Dynamic parallel turns are the Holy Grail of the skiing world; they’re the highly-skilled turns that will get you to any place in any condition at any ski area on the planet. The path to improvement of dynamic parallel turns is made up of very small steps To improve your dynamic parallel turns, focus on leading into the new turn with your inside thigh.
Archive for March, 2006
Spring skiing is surely the Prime Time of the winter season. The weather’s warmer, the sun’s higher, the snow is softer, and you’ve been making turns all season so you’re probably feeling pretty comfortable on the slopes. By March, you should be set up for some amazing days of skiing and riding, provided you take care of an unintended consequence of those factors on your gear. Due to the warmer temperatures, your boots won’t have the same fit as they did earlier in the season. Materials such as plastic, foam, and suede all behave differently under various temperatures and you need to adjust your boot settings to compensate.
Hugh? you ask… Yes, now would be a great time to stock up on skiing and snowboarding clothes for next year. Ski shops want to get rid of their winter inventory at this time of year. Who really knows the difference between a 2006 ski sweater and a 2007 ski sweater? Go grab all of the closeout items now while the getting is still good and prices have started to drop.
You can always use more ski socks, right? Now is the time to stock up for next year! How about new equipment? Well, that can be a little trickier.
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When the warmer temperatures bring warmer (and heavier) snow, snowboarding can get challenging. Sure, the softer snow feels great under foot and it doesn’t take much to get the board gripping the surface. The heaviness of the snow, however, can put you in a situation where the board seems to have a mind of its own. A snowboard seems very long when you’re trying to turn it against a whole mountain’s-worth weight of snow.
A natural reaction to this condition would be to steer your board more with the rear foot to compensate, but a little high school physics can teach us otherwise. If to every action there’s an opposite reaction, then the more you try to push the board around, the more the snow will be grabbing back at you. There’s a solution; resist the urge to over-steer your snowboard in heavier snow conditions by keeping the rear foot light and directing your balance along the path of the turn.
When going on a ski vacation, a good ski or snowboard instructor can help make the difference between a good and great time! And one of the best ways to know in advance if an instructor is good is to ask for one who is certified by a professional skiing and riding organization. Almost every country with winter recreation sports has such an organization: in the United States, the professional organization of snowsports instructors is the Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA) and the American Association of Snowboard Instructors (AASI).
In the wetter snow of spring skiing, it takes a different set of skills to make an efficient skiing turn. As the snow gets softer, focus on putting nearly the same amount of weight on both feet. Yes, there still has to be a dominance of balance on the outside leg, but the heavier snow dictates that both skis need to work together and that takes modifying your movements to stay balanced and efficient. The focus is to ski with two feet!
My favorite piece of clothing for spring skiing in sunny weather is a fleece vest, for a bunch of reasons. It keeps your torso warm while giving your limbs freedom of movement. It’s not too warm on the chairlift ride up and keeps you warm on the way down. It gives you pockets for storing lip balm, keys, and the season pass. It has a collar to keep the sun off your neck. It’ll make you look like a skier and rider, on and off the slopes. And there’s lots of choices for how much you want to spend on one.
O.K., today’s blog is surely a pet peeve of mine in skiing; too many people have no idea how to carry a pair of skis comfortably! Let’s face it, the gear can be heavy and you’re probably wearing heavy layers of clothing and might be in your ski boots and it’s likely that you’re walking uphill or on uneven terrain and yeah, sure, it can be a challenge! With all that adversity, folks tend to make things worse by contorting their bodies and limbs in all sorts of combinations that usually aren’t very efficient and lead to almost immediate fatigue. These folks are almost human porcupines, in that their gear is sticking out in all directions and likely to hit anyone and anything close by. To learn how to carry skis comfortably, watch the professional skiers from your local ski school and ski patrol: they’ll show you how it’s done!
It’s a question a 4 year old would ask: “Why does the ski turn, Daddy?” While this might seem like a tough question, there are surely many other topics which are more difficult for parents to address with their children than why a ski turns. Why a ski turns is simple in concept, if fairly challenging in execution. A ski is built with a specific shape and flexing characteristics that allow it to prescribe an arc in the snow if it’s on edge and is weighted in the middle.
There’s a lot going on in your body when you’re making a turn; legs, feet, hands, arms, body, and head can seem to all have minds of their own when you’re trying to find the right combination of moves. Use the KISS Method (Keep It Simple Stupid) by reducing the load; try skiing without poles. The weight and grip of your poles tends to encourage overly active movements of your arms, sometimes to the point of twisting your body and taking you out of balance. If you can take the arms out of the equation, you’ll be more successful at focusing on separating your upper body from the more active motions of your legs. Result? Steadier balance from turn to turn!