Hey guys, we're out here in Laax today
and I'm going to teach you five drills that can significantly improve your skiing, just like it did for me.
So to smash one out. I can hardly keep my eyes open. If you've been following the channel a long time
here's some news for you.
Until I was about 20 years old,
I could shred pretty hard, I could do like
900s, 1080s and even free ride sometimes pretty gnarly lines like this one.
Yeah, gnarly, I know that right now but people like it better this way, they say so in the comments.
So I couldn't even ski pretty gnarly lines. Which one should I say?
At the age of like eighteen, nineteen, skiing pretty gnarly.
Three red lines like this one and for the untrained eye that may look sort of sick.
But for the trained, like, the ski instructor, etc. you can see that that skiing isn't that great.
I'm sending off every turn by like rotating the upper body in the direction
I want to go then the legs just follow. I also just tip in.
He did a snowplough, for Heaven's sake, just before the drop.
It's not the best and it was first when I got into the world of ski instructors
where my skiing got corrected, because everything was wrong back then. I started the turns basically from the top down,
instead of from the down up. So I'm going to share with you in this video
the drills I can remember that made the strongest impact on my skiing where I flipped my skiing upside down. A little disclaimer,
me and my filmer Ed, who's a Canadian ski instructor, we actually had a little disagreement this morning, didn't we? A small disagreement.
Yes, because we used slightly different words to explain the same concepts.
So if you are used to different wording that I'll be using, it's just another system.
So bear that in mind and I'll try to use sort of universal words that are not too technical.
Let's hit it. So before we get going there are a few core concepts that every skier should know about.
The first one we'll mention is rotational separation. It means that you separate the lower half of the body from the upper half basically.
So if I have just finished a turn,
and I want to turn that way now, so I finish a turn and I'm in this position,
so the hip and upper body is facing down the hill slightly, or a lot, depending what kind of turn you do.
So that is rotational separation.
And there's another tricky one called sometimes angulation, like this.
So you can put the skis more at an angle by angling the lower half of the body from the upper half,
also called lateral separations sometimes but I like angulation better, it's quicker.
And if you just use angulation, this is all that's going to happen. But if you combine the two you
can
engage the edges much more aggressively. And that's a
common theme in all skiing, that you're so like a disc jockey, you know pulling the levers,
mixing the different techniques in a different fashion, depending on what turn you're doing or what the terrain is like.
Hello Phillip, how are you doing? You can only achieve
the rotational separation and the angulation if you're already skiing with a pretty good foot position,
where the joints are evenly flexed and you're nice and centered above the ski.
Arms forward and out from your body. Here you get better balance. It can look a little bit silly, but
it's worth it for the improvement in balance as well as
it can help with the rotational separation as well
if you're out and pole planting down here, rather than over here.
Last key concept you need to know before you move on with this video, is,
we're going to talk about the turn shapes. Basically the first part is the radius,
basically the side cut of the ski, this ski is bent like that, right? And that is more or less set.
Very good technique, you can influence it and turn quicker,
But this one's has 18 meter radius which means that the radius is going to be 18 meters
or that's about thirty-six, never math in front of the camera.
It's a medium-long radius.
Next thing is arc length. That's a little sneaky. So with the same radius a turn can look like that,
a shallow-C, or it can be like a 180 degree turn with the same radius.
And the last part is the
corridor width, it's basically
If you imagine a corridor between these poles,
let's do a sneaky one. Do you see that?
And if you do turns in between these ones, I think we'll do a graphic for that one.
The corridor width is how wide of a path you choose.
The maximum is the maximum width of the slope, but you can choose like one half or third, one piece of the length, two of them,
that sort of thing. Drill number one.
Lifting the inside ski. We're going to do this drill to improve both angulation,
so we put more weight on the outside ski,
and also can help you improve steering with the feet,
patience, it improves all kinds of stuff. So let's do a couple.
I'll lift my foot halfway through the turn, ideally.
Oh I lift too early, damn it.
Lift it.
Start to turn, lift it.
That was exciting, so if you can do that about halfway through the turn,
then try to lift it higher and higher. Now. I'm trying to do it on the top third. Check it out.
Holy shit, this is so rad.
Woo hoo
Now I'm going to make it quite tricky for myself. I'm going to lift this ski bang in the middle of the turns,
maybe even have a little bit of a traverse in the turn. So I make sure
like, we don't like traverses in between turns.
They should be nicely linked, poking, stretch it out a little bit, just to make it difficult for ourselves.
While I'm doing this
I'm also really feeling the end of turn like a little pinch here
inbetween the hip and the ribs, because I used these muscles and that is the angulation we've been talking about.
As you're getting better and better, now you can do like whole turns on the outside ski. There's two main ways of challenging yourself,
it's either ski super slowly, it is great exercise.
I feel embarrassed, I'm like, oh, I'm a way better skier than this,
I can ski fast, but skiing slow is what's difficult, but skiing fast is also difficult,
so you can also try that. And in a place like here it changes, how steep it is and you constantly have to be agile
and flow with the terrain.
