Balance in skiing
Lower leg and spine are at parallel angles due to equal flex at ankle and hip joints. I’ve been in Canada for the past few weeks working with a former colleague on some of my personal methodologies for the instruction of skiing. It’s been an interesting an insightful time from a teaching perspective. To be…
A good pole plant will make your turns both easier and better. A bad pole plant on the other hand can be completely detrimental to your skiing. In fact, it’s almost better for you to NOT pole plant than to do a bad pole plant. Again, like most things in skiing, a pole plant is a…
Active inclination at the start of a turn. Inclination is an active edging skill. Active means we have to consciously perform it. The opposite would be a passive movement. Flex your ankles (active movement) and your knees will flex (passive movement) as well. Inclination allows you to achieve that ‘oh-so-mysterious’ high early edge and it also…
When we ski, we shouldn’t be looking down at our feet or skis. So we can’t see whether what we are doing is right, enough or even wrong. We have to feel it. Video can be a useful learning tool but ultimately, the only immediate and constant feedback we have to rely on is what…
Skiers are vain people. We loooove to look at ourselves. Even when we know we should be looking ahead when skiing, we can’t resist a little peek below to see what our skis are doing. I still do it myself but I try my hardest not to. Don’t believe me? Get a friend to stand…
Ok bear with me on this one, It’s a bit of a toughie. If I had to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of technical difficulty, it’s a 10. But if I also had to rate it on the “Will make the most difference to your skiing” scale, it’s about…
When I first started skiing, a trainer would often ask me to follow him/her and when we stopped, would ask me, “How did that feel?”. Usually I’d be scared shitless because it was way too fast for me. But as I got more comfortable with the speed, my answer became a mere shrug of the…
One of the simplest yet most difficult things I’ve had to change in many a skier is the bad habit of looking down at their skis. It is a habit often developing from their very first time on skis when they were learning the snowplough and constantly looking down to check if they had a…
turnshape 