- Hi I'm Greg Rhodes with PSIA and the REI Co-op
and I'm here to cover some tips for you
to get you classic skiing down the trail.
(upbeat music)
What we're gonna be covering are skills
before we put our skis on, moving on flat ground,
pole basics, going uphill, going downhill,
turning and coming to a stop, and getting up from a fall.
Before we put our skis on, let's practice our body position
that we're gonna use when we're on our skis.
It's a basic athletic body position
where your ankles and your knees are bent softly
and your hips are right over your feet.
You can even stand with your hands out in front of you,
practicing and having this soft bouncing movement
to feel the pressure on the bottom of your foot.
When we classic ski, we actually stand on one foot.
So take that two-footed athletic stance
and shift your weight over to one foot
and practice having that same stable and stacked position
on one foot just like you'll be classic skiing.
You can switch feet and try it on both.
Now that we're on snow, we're gonna have to put on our skis
before we can start sliding.
When you put on your skis, put 'em on the snow,
put 'em parallel to each other.
There's no right and left ski,
so don't worry about where they're at.
And then you're gonna wanna clear the snow off your boot,
line your toe up behind the rubber bumper,
and push down 'til it clicks.
The first thing you can do to get moving on the snow
is to do a little shuffle,
just shuffle your feet underneath you
to keep your feet underneath your hips
and have that feeling of having a long ski on your foot.
You can also think of the shuffle
as just walking on your skis.
Now we're gonna bring it to the point
where we get to actually glide on our skis.
The fun advantage of being on cross country skis
over just hiking in the snow or being on snowshoes
is we get to glide.
So let's take that shuffling and add a glide into it.
To do this for the first time,
a lot of times what we like to talk about
is doing a shuffle, shuffle, glide.
This way you can practice having your feet underneath you
and then gliding on one foot,
shuffling with your feet underneath you,
and then gliding on the next foot.
Let's get to actually kicking and gliding
on our cross country skis.
When we kick and glide on our skis,
or the actual classic stride, what you wanna think about
is quickly bending your ankles and your knees
to set your wax pocket, or your grip zone of your ski,
and gliding onto the new ski.
This will be a sequence of quickly bending your ankle
and your knee and driving your other foot forward.
One of the best ways that we can have everybody
get going on the cross country skis,
is to actually practice kicking and gliding
without using their poles.
Let me give you a demo what I mean by skiing without poles.
When you're classic skiing, you really wanna remember
to focus on setting the pocket and pushing off that ski.
Think of bending the ankle and the knee quickly,
push down on the ball of your foot, and glide,
push and glide.
When we cross country ski,
we don't just use our skis and our legs,
we actually get to use poles too.
Poles provide us an opportunity to use both our upper
and our lower body to move more efficiently down the trail,
as well as gives us a little bit of balance
when we're in that glide position.
To start, we're gonna have to put on our poles.
When you put on your poles,
you wanna go up from the bottom of the strap.
I always talk about it as the rabbit comes up
through the hole and then grabs onto the tree.
You wanna look to make sure that the pole strap
is between your hand and the pole.
If you put on a pole and the strap is too loose
because you grab it below where the strap goes in,
this is too loose
and you're gonna have to tighten up your strap.
Now that we have our poles on,
we're gonna really start putting our arms into the skiing.
Before we start moving and doing the striding,
let's actually just work on some basics
of double poling that are gonna be easier to apply.
What I like to have people think about the first time
is getting that official body position
that we've always done,
so remember our ankles and our knees are bent,
our hips are over our feet.
And now with our hands,
we're gonna put 'em out in front of us,
about at the level of our mouth,
our elbow is gonna be bent at 90 degrees,
not straight, but right at 90 degrees.
The first movement pattern you're gonna think about
is you're gonna think about activating your core.
So when you do this, you wanna have your hands
out in front of you, activate the core
until your poles come to the snow.
Activate the core 'til the poles come to the snow.
One thing that you can check on
to make sure you're doing this correctly
and that your arms are in the right position,
your pole tips are landing right at the tip of your binding
to the tips of your toes.
If your arms are too long,
they land out by the tips of your skis.
If your hands aren't out in front of you far enough,
they land out by your heels or by the tails of your skis.
Elbows at 90 degree, activate your core,
pole tips to the tops of your bindings.
When we're double poling, we're doing more
than just activate our core and bring our poles to the snow,
we actually need to use the poles to push off of.
So what we're gonna do is you're gonna activate your core,
bring the poles to the snow,
and then you're gonna drive your elbows back
so you push off your poles to move yourself forward.
Activate the core, push and slide forward.
One good way to think about the sequence of double poling
is to think about activating my core,
and then pushing my hands to my pockets.
Activate, push to my pockets.
Now that we've worked on both kicking with our feet
and our skis and our double poling,
let's put that together to actually classic ski,
or what we call diagonal striding.
Diagonal striding uses your arms independently
and not together, but the same movement pattern happens,
with your hand just in front of your shoulder
about level with your mouth, elbow at 90 degrees,
activate, push with your hand to your pocket,
with your other arm swinging through at the same time.
The reason why we call it diagonal stride
is the timing with your legs is
that it's opposite arm, opposite leg.
So before you even have your skis on,
have your poles on and just walk down the trail
and slowly feel like what it feels like
to have your poles in your hands and diagonal stride.
Now that you have the timing down with your walking,
put back on your skis and try it with just a little shuffle
and low intensity to see if you can get the timing down.
