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The skis’ role
Expert
skiing is a dance: the skier dancing with the mountain, and sometimes,
it seems, the mountain too, dancing with the skier. But between skier
and mountain, between you and the snow, are a pair of faithful
intermediaries. In our effort to make friends with the mountain, to
shake off the intermediate blues, to become true expert skiers, we have
a formidable ally, a secret weapon or two. Of course, I’m talking about
our skis.
When expert
skiers fly down a slope, their skis are doing most of the work! This is
the core principle of modern expert skiing. It has influenced and shaped
my own skiing and my ski teaching for many years, so I’d like to start
this series of articles on understanding expert skiing by focusing on
this crucial idea. In expert skiing, our skis do most of the work.
Average intermediate skiers, on the contrary, tend to put an enormous
amount of physical effort into their skiing.
Skiing down
a mountainside involves only two kinds of motion: turning and going
straight. Going straight is a given. Point your skis down and gravity
will do the rest, pulling you, more-or-less quickly, down the hill.
Turning is something
else. Turning equals control. Turning - twisting, curving, varying the
path of your descent - not only lets you avoid obstacles like trees and
other skiers, turning slows you down when you want to slow down; turning
adds an element of choice, of aesthetics and creativity to your descent,
puts you, not gravity, back in charge. So in a very real sense, ski
technique is mostly about turning. The good news is this: you don’t
turn your skis, your skis turn you. Perhaps you’ve noticed - good
modern skis are rather expensive. But they’re much more than inert,
lifeless sticks underfoot; the reason they cost so much is because they
have been designed, engineered and built to turn for you.
In my
teaching, in my videos and articles and books, I wind up saying this
again and again, in many different ways. My long-term goal as a ski pro
is to put my students in touch with their skis, introduce them to the
simple movement patterns used by expert skiers to coax the very best
turning performance out of these exquisite tools.
For now I
can promise you this: the better a skier you become, the more you will
let your skis do the work. Expert skiers often feel as if they were
passengers, lucky passengers, riding well-trained skis down the
mountain. Skis that only need a subtle suggestion to bite into the snow
and create a graceful, arcing, turning path down the hill. This is the
heart of modern ski technique. Exploring how we can use our skis - and
not our muscular strength - to get the job done, to ski efficiently,
easily, beautifully. Keep this one notion in the forefront of your
skier's consciousness - I don't turn my skis, my skis turn me -
and you will be halfway to expert skiing.
Of course,
there are more factors involved in developing expert skiing skills than
just our skis. Modern ski boots communicate subtle messages from foot to
ski, and back from ski to foot. Modern ski areas use remarkable snow
grooming technology to offer learning skiers smooth, friendly, almost
perfect practice slopes. But our skis, and the way they interact with
the snow to produce a curved path, a carved round turn, are the crux of
the matter. The skis' own built-in turning action defines high-level
modern skiing.
In future
instalments of this
Understanding Expert Skiing
series, I'll explore the intricacies of ski design, how and why modern
skis turn so well, how skis carve different sized turns, the skier's
stance and the skiers role in this whole game. But I believe this one
insight is worth its weight in perfect turns.
Expert
skiers don't turn their skis - their skis turn them.
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