How to Ski
1/
Balance
Stand
in your boots so that the pressure from the tongue of the boot feels
equally distributed from shin to calf. Most of your weight should be
felt between the heel and the arch of the foot. Discover how to
"walk" by alternatively sliding one ski ahead of the other.
2/ Straight Run
Next,
go just a few feet up a gentle slope. Your shoulders and hands should
face down the hill, while your skis are sideways. With small steps,
point your skis downhill, while putting your weight on your poles. Now
stand on parallel skis, with knees bent and leaning slightly forward
while putting some weight on your poles. Then just lift your poles off
the snow and go!
3/ Gliding Wedge
It's
now time to learn to control your speed. The usual way is called a
"gliding wedge". This is a V-shaped position that is formed by
sliding both skis tails apart an equal distance while
keeping your ski tips together.
This
position creates resistance as you go downhill and slows you down. A
common exercise is to gradually make the wedge wider at you ski straight
down the hill until you come to a stop.
4/
Wedge Turn to Stop
You need to realise that a turn can occur without
any actual turning forces being applied to your body. That means no
twisting or leaning the body in the direction you want to turn.
Instead, white gliding straight down the hill in a wedge, simply apply
slightly more pressure to your left ski. The pressure should be very
subtle so that the left ski seems to magically steer you gradually to
the right until you come to a stop. It is absolutely critical that you
apply this pressure on the left ski while keeping your body still.
5/ Linking Wedge
Turns
Once
you have learned how to control your speed by turning across the hill,
the next step is to link successive turns. Instead of continuing a turn
until you stop, a new turn is initiated before you lose all the momentum
from the current turn. This simply involves a subtle transference of
pressure to the other ski, thereby causing it to instead become the
"turning ski".
When turning you will need to shift your weight to the inside edge of
the previous outer ski and turn your body to face downhill again for a
moment, before continuing across the slope. So shift your weight onto
your right leg when turning left, and onto your left leg when turning
right.
In
the old days, eg. in the classic snowplow, the skis are always edged to
control speed and the upper body is angled to weight the outside ski.
Learning turns was a slow process, because it was difficult to "get
out of the snowplow." Less experienced people got off balance,
locked their knees, crossed their tips, hooked the downhill ski, or
caught an edge. These faults carried over into stem, telemark, and
parallel turns.
In
a modern wedge turn the skier is erect and balanced, not leaning to
either side, steering both skis which are almost flat on the snow. The
knees are not pushed together as in the snowplow, because the skis are
flattened. At higher speed on a steeper slope, there is some edging of
the outside ski to prevent skidding.
The
modern gliding wedge is opened and closed by pivoting the skis under the
feet, not by pushing the tails out. The skier controls speed by turn
shape, not by braking with the edges. The braking wedge is still used to
stop or control speed in narrow places, but it is not taught as a method
of turning.
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