Snow Skills

Compliment the balance of your body in skiing with the movement of your arms.

The movements of your arms will help to fine-tune the balance generated by your body. Stand in a balanced stance and place your forearms roughly parallel with the snow. Keeping your head facing straight ahead, explore the range to which you can move your hands without taking them out of your vision; these movements help balance. Then explore the movements that take your hands out of sight; these movements will not help balance.

Now, make some turns and try to keep your hands where you can see them. Each hand should move independently to assist any variation in your balance while moving. Add in a pole swing that meets these guidelines and the entire body will begin constantly moving to maintain balance. These arm movements will also help you in skiing terrain such as moguls and trees.

Separate the upper body from the legs at the hip joint.

The ability to twist the legs without steering the body is crucial to short turns. Stand in a hip-width stance without skis on flat terrain. Using your poles to stabilize your upper body, explore twisting your feet with all the parts of your legs from the hips down. The best twisting movement is one where the toes and heels move a similar distance to leave an hourglass shape in the snow.

Next, twist your feet without using the poles and focus on isolating the movement of your legs in relation to your body. Now, apply this move in gentle parallel turns by focusing on twisting your legs together such that the skis turn more than your body. You’ll find your balance is more steady from turn to turn and your short turns more precise.

Want to become an expert skier? Use your pole swings all the time.

The motion of your poles can provide a significant boost to your skiing skills on diamond terrain. The ability to swing your outside pole to establish the beginning on a new turn will add timing and flow to your skiing and produce steadier balance and movements in higher-gravity areas. Focus on swinging the pole evenly out and back and let that swing be the result of wrist movements as opposed to a reaching motion by the arm. Skiing without a pole swing is like The Lone Ranger without Tonto: it’s really noticeable that something’s missing.

One of the toughest factors in skiing moguls is to know where to find a path through them.  At first glance, a mogul field may look like chaos, but it can be made more manageable.  There are always many paths through any mogul field, and some are more desirable than others; make it easier by taking a trip to the refrigerator!

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Skiing moguls requires a separation of upper and lower body movements in order to stay balanced in uneven terrain.  Those movements are twisting movements and identifying which twisting movements are good ones will help you ski moguls.

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Keep it slow! Maintain control and manage speed in the moguls by taking advantage of every opportunity to slow down.

NOTE: This post builds on previous posts regarding skiing moguls; please review Moguls 101 to 104 first.