How to ski like an Olympian
We all know that skiing is fun, and the more you improve the more fun you have. Carv has worked with professional skiers, Olympians and top level ski instructors to compile the most important components when it comes to best ways to improve your skiing. Practice makes perfect, but how you practice and learn to ski is just as important. While it’s difficult to know exactly where you need to improve on your own, Carv teamed up with some of the best skiers in the world to collect the most important elements that make up a perfect ski technique.
Balance
Do you lean too far back while you ski? Too far forward? You want to keep an even balance while you ski to maintain form. To keep a well-balanced position, focus on the following:
- Bend your knees
- