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- Hi, I'm Greg Rhodes with PSIA and REI Co-op.
The seven skills we're going to cover in this video are:
before you start moving,
moving on flat ground,
adding poles, going uphill, going downhill,
turning, and getting up from a fall.
Before you even get on snow and put on your skis,
there's a couple things that you can work on
that are going to help translate
to being in a good body position when you're on your skis.
First of all, just get into an athletic stance.
An athletic stance has our ankles bent,
our knees bent, and our hips right over our feet.
One cool way to make sure you're in that athletic stance,
do a couple quick hops, land lightly,
and feel that pressure on the ball of your foot
by bending your ankles, bending your knees,
keeping your hips over your feet.
This is really important because when we're skate skiing,
we want to have that pressure on our balls
of our foot the whole time we're skiing.
Cross-country skiing, and specifically skate skiing,
is definitely a one-footed sport.
Meaning you're going to have to balance on one foot.
So even before you put your skis on
and start sliding around,
practice that body position of standing on one foot,
knees bent, ankles bent, hip over my feet,
pick up your one foot off the ground.
Work on having a nice straight line
from your armpit all the way down to your foot.
Not your hip out, not your head over,
but a nice straight line, stacking yourself over one foot.
Transfer your weight to your other foot
and work on gaining balance with one foot on the ground.
(upbeat music)
The exciting thing about skiing is sliding and moving.
So let's get us moving on the snow.
With skate-skiing, it's really important
when we're in that athletic stance,
that our hips are forward and our pressure's
on the front side of our feet
and the beginning part of our skis.
Try this split skate drill to start getting that feeling
of where it feels to have your skis sliding.
Set yourself up with your feet shoulder width apart,
toes slightly pointed out,
the tips of your skis a little wide apart,
and your tails together.
Start with your hips behind your heels,
feeling a little pressure on your heels of your feet,
and then what you want to do is
start moving those hips forward
until your skis start sliding,
you feel the pressure on your balls of your feet.
Waddle skate is a great way to start feeling
that one foot balance between left foot and right foot,
while keeping your weight forward,
feeling the pressure on the ball of your foot.
Waddle skate helps you work on one-legged balance
from left foot to right foot.
As you start transitioning
from waddle skate to full on skate skiing,
you can just start lengthening the glide
and getting a little bit more push
from your ankle, and your knee flexion and extension.
While you're skate skiing, you glide on one foot,
push off, transfer your weight,
glide on the next foot, hips forward.
As you're working on your skating,
there's a couple other drills
that you can use to advance your balance and your push off.
And these will be the marathon skate
and the speed skater drill.
In a marathon skate, you can keep one foot in the track
or one foot moving forward,
and just push off of your other foot.
Working on a good push off and a full weight transfer
to that gliding ski.
The speed skater drill is one
where you don't have your poles in your hands
and you're just skating and driving your hands in-line
with your other ski, just like you
would think of a speed skater on the ice.
Both of these drills are really good
at enhancing your weight transfer from ski to ski,
as well as working on your push off.
After you've practiced skating with just your lower body,
you're gonna wanna add poles.
Poles add an opportunity for us to use our full body.
Our upper body and our lower body
to propel us down the trail.
It also gives us an opportunity
to be a little bit more balanced
as we're sliding on our skis.
First thing, you need to put on your poles.
A lot of skate poles will have an advanced strap
with a velcro on it.
It fits just like any other strap.
Bring your hand up from the bottom.
Put your hand through the thumb hole.
Velcro wraps around and attaches.
Make sure it's not too long
and it has your strap right in the crux of your thumb.
When we skate ski, our hands are shoulder width apart,
almost at the level of our eyes.
Our elbows are bent at 90 degrees
and your elbows should be relaxed with your shoulders.
Grab onto your poles.
And your first movement you want to think of an activation
of your core like you're making it tight.
And when you do that, your poles come to the snow.
You can double check
that your arms are in the right position
by when you activate your core,
and your poles touch the snow,
that your tip is landing in the snow,
level with the binding to the toe of your boot.
If you find that your poles are landing out
towards the tip of your ski,
your elbow might be too straight.
If you find your poles landing behind your feet,
you haven't brought your hands up far enough.
Hands, shoulder width apart,
right in front of your eyes, grab on your poles,
bring your poles to the snow right by the toes of your boot.
