Snow Skills

The pole swing can mean a lot in terms of building better balance in skiing. If you initiate a turn with a pole swing, you’ll be improving your timing, enhancing flow of turning, and being decisive on changing direction. The pole swing can add more balance as well, but only if the swing motion has a positive impact on your stance. To help your balance, make your pole swings from the wrist, not the arm.

Stand on a flat surface in your skis and holding your poles by the grips in front of you. Without moving your arms, begin swinging your poles from the wrist, out and back in a similar manner. Keep your hold on the grips solid without grabbing them; be supple and gentle in your wrist. Hit the slopes and try making pole swings from the wrist to initiate each turn. Notice that swinging the poles from the wrist is a relatively small movement in relation to the efforts of the leg. These small movements can add up to a significant factor in improving your balance by serving to avoid other, larger movements which could detract from your balance. Specifically, if you reach with the arm, it’s likely that you’ll take yourself out of balance.

By using your wrist to swing the poles, you’ll minimize your swinging efforts, resulting in improvement of your balance by quieting your upper body.