get help.
Common causes of an ACL injury?
- An inward twist or rotation of the outside femur, at the knee, that is excessive or sudden. Sometimes it's in a turn, a fall, or upon landing from a jump.
- What often starts the excessive internal twist? The Turn-side™ hand, the one inside the arc of the turn with which you make a pole swing, drops back and in, and the hip falls behind the ankle. While the outside foot is relatively stationary, trapped, or posted in one place, the ski and body twist against each other.
- Is this a simplified or comprehensive description? It highlights major factors that can be addressed on short notice, like when you rent a ski, but it applies in about seventy percent of the ACL ruptures, the most common major ski injury.
- Does it cover all of the circumstances affecting an ACL injury, and it's prevention. No. But it's a start, the ones it does cover will continue to be relevant as long as you ski and ride.
- And most importantly, it's a gender issue, but men have them too. Women have two to ten times the ACL injuries in sports that men do.
Let's keep the first list short:
ACL Reminders:
1. Know your foot size and boot size. The boot should be the same size, or smaller than your foot, fitting like a glove, comfortably, to steer the ski when your foot moves.
Ski Boots are sized in a system called Mondopoint, from Europe, with two numbers. Most of the sizes in Mondopoint can be understood by adding the two numbers together. So a size 8 in a regular shoe, is a marked as 26. 2+6=8 so size26 in a ski boot is equal to size 8 in a reglar shoe. Getting a larger boot than your foot size can be like installing loose steering on a car.
2. TurnsideSM hand up and forward, RIH style. The First three lessons, train you to move the hands forward. That untwinds the body, and tips the ski on edge. That, and the right equipment set up, keep you in the center of a functional range of motion, a cardinal principle.
3. Two footed foot movements. Lesson 4. Tail of the Dolphin Learn to move your both feet independently, in unison, without being locked together. Learn at your own pace on slopes you are comfortable skiing and riding, then work up. Support from both feet is stronger than just one. The IOC, or International Olympic Cimmittee, also recommends two footed movements to reduce ACL injuries.
4. You want both feet to roll onto and off of edge at the same time so, extra credit if you can get your boot fitter to adjust your cuff, if a rental, or you have effective foot beds that support both feet in a neutral position. This is a "prophylactic arrest" of inward rotation of the femur or knee. When your foot is supported, the leg rotation tends to occur at the hip.
Ask the pro in your ski shop who they recommend to adjust your stance with a footbed in your boot, often a pedorthist. Especially if your knees touch before your ankles do when you draw them together, you may not be getting the support that you need from the edge of both skis at the same time.
5. Center of a functional range of motion. Ankles under the hips. The skis will tend to turn toward the TURN-SIDESM hand, right turn-right hand, left turn-left hand. Draw them back in each turn until you feel comfortable with them there most the time, as your legs flex and extend. This is new, not to RIDE IN HARMONYTM, but to the way beginners have been taught from traditional methods of ski instruction.
There is more but this is a start.
Contact us to discuss an ACL AWARENESS program at your ski area for employees and gue
You'll be glad you did.
cary@rideinharmony.com
Phone 970.274.0365
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Patented use of gravity
Ride In Harmony™ Founder, Cary Thompson , has been issed a patent with 19 claims by the US Patent and Trademark Office, for telemark bindings. Dave Durrance of the legendary ski family is named on the patent, as well, for his work assembling the first prorotype. The Kam-Holdz™ binding, operating like a shoulder or hip joint, features a partial release system which pivots back into place with a gravity assist, following recovery from a fall.
Welcome the security of the release of the ski in a fall, and stay with it for enhanced performance because of its ergonomic location at the center the ski or board.
When you become comfortable as an Alpine skier, you may want to experience the "Unbearable lightness of skiing", which is Telemark, and the patented "return to center force" of KAM-HOLDZ™ Technology, (with apologies to Milan Kundera).
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