Then you're going to push with your arms
until your hands come back level with your pockets.
Activate your core to the snow,
pull your hands to your pockets.
When we bring our skating movement in our lower body
and our double poling together,
we get a full rhythm of skate skiing.
When we skate ski, there's actually
three main techniques that get used.
There's the V1, the V2, and the V2 alternate.
The difference between each of these is the rhythm
and the timing between when your poles
and your legs are pushing.
We're going to focus on the V1,
and how to time your poles
and your legs together to skate a V1.
The simplest way to think about of a V1 is
to think of three points of contact, and then one.
You're going to land with your ski
and both of your poles at the same time.
That means three points of contact.
As those push through, just like a double pole,
transferring your weight to your next ski,
now I have one point of contact.
So, three points of contact.
One point of contact.
So let's see what a V1 looks like skiing down the trail.
The rhythm of a V1 is three, one,
three, one, three, one.
V1 can be done on either the left or the right side.
What this means is the left foot can be part of the three,
or the right side can be part of the three.
For the first time, do the one
that is most comfortable to you.
But as you get used to it and get going,
work on having a balanced left and right side V1.
After you've worked on your basic V1
and your skate skiing on the flat areas of the trail,
eventually you're going to venture out on the trail.
And you're going to run into some hills.
Let's talk about some ways of
how we're going to get up the hill.
We focus on using the V1 on the flats
but that is also the main technique
that you're going to use to get up a hill.
The only difference that you're going to use
while you're going up a hill is you might have
to slow down that rhythm from the speed
that you would be doing on the flats.
So keep that three-one rhythm of the V1 going up the hill,
and just gradually make your way up the hill,
stepping three points of contact,
one point of contact, using that V1 rhythm.
If you're going so slow that the V1 rhythm
becomes more of just a stepping march,
you might be able to use a herringbone,
or a gliding herringbone to get up the hill.
The herringbone is keeping your skis at a V,
rolling your ankles and your knees to the inside,
so your inside edge is grabbing the snow,
and stepping up the hill opposite arm, opposite leg.
Meaning as my right leg steps up the hill,
my left arm is going up the hill
and it's going to be used as my pole to push off of.
The glide and skate herringbone is going
to be stepping up the hill
with your feet out to the side,
ankles and knees rolled in,
so the inside edge of your ski can push off
of the snow as you step up the hill one foot at a time.
As you're out on a trail skiing around,
you're going to ski up the hill,
that means you get the opportunity to go down.
One way to go down a hill is
to just glide down the hill with your skis parallel.
Just remember to keep that athletic stance,
ankles and knees bent, hips right over your feet,
keep your hands forward,
and just let your skis glide down the hill.
If you come to a hill that's a little steeper
and you want to control your speed,
start using a wedge to control that speed.
What I mean by a wedge is push your heels out,
let the tips of your skis come a little bit together,
roll your ankles and knees in,
and push on the inside edges
of those skis to control that speed.
As the hill gets steeper, increase the pressure
on your feet to increase the wedge
and slow yourself down more.
You can also use the wedge to come
to a complete stop on the flats,
as well as a bottom of a hill, as you need to.
Cross-country ski trails aren't straight arrows.
We're going to have turns in them.
So how are we going to make some turns
as we go along the trail?
To make a turn, there's two different ways to do this.
One is to do a step turn.
Start with your inside foot.
Step into the turn and bring your other foot parallel.
Keep doing this over and over again
until you've made it all the way around the corner.
Step with the inside foot,
bring the other one foot parallel.
Step with the inside foot, bring the other one parallel.
Another way to make a turn
and control your speed down a hill is to do a wedge turn.
So if you're in that wedge position,
with your heels out, tips of your skis together,
knees and ankles rolled in.
To make that wedge turn,
just pressure on the outside ski
and rotate your hips into the turn as you make that turn.
If and when you fall, 'cause inevitably,
we all might fall while skiing.
Here are a couple tips in getting up from that fall.
First of all, you want to make sure
all your skis are parallel and organized together.
One way to do this is rolling on your back
and sticking your skis up in the air
in a skill that I call, doing the dead bug.
Lie on your back, put your skis up in the air,
make sure they're parallel,
drop them to your side to the snow,
and now you're ready to get up.
If you fall on a hill,
make sure your skis are parallel to the hill
or across the hill before you start trying to get up.
(acoustic music)
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