Body movement applied in skiing
When skiing we look ahead. Simple. But there is a little bit more to that statement. For where exactly do you look ahead? In short turns, it’s straight forward. Pick a point, actively look at it and keep heading towards it. (The technical definition of a short turn is one where the radius of the turn is within…
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…
In skiing there is talk of a ‘Basic Position’. It is essentially a basic athletic stance + angulation and is referred to as a strong desirable position. The basic athletic stance is flexed ankles, knees and hips. Angulation is creating angles with our body by moving our knees and hips. When you’re traversing, you’re pretty much…
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…
Edging is the skill of tilting the ski onto an angle against the snow. This skill when combined with the other skills (balance, twisting, etc) results in multiple effects. On its own, I like to simplify edging as giving skiers a grip on the snow. When we have a firm grip on the ground, other…
Put any fool on two planks and they’ll be able to head straight down a hill. Gravity ensures it. Skiing is all about turns though. And we should make turns for two reasons only; “We turn to change direction or to manage our speed via turn shape.” A huge bonus is that those turns start…
In my first few seasons of instructing, I had the good fortune of teaching an honest-to-god rocket scientist (who shared with me that rocket science is actually a lot simpler than a whole lot of other sciences out there). He was an inquisitive student that was learning the snowplough turn. I remember one of…
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…
turnshape 