Snow Skills

For Skiers, remember the basics: put most of your weight on the outside ski.

Here’s a simple tip from a thinking focus:

“Keep your inside leg light.”

When I think about keeping my inside leg light, the outside leg becomes ‘heavy’ in the sense that it’s the primary place for my weight. The ‘light’ focus lets me enter a turn with more balancing on the outside foot than inside, a ballpark of 60% of the balance for a typical turn. The ‘light’ 40% of weight on the inside leg can only be accomplished if I let my body move toward the outside at the top of the turn

Be aware that the percentage of balance mix will vary with snow conditions, terrain, and speed; regardless, thinking about keeping your inside leg light will direct your balance to the outside ski where it belongs.

Half your day of skiing and riding is spent on the lifts. While safety is an issue all day long, riding the lifts represents a time to be more vigilant, especially if you’re riding with the lift with a child.

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Children enjoy learning more when it feels like fun: one fun way to improve their skiing is to use imitation to introduce new skills.
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It’s probably the oldest skiing tip in the book; stay forward! Having trouble with control? Stay forward! Want to start parallel skiing? Stay forward! Want to ski faster? Stay forward! Fine, got it; can do it great in the living room. But just how does one stay forward on slick, uneven, steep snow at speed? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the chicken or the egg question of skiing: do the hands time your turns or do your turns time the hands? In terrain and conditions such as moguls, steeps, trees, powder, and Spring snow, it really doesn’t matter which answer is right. Either way, a series of relatively short linked turns are best made by keeping the hands and legs working in concert. Key to those movements is the commitment to the turn that a good pole swing adds to your skiing.

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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).

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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!

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It’s just human nature to want things to come easy and the frustration level can rise with an activity that requires a substantial amount of learning before you master it. Skiing requires thorough learning which builds methodically to bring you to a higher level of ability. If you rush that process, you may create a situation of diminishing returns as you abandon what’s come before in a hurry to get to what’s next. In skiing, telemarking, and snowboarding, use patience turns to give your gear a chance to do the turning for you.

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An earlier post discussed the four basic styles of learning: doing, thinking, seeing, and feeling. This post explores the seeing learning style. and does so by explaining the same improvement focus as the previous post; isolate your upper body from your lower body.

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Balance is the bottom line in skiing and it can be tough to maintain when the pitch is steep and the snow is uneven. Add in many different body movements occurring at once and the challenge of balance can become confusing. You can settle everything down and create all the balance you want in skiing if you focus on separating your upper and lower body.

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