﻿Hello my friends, I’m Benni Walch, coming
from the small town of St. Anton in Austria. Today we will make a lesson about short turns.
The reason why I love short turns is because it's a challenge and everything moves really fast.
What's exciting about today's lesson? We have Jacob here,
and he will tell us his level on skis. Great to be here, my level of skiing I would probably
say is an intermediate level, it's been a while since ive had any ski instruction, so it would
be great to hear some tips from you today Benni and for you to have a look at my skiing.
Of course, do you like short turns? I would definitely say I enjoy the short turns,
but as i say there is definitely work that needs to be done.
Let's have a look at Jacobs short turns before we get to the tips, right let's go!
Yeah man, he's already looking like a diamond, we just have to polish him a little bit.
I think there are 3 things that are really important for good short turns.
The first thing is separation for good steering and speed control. The second
one is the movement for early edge and early pressure. The third one
is we need more grip and so we start to use the ankle and knee joint more.
Tip number 1 - walking the turns, just get out of the skis and look for a gentle slope like this
one here. We are looking for a separation so we separate lower body and upper body,
so it's looking like that. Here we see the separation
of both parts, now we walk on. That's how we have the speed control, the steering is happening
at this point, and then exactly at this point we go to a neutral position and now
we build up the separation to the other side, and again here we can see the separate parts -
upper body and lower body. And normally we should be able to feel when we stop
that the whole weight is on the downhill ski. A common mistake in short turns is that
the skiers are having not enough separation and that's why they don't have enough speed control
and that's the thing we need in short turns and probably as we saw with Jacob
he was not having enough separation and speed control and that's why he lost his phone.
Lets do it together. Just copy me okay, so we are walking, we are straight,
you feel that the arms are straight now, when we go around to turn we drop
the outside hand, yes exactly, and you just follow me, then we go back up, the arms are straight,
then we drop to the other side, the downhill hand, and we feel the separation.
And when we stop here, you should feel the crunch by the hip
and be able to lift up the inside ski, because of the separation we brought the whole weight
to the downhill ski, and with that we have the speed control.
Jacob can you feel the crunch? Yeah I can feel the crunch in my hip. So now, I just want you to feel
this crunch to the side in your short turns. So i'm going to put on my skis now and go see
if I can feel that crunch when i'm going down into the short turns.
Feeling that separation.
Can you feel it? Yeah i'm really starting to
feel the separation. So let's go up and try it again! Let's do it!
Tip number 2 is the right movement to get the early pressure and the early edge,
this happens with the initiation of the new turn. A common mistake with this is
that they are rushing their turns and rotating with their upper body
and that is how they are getting their skis into the fall line. With this drill we will be able
to do the movement and get the skis into the fall line without any upper body rotation.
So, the drill for tip number 2, we start with sliding, so we start to slide to the front.
When we reach the front we start to slide back, so it's like a zig zag slide.
And at the moment when we slide back and we feel the skis getting a bit slower, we move
on to what's becoming the downhill leg and then we get into the fall line and we do a turn.
So I will show it now to you, one time, so we start to slide to the front like that,
now we start to slide back you see. Now we put the weight on the ski and we stop over here.
Now we were rotating, the common mistake just now. This is the bad habit that a lot of skiers
have in their short turns, they are rushing their turns and using their upper body
to turn their skis into the fall line.
And it's that simple.
Yes! And stop, here we go better. Im shifting the weight, i'm starting to
feel it but im still rotating my body a bit, i'm going to give it another go.
Then, putting the weight on my left one.
So Benni has just said i need to try it out with a bit more speed, so thats what ill do now.
So it's really important to find a slope that is not too slushy
and is hard and compact. So its easier to slide and as well to turn the skis.
Nice, good one mate! It's getting there now. So i'm starting to feel the early outside
pressure, and i'm going to start linking them together.
When we are doing this drill, it should feel effortless,
it's all about the movement and not the rotation.
Tip 3 is getting more grip with the ankle and knee joint. When we looked at Jacobs first run,
we saw that he was not edging enough with the ankle and knee joint,
so let's work on it and try exercise number 3.
Alright Jacob, the next tip is about grip, a common mistake in skiers is that they are just
edging with the hip and they just think about the separation but they are totally forgetting
the ankle and knee joint. I really want you to focus on rolling the inside knee.
Towards the hill. Normally with this movement the outside ski will follow
and we get more ankle and knee action. So we can think about that when we get into the fall line we
just try to press, when we think about this here as a button, we try to press the button with the
inside knee, and with this movement the outside knee will follow.
When you make this movement with your knees and ankles the grip will increase,
the pressure will be much more and you will be able to stay lower. This will rebound us
into the next turn, this movement with the ankle and knees is not happening at once,
we will try to build it up. Lets try it out! So we think about rolling the knees to the hill,
at this point it's happening, now,now,and now,and now we roll the knee towards the hill.
So now I'm going to try tip number 3 to use my ankles and knees
so around the fall line I can have more grip and get those higher edge angles.
So i'm coming towards the fall line and trying to push in on that button
with the knees and ankles and get more grip and higher edge angles.
A good way to practise tip number 3 is starting with long turns and getting shorter. So Jacob
followed me, okay, now we are doing long to short turns with rolling ankle and knee joints towards
the hill. As we get used to the short turns we can start to roll the knees earlier towards the hill.
That's it, what a great feeling.
Good, let's compare those two runs. So the run from the morning we have the balance
56, over here in the afternoon was
87. Edge smoothness in the morning was 78 and in the afternoon was 81. Early edging in the morning
a 70 and in the afternoon a 78, that's about the initiation moving onto the downhill ski.
Another interesting thing we can see from Jacobs skiing in the morning is
the turn symmetry was 76 in the morning and 90 in the afternoon, this shows that he was
looking for a nice separation on each side. Today we saw that Jacob improved his separation,
turn initiation and the grip. And those 3 things helped him improve his short turns.
Alright my friends,thanks for watching my lesson. Today we had 3 nice tips, the first one was
to walk the turn for good separation. The second one was getting the earlier pressure and edge
and the last one was grip. Remember its taken a while to have good short turns, i practise them
nearly every second day to get them right. Thanks for watching guys, if you liked it please
like, comment and subscribe - see you on the mountain!