Here are a couple easy ways to get up that hill
so you can use more
of the Nordic centers that you're visiting.
Gradual uphills can easily be taken care of
with just shortening up your stride
into one of those shuffle movements that you did
when you first got on your skis.
Keep your skis in the track, shuffle up the hill
with a shorter push but make sure you really set that pocket
with maybe a little bit more ankle and knee flexion
to set that pocket harder when you're getting up that hill.
If the hill gets steep enough that
that short diagonal stride, you start slipping,
you might need to use what we call the herringbone.
The herringbone is where you step out of the track,
your ski tips are going to go out into a V and separate
and you're gonna start rolling your feet into the inside
and dig the inside edge of your skis into the snow.
You're gonna keep your arms and your legs
still in a opposite arm, opposite leg pattern,
but you're gonna just slowly step up the hill,
and use your poles to make sure you don't slide backwards
as you take a step up the hill
with your feet in that V shape
and the middle edges rolled towards your arches,
digging into the snow.
The hill gets so steep, you might even have
to side step up the hill or even take off your skis
and walk up the hill, especially if it's really deep powder.
If you have to use herringbone, side stepping,
or walking up the hill, make sure you step out of the track
and keep the track nice and crisp and clean for those
that are actually gonna diagonal stride up the hills.
If you skied up a hill, you get the opportunity
to go down the hill.
The first way to get down the hill
is keep your skis in the track,
get back into that athletic body position,
that neutral stance that we started with,
ankles bent, knees bent, hips right over our feet,
hands slightly out in front of us,
and just keep your skis sliding in the track
as you gradually go down the hill.
This is something you can use on low angle hills,
places that you feel more comfortable,
keeping your skis in the track
is a great, safe way to do it.
If there's a corner in that downhill,
you can usually just ride those skis in the track
just like a train would ride the rails around a corner.
If you wanna have a little bit more safety and speed control
you can do a half wedge.
Shift your weight to your ski
that you're gonna keep in the track, lift up your other ski,
step it out of the track, shift your weight
to the wedged ski, pushing in on the inside edge,
and slowly pressuring that ski that's out of the track
to control your speed and slow you down.
It's easy to lift your leg back up,
stick your foot in the track, and continue gliding on.
If the hill is too big, or you want a little bit more safety
and comfort when you're going down the hill,
you might wanna use a full wedge to get down that hill.
The top of the hill is probably the best time
to step all the way out of the track with both feet.
And now you're gonna put both feet into a wedge,
meaning you're gonna move both heels out,
putting your toes together, your tips of your skis together,
and pushing in on the insides of your feet,
towards the arch of your foot.
This way you're pushing out with both left and right foot
at the same time, and you can really increase the pressure
or increase how wide that wedge is
to slow down your skis as you're going downhill.
Think about it as you're a snowplow,
pushing into the snow, slowing yourself down.
As you're doing this to make sure and increase that pressure
you're gonna want to drive your knees
towards the tip of your skis,
bending your ankles and your knees,
keeping your hips right over your feet.
If you want to stop, you're gonna have
to really push out hard until you come to a complete stop.
One other reminder, whenever you're going down the hills,
keeping your hands out in front of you
and your pole tips behind you is gonna keep you in control
as you're going down that hill.
If you try to stop yourself with your pole tips,
you might catch your pole
and take it to your chest or your face.
If you come to a hill that's a little too steep
for your current abilities,
or you don't feel safe going down it,
it's okay to take your skis off and walk down the hill.
Just one reminder to be courteous
of your other cross-country skiers and the trail conditions
and make sure you do it to the side
and definitely do not walk down the classic track.
One of the great things about cross country skiing
is our ski trails wander throughout forests and prairies
so there's always gonna be a turn
that we're gonna have to do.
There's a couple easy ways to make the turn.
First of all, if you're classic skiing,
the tracks are gonna easily just guide you
around every corner and you just feel like you're a train
in the train tracks, just keep your skis in the tracks
and let the track turn you.
Another turn you can use is a step turn.
Step turns are really just stepping your inside foot
in the direction of the turn
and then bringing your other foot parallel with it.
If you're moving fast, the rhythm of that
is just gonna increase with smaller steps each single time.
Just remember, it's inside foot, parallel,
inside foot, parallel until you get all the way
around the corner and then you get back
to just gliding straight down the trail.
If you use the wedge to get down a hill
and there's a turn in the trail,
you're gonna have to use what we call a wedge turn.
You're gonna keep your feet still in that wedge position,
but now you're gonna start steering your feet
by pressuring the outside foot
a little bit more than the inside foot
to steer your skis around a corner.
When you're sliding on slow, inevitably you might fall.
This is okay, everybody does it.
The first thing to remember when you first are on the snow
is to take a deep breath and relax
and understand you'll be okay.
Then start thinking about how I'm gonna arrange my skis
and my poles so everything is untangled,
and in a straight line, and parallel to each other.
One way I like to think about it is
I like to do what I call a dead bug.
I roll over on my back, put my feet up in the air,
make sure my skis are parallel, my poles are not tangled,
and then slowly drop my feet to the side
so my feet are parallel to each other.
Now I've found myself in a very untangled position,
easy to stand up.
If you're excited and interested
in trying cross-country skiing,
we invite you to find your local Nordic center,
rent some gear, and get out on the trails.
If it would make you feel a little bit more comfortable,
find a Nordic center with a certified instructor
and take a lesson.
Thank you for watching.
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