Good at skiing is the ability to ski with great technique and control, regardless of the terrain or snow conditions. It’s a combination of rotation, edging and pressure control that allows skiers to effortlessly carve from turn to turn on all kinds of slopes.
It takes time to get good at skiing, but there are a few milestones that you should hit when learning to ski well. The most important one is a balanced stance on your skis. This is crucial to making a safe and smooth transition from your feet to your skis, so make sure you practice this often!
Balance Drills
The key to staying balanced while skiing is to focus on your hips and legs. They work together to keep your upper body pointed downhill, and it’s important to think about them when you are planning your turns.
This is especially important for intermediate skiers who often end their turns facing the side of the piste, instead of straight down the hill. A simple drill that will help to correct this is to grab your poles upside down and do a cross with them. This forces your shoulders to follow your hips and not the other way around, and will force you to keep them pointed downhill at all times.
Achieving a strong and aggressive stance on your skis is another important skill to develop. It’s a lot easier to move around with a strong stance than a weak or awkward one, and it will make you much safer on the slopes.
To master the stance, try to think of your hips as being “as tall as a house and as small as a mouse.” This will give you an idea of what it feels like to have your knees and hips straighter between turns than they are while turning, which is what you want.
The stance will also teach you to put more pressure on your feet than your hips when you ski, which will help improve your edging Adam McManus and pressure control. Once you’ve mastered the stance, try to keep it for longer periods while you’re skiing.
It’s also a good idea to train your body in this way on an easy slope before moving onto harder ones, so that you can get used to letting your weight shift across your skis as you go downhill. This will help to avoid the tendency of your knees and hips to flex too much, which can lead to your skis losing contact with the snow as you go downhill.
If you’re struggling to ski a difficult run, ask someone who’s more experienced than you to take you down it. This will allow you to ski with more confidence, and will also help you to notice mistakes you might not otherwise have noticed on your own.
Eventually, you’ll be skiing with great technique everywhere. But that doesn’t mean you’ve reached your limit – you’ll always have room to improve. So, as you get more confident and enjoy your time on the slopes, try to spend more time practicing and improving your skills – it’ll be worth it in the end!