Better Ski Technique - Practice A Long Controlled Turn - Part 1

Have you read the Edging Exercise article? If not, have a look at it before you read this.

Tootle off on a left traverse on a blue run, as though you are going to do a right turn first. Start off with your right hand half way down to touching your boot. Without moving your body from this position, lift your right arm up roughly horizontally and plant the pole in the snow. This is actually little more than a momentary stab in the snow approximately as far in front of your boot as your outstretched arm will allow and only a few inches away from your downhill ski. As you put the pole in start to rise up. Rise up fast enough to unweight the back of the skis with a parallel turn so that you can start to bring them round. There is no need for the backs of the skis to come right off the ground; in fact it is important to apply as little unweighting as possible in your upward movement to maintain control. The faster you go the easier it will be to unweight the backs of the skis.

You will speed up as you go into the fall line. Come round as smoothly as possible, and drop down slowly as if to touch the left boot with the left hand this time. At the same time apply pressure on to the lower ski. By 'applying pressure' I mean that you should have a sense of pushing hard down on to the ski with your leg and thigh muscles into the middle of your foot. It should feel as though you are driving the skis round, and the whole movement must be done smoothly and firmly.

Why should you apply pressure in this way? Well eventually with more speed and less unweighting this downward pressure will start pushing the skis into added reverse camber, which as you probably remember will make them carve through the turn and because they are bending under tension they will give you a spring to bounce you into the next turn as you start unweighting once more.

(You will notice I have put the phrase