Snow Skills

Good balance comes from good posture which comes from a good stance which starts at the feet. Whew! That’s a lot to deduce in a short sentence, but there’s a simplicity in identifying that good balance builds from where you set your feet. None of the other body parts are even touching Mother Earth, so the position of the feet in relation to eachother is key to staying in balance when gravity is pulling you down an uneven, variable slope. With today’s shaped skis, the general stance width is hip-wide no matter what the situation to give you the most effective balance and skiing movements

Start your search for a hip-width stance indoors in bare feet on a firm surface. Find a hip-width stance by placing the palms of your hands on the bony part of your hips, fingers straight out and facing down. Now close your eyes and set the outside of your feet even with your palms. Open your eyes to visually check that the outside edge of your feet is directly under an imaginary line extending from your fingers. Note that your feet are within the extents of your hips, not outside them: this is a stance that will give you the best balance and most effective leg movements.

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Ski boots are surely the King Kong of footwear by their sheer size; it takes a lot of boot to help you turn a ski when gravity’s pulling you down the mountain. Those forces require a method to close your boot more substantial than shoestrings and that’s why a ski boot buckle has been the norm since the introduction of plastic boots in the late 1960’s. Just as you would tie your shoestrings to get a snug and comfortable fit, ski boot buckles need to be adjusted to fit your body. Due to the bulk of the boot, however, there’s a human instinct to think that buckles need to be tighter than your shoelaces to keep that big piece of footwear in its place. Resist that urge: ski boots need to be just as comfortable as any piece of footwear!

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Question: what parts of the legs allow you to turn the skis? Answer: all of them! Your legs are the strongest limbs on the body and have many parts which work in concert to create that strength. The inidividual parts of the leg control your movements by an equilibrium of contraction and extension to give you strength through balance in any athletic activity. You can translate that energy into powerful skiing by ensuring that you use your legs in skiing the way you would in any other activity.

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Do you know how to properly select your snowshoe size? Snowshoeing is all about buoyancy. So you want to pick a size based on the ability of the snowshoe to float on the snow.

Here are the factors in float/buoyancy:

• Weight: – Both you and any gear you might carry.
• Size: – The longer or wider the snowshoe, the more snow it can float on.
• Snowpack: – It is easy to stay buoyant on packed snow while powder is tough

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One of the simplest things you can do to encourage a great day of skiing is right at your fingertips. It’s an important moment when you’re sitting in the base lodge ready to put your downhill or telemark ski boots on: you’re in charge of setting the buckle adjustments. You need to set the hook in one of the slotted positions on the boot and then close the handle, possibly fine-tuning the hook length by twisting it (some manufacturers call that a ‘micro-adjust’). Husbands are especially prone to over-tightening their wives’ ski boots in an honest attempt to help out: “Here, honey, let me just crank those buckles down for you….SNAP!” Leave her alone, guys; the wearer of the boot needs to close their buckles themselves to get the proper fit. Ski boot buckles should be set to close with no more effort than moving your fingers. If you have to use your wrist or arm to close a buckle, that’s too much effort. And the buckle closing should sound gentle, not like a thunderclap.

Use care by adjusting every buckle individually. The best arrangement is to have the bale settings identical from left to right, as that will mold the boot to your foot in the most even way. Your feet may not be identical, however, and that’s where the micro-adjusts are helpful. By fine-tuning each buckle adjustment, you can get a boot fit that will be comfortable, warm, and set you up for an awesome day on the slopes.

Whether the chicken or the egg came first can be debated forever. What’s not debatable is that your ski boot most directly contacts your foot, not the ski. If you were listing the instructions to edge the ski, that list would place moving the ski boot before the skis roll onto edge. The ski boot directs the ski to subsequently contact the snow along its edge and generate the turn. With this sequence in mind, improve your edging by focusing on how your foot brings the boot up onto edge.

Ignore the resulting action of the ski by feeling the pressure of the boot on its side all the way from your toes to the heel. You can practice edging without skis by standing on a firm, flat surface in your boots and exploring the motions and sensations of balancing on the sides of the boot soles. By focusing on the smaller area of your boot rather than the entire ski, you’ll be more likely to isolate the edging motion to the leg and avoid introducing an unwanted twisting of the body. You’ll see the ski and boot roll onto edge at the same time, but the thought that the boot directs the ski will help you to more distinctly translate your foot movements into good edging of the ski.

Old wives’ tales insist that mittens are warmer, but experience has shown otherwise. The rationale that having all four fingers next to eachother generates more heat for all discounts the advantage of having insulation directly surrounding your skin. The further advantage of greater dexterity pretty much ends the debate in my opinion. If you have to frequently take mittens off in cold weather to adjust your snowboard bindings, it’s just practical that gloves are warmer since you don’t have to expose your skin to make those same efforts. For skiing, the form-fitting feature of glove design represents a lower profile of material between your hand and the pole grip than mittens would allow. A firm grip yields a firm pole swing which brings firm turn commitment that will improve your skiing. Whether riding or skiing, gloves are the best way to keep warm and provide dexterity.

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An old Maine sayin’ goes “An ounce of protection, is worth a pound of cure.” When that cure could be a knee operation or a cast on a broken limb, that ounce of protection will seem like a bargain to keep you enjoying the outdoors through the winter. According to sources on the Web, injuries due to equipment issues are one of the top five common accident causes. Downhill ski bindings have come a long way in design and materials to improve injury protection. The performance of your bindings relies on an annual maintenance check, however, to verify their condition and that takes a professional ski technician. Bindings will protect you when they are accurately set and functioning properly: only an experienced ski shop has the ability to assure you of both!

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Welcome back to winter! My home mountain, Sugarloaf,is open and I made my first turns of the winter today! No matter how many years of skiing under your feet, that first run always brings to mind a newborn colt making its first steps. The stance wavers, the balance is unsteady, and the muscle-memory of your moves from last spring is, well, …back in last spring. When your first day of skiing feels like a baby deer trying to walk on ice, the best focus is to simply turn the skis with your legs, not with your body.

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The 2005-2006 season officially begins with opening day at our home mountain, Sugarloaf/USA. We’ve already had a number of stormstorms that whitecapped the summit and the snowmakers added depth on a handful of trails for opening day. I’d guess there are a number of folks like me that can’t wait to get out there and rip it up…..wait a moment. Opening day is no time to get ahead of yourself. There are five months of winter ahead; there’s just too much fun before you to not think this through. The skiing and riding you recall from last season is old news; to start the season, start at the beginning and that means warming up the body through stretching.

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