In skiing, our body tends to automatically assume determined dispositions based on vestibular and postural reflexes. When our stance is altered, postural reflexes will be in charge of maintaining our postural stability, keeping our body upright and aligned by carrying out continuous adjustments.
In certain circumstances, due to the complexity in their simultaneous activation, these reflexes interfere with our skiing activity generating an additional effort. Furthermore, excessive muscular tension while achieving our skiing postures, especially at the initial stages, causes movement restriction. This produces a distorted functioning of the postural control because we are voluntarily handling something that should be natural.
If our head loses its alignment, then a righting reflex will be sufficient, but if our whole body moves out of our base of support exceeding stability limits, a balance reaction will be necessary to return to a stable posture. During human development, postural reflexes and balance reactions replace primitive reflexes. The purpose of postural reflexes is to maintain our referential posture or adapting it to the desired situation.
Lack of Development in Postural Reflexes
As we have mentioned, the objective of our postural reflexes is to preserve our balance, posture, and proper head and body alignment. As developed in higher-order brain functions, these reflexes appear later during growth. If they do not fully develop, it may occur that in stressful situations, primitive reflexes appear first since the nervous system has no other way to respond, even if these alternative responses are inappropriate, suffering balance and coordination problems. In these cases, there will be observable consequences, as visuomotor integration problems, difficulty in controlling gaze and visual fixation, insecure head movements, poor body alignment, or defective muscle tone.
Balance Reactions
Balance reactions allow us to recover our posture in the event of any change in the mechanisms preserving balance or a disturbance in gravity perception. These reactions get involved by relocating our center of gravity or adjusting the size of our base of support. In the development of postural reflexes, balance reactions are the last ones to mature.
These reactions are classified in:
- Base of Support Reaction, in which we move one or both feet to keep our base of sustenance under the center of gravity.
- Body Reaction: we move our body to keep our center of gravity over the base of support.
- Base of Support and Body Reaction: we increase our base of support by separating our feet simultaneously flexing our body, approaching our center of gravity to our base of support.
Head Postural Reflex
Our head positioning is considered as our main body posture reference, so if we correctly perceive our head spatial location, it can be interpreted that we perceive our body position. When our head is not aligned with our upper body, the cervicocollic reflex activates realigning it on the trunk by stretching our neck muscles.
Sliding Reaction
A typical reaction in the beginner skier is jaw retraction, retaining his head back by tensing neck posterior muscles. This is a normal reaction triggered at the same moment in which he experiences the base of a support sliding forward, producing a cascade of reactions that elicit postural imbalances.
These reactions are: tensed back, arms used as balance recovers instead of balance stabilizers, stiff legs, and finally, podal insensitivity. The expert skier seeking sliding pleasure leaves his neck and head flexible, but maintains an appropriate tonic intensity in the rest of his body.
On-Slope Examples of Postural Reflexes and Balance Reactions
| Concept Name | Academic Core | “On-Slope” Example |
| Postural Reflexes | Involuntary nervous system responses in charge of maintaining postural stability, keeping the body upright and aligned through continuous micro-adjustments. | * Cruising along a long, slightly wavy cat-track where your body automatically stays completely upright and balanced without any conscious thinking or muscular effort. |
| Distorted Postural Control | The physical movement restriction and excessive muscular tension caused by voluntarily managing postures that should happen naturally. | * An intermediate skier trying so hard to force a “perfectly bent racing stance” that their hips freeze up, their back locks, and they look completely rigid. |
| Righting Reflex | A subtle, localized reflex that triggers to realign and restore the head’s position when it loses its alignment with the neck and trunk. | * Stumbling slightly over a small clump of hidden snow on a flat run, causing your head to tilt briefly sideways before instantly snappy-straightening back to center. |
| Balance Reaction | A major physiological adjustment activated to return the body to a stable posture when the center of gravity moves completely outside the limits of support. | * Getting heavily bucked backward by a deep, sudden rut in the snow, forcing your whole upper body to lurch violently forward to stop from crashing. |
| Primitive Reflex Regression | The inappropriate re-emergence of infant-like defensive reflexes under severe stress, leading to poor body alignment, insecure head movements, and bad coordination. | * A nervous skier panicking on a steep slope, causing them to lock their arms out wide, drop their chin to their chest, and lose all visual control of where they are going. |
| Base of Support Reaction | A specific balance reaction where a skier moves one or both feet to rapidly relocate their base of sustenance directly under their shifting center of gravity. | * Getting knocked sideways by an unexpected bump and instantly stepping your outside ski wide to the side to build a wider platform and catch your falling weight. |
| Body Reaction | Shifting the torso or upper limbs to bring the center of gravity back over a fixed, stable base of support. | * Catching a slight edge on your inside ski, causing you to rapidly counter-lean your entire upper torso out over your outside ski to stay upright. |
| Base of Support and Body Reaction | Simultaneously widening the feet and flexing the entire body lower to the snow to quickly drop the center of gravity closer to the base of support. | * Blasting out of a smooth trail directly into a chaotic, crowded intersection, causing you to instantly open your skis wide and drop into a deep, low squat. |
| Cervicocollic Reflex (Head Postural Reflex) | The automatic activation of neck muscles that realigns the head squarely on top of the trunk when the head-to-body relationship is distorted. | * Slashing through a deep powder turn where your body leans hard into the arc, while your neck muscles stretch and contract to keep your head tracking squarely with your chest. |
| Sliding Reaction | A beginner panic response marked by jaw retraction, tensed neck muscles, a tensed back, stiff legs, and feet that lose all sensory feeling (podal insensitivity). | * A beginner skier sliding forward for the first time, causing them to pull their head back, lock their knees straight, and lose all feeling of the snow under their boots. |
According to these considerations, you can apply the following recommendations in your own skiing:
- Remember that your postural reflexes will be in charge of maintaining your postural stability, keeping your body upright and aligned by carrying out continuous adjustments.
- You can reestablish your balance by applying a base of support reaction, moving one or both feet to keep your base of sustenance under your center of gravity.
- By moving your body to keep your center of gravity over your base of support, you will be using a complete body reaction.
- To recover from an imbalance, increase your base of support by separating your feet and simultaneously flex your body, approaching your center of gravity to your base of support.
- Control that your jaw is always in advance, which will prevent retaining your head back by tensing neck posterior muscles.
