Jens is super jealous about us filming so much without him today. Are you struggling with this? Yes. Yeah
I'm a bit jealous. You're not in charge today. I am in charge, I'm the director. Feel my face first.
Hi.
Do you want to learn to carve like that?
I've got you the guys to teach you, or we are so going to teach him, mostly him.
I'm not used to being the sidekick.
Yes, because I grew up learning to ski all alone
so I developed a bunch of common mistakes, and I first corrected it in my early twenties when I was ski instructing.
That's why we are today going to do some carving with Kerr.
Hello. What's cool about this is that when I have problems with a trick,
I sometimes ask this guy for advice and he's as passionate about turning as I am about analyzing tricks.
That's why we got him here now.
You'll get to turn.
Yeah pretend like we're about to do the filming, right yeah, we just did this rail rash. We're actually going for Swedish meatballs now.
When starting with anything in the park, on the slopes, basic position is where it all stems from.
It's really easy to get right, it's something you want to have pretty down, hit with the skis.
Imagine you've got a bit of string tied in your head like under your skin.
And then someone's pulling up in that so you're going to go onto your tiptoes almost, then I let go of the string and I relax.
The ankles flex first,
so the shins are rested against the front of the ski boots, the knees can then flex properly
to allow the hips to stay over the centre of the ski, with a slight bend in the waist.
Through our feet, we can be looking for like a nice even spread of pressure around all four corners of our feet and
our shins should just be, as I said before,
rested against the front of my ski boot there. And this is the foundation that we want to work from
when going through some of these carving tips.
So now that we've established our basic position on the skis we can start to look at
which parts of our body are moving to begin steering the skis.
Yeah,
that's really important because many people just tip in when I
ski instruct beginners just tip and that's not where that turn starts, no? We turn with our legs, not our body.
Wow
It's a really subtle, small movement. Yeah, we're imagining
we're bare feet on a wooden floor and we're just rolling onto the big toe side
of our downhill ski, in this case the left one, and on to the pinky toe side of our uphill ski in this case.
The right one.
It's very subtle, very small movements.
So we avoid using the knees now, as you get better at it
then you move much quicker through that little movement from the ankles. To really practice this do J turns
where you traverse across the slope using just the ankles. This is to make sure that you're not skidding out.
You can look at the tracks behind you after you've done a turn and see if they're two clean cuts.
So, we've got the feeling for what it
What it's like to carve with the skis slicing cleanly through the snow using more your ankles going one direction over the slope.
Now we want to link them together. What's important to say here, Jens, is
These are, it's very small movements and there's always a tendency to try and do things really quickly
but you've just got to
little bit more and little bit more
and the skis then roll on the edge nicely.
Also as we've released the edges to move into the next turn, the release and the smoothness of it is as important as
the application of rolling onto the edges. So really have some patience and let the turn start. Exactly.
We've had a bit of time practicing
using our ankles in isolation and you'll probably find that your knees automatically want to come in and join the party to help out.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah because as soon as you twitch the feet
they come with it. And it's exactly that. You know, your ankles go in, the continuation is
your knees moving in towards the snow
almost to kiss it, like when you're right in, if you were a racing motorcyclist. They do drag their knees in the ground almost, crazy.
So the knees go in towards the hill and, in this case, my left shoulder, and
all down underneath my left armpit. I'm going to start to contract the muscles
so you get a little pinch around about your waist, do you feel that? Yeah, I do feel that.
Contracting these muscles is going to pull your upper body further down the hill.
So that allows us to stay balanced on the right side ski.
It's still very subtle, we're only doing as much as we need to, yeah, to respond to the forces.
And for you watching, why we want to get more in,
it's so we get more power over the turn when we get faster, a steeper slope,
there's more of Mother Nature, yeah, to have to deal with, she's a, she's a feisty girl actually, isn't she?
So to deal with this feisty girl and her g-forces, it's important that we use all these techniques in a fluid motion.
Where you start off using those ankles to get the skis on edge,
and then that is followed by the knees or tipping in too, and then lastly feel a pinching motion
that makes your body turn like this so that you put more force on the outside foot, giving you
fast, hard carves like this.
No matter if you're into park riding or free riding
make sure to perfect your carving technique, and it's going to open up the mountain to a whole new playground.
But I got Jens in my pocket.
He's a ski rocket.
Thank you guys so much for watching, hope you learned a lot, and thank you so much for joining.
Hey, thank you for having me Jens, and thank you for listening to my dulcet tones.
And if you enjoyed learning through Kerr and me in this video
let us know any blogs if you want to see Kerr again because he's one of these go-to guys I have
when I think about a trick and I can't
really figure it out as such. I'll talk about turns dude. It's all skiing.
Sweet man.
I made you a little playlist of our other how-to ski videos and if you want to learn your first tricks on skis we made two
online courses for beginner skiers where you can learn your first tricks on skis.