Cold plan come on turn, turn, turn, turn, turn.
The next drill we're going to do is a simple pole drag. So this is what you've got to do, grab your poles this way and
then you just ski along cart and drag both poles in the snow.
It's more important that you drag the outside pole, not ski,
because it puts more weight on the outside leg.
This can help improve the angulation but also a little bit on the rotational separation.
What is good with this drill is that it gives you instant feedback because you can feel
if you stop dragging in the snow, then you know you're doing it wrong.
Let's do some at higher speeds.
We have a little speed, I turn shape to allow that to happen.
That was good.
And then after you've done this exercise, I think it's pretty good that you can imagine sort of dragging that outside pole
but just imagine like the outside hand, just with the G-force pressing down some extra on that outside ski.
So that's enough for that drill, next one.
So the next one we're going to do is the Javelin turn, which is pretty cool
like the one leg skiing before
we're going to try to do this while carving now, so we need a fair bit of speed
and what we want to do is,
that must have been Charlie Banfield, it was.
Sneaky sneaky guy, that threw me off a little bit that spray.
Let's try to do this with a carve term for now as we need a fabulous speed.
I'm going to lift up the inside ski, just like before, a lot of people just do that
so you make it look cool, could be sketchy if you catch an edge. Try to keep it more less straight
and the leg underneath is the one, so turning under it
It's definitely easier with a fabulous speed and the slope should have
like a nice even pitch, so it's not too tricky on the balance because this is going to challenge your balance,
angulations, rotation, a lot of good stuff.
I was going to go for slalom and on slalom skis today to make it easier to show these drills
But Rory said, no man, a lot of your viewers are shredding on the twin tip ski, do it on them,
it's more relatable. I was like, true, just like we did in the carving video because you can ski well on almost any equipment.
Short turns.
When I was 20 years old,
it is possible that I didn't know there was such a thing called short turns.
Obviously, I'd seen slalom races
and that sort of thing, but it was nothing I ever did
because it's sort of slow to learn it and slow is not fun for the sort of intermediate skier. Technically speaking.
But it's important because if you can do good short turns,
it's going to help you a lot when free riding and riding steeper terrain because you're getting really good
at that rotational separation and at angulation because at the end of every turn you really should be
projecting the upper body and down the mountain a strong pole plan
not there, but rather there and
one of the things you can control yourself with is that you look at the tracks of your own short turns and
if they look like bananas
you're doing it pretty good, because it's just like a DJ mixing their rotation and angulation,
here you're mixing like how much you are gripping the snow with the edge.
So you're not really carving but also skidding and that is what creates that banana shake. So if you do nice banana
you're likely doing it quite nicely. Forward class.
I can't stress it enough how incredibly important the pole front is and that is
a wee bit below you because it gives you that rhythm,
projecting the upper body down.
One of the key reasons why you want to get at least decently good at short turns,
it's because if you have the same issue as I showed you in the beginning of the video to steer with the upper body.
Here, it's so obvious. You have to steer by rotating the feet.
And that's going to make all the difference in the world.
You bring the short turns over the ridge,
since you go over that ridge it exaggerates the movements you have to do,
So if you're back seated here, it's going to be almost impossible for you to do it. So it really highlights for you
where you're not so strong yet. And if you're back-seated slow the speed down and center yourself before you do the next turn.
And a good way of getting used to your skis for the day is to try a couple of J turns.
Where you just put your skis as much on edge as you dare too, and then you just can go diagonally across the slope
and use the edges all the way and go up the mountain. This is a classic drill to get into carve turns.
And then after you've done diagonally
you go in the fall line, straight down, put them on edge and see if you can do like a 180 degree turn
Always yeah, they're named actually after me, Jens.
No, I'm just kidding. It's called a J-turn because it's shaped like the letter J, you go down and then up.
But the first time we did it, we did it sort of like that, crooked, and then we make it harder by doing it like that.
Put the skis on edge.
Up we go. Oh I'm going to miss the slope. Fall line.
Feeling that turn now, oh, I'm off piste here.
So that's a J-turn. Now knowing
the size of your turns
we're going to go for a ski and see if I can make the turns almost that big.
Linked in like big ass C's.
All right, big turns and we'll link them.
I'm loving this right now.
That feels good.
Let's make it a little groovy.
No big deal.
Blow some turns.
I enjoyed this video. I'd like to say thank you guys for watching. I had a really good time teaching you all.
Remember to stay playful.
If you're playful in your skiing, have a good time, every now and then work on your technique.
Think about this core concept, the rotational separation, the angulation,
protect the body down, putting our weight on the outside ski.
Keep doing that and you'll become a great skier one day.
Yeah, I encourage you to write a comment below,
discuss, what are your favorite ways of teaching skiing or learning how to ski?
I'm happy to discuss everything, we all have
our different ways of teaching and putting emphasis on different things.
So if you learn something, like and subscribe
and check out the playlist up here.
Some more ski technique videos. They may be a little bit more in-depth, better for you who are
more on the beginner side of the spectrum which this video isn't really meant for. See ya.