January 31, 2006

Ski thoughts

Finally, a year with a lot of snow! In fact, last weekend the road to our ski area was closed because of the amount of snow that fell (about 48" in three days)!

I've been working with a couple of my fellow instructors on our skiing tasks for passing our PSIA exams, and our former technical director had a couple of suggestions that really hit home.

First, he likened the "extension phase" of the turn as a relaxing of the legs, allowing them to naturally extend in the direction of the new turn, rather than some "forced" movement.

Secondly, he drew a parallel between skiing and ice skating. When you watch an Olympic caliber ice skater, they have very efficient movement patterns without wasted motion. In skiing, the skier should simply flow down the mountain, only using those movements that are required for the maneuver, and nothing more.

Makes a lot of sense, huh? I've been trying to incorporate these ideas into my own skiing and I think it helps.

What do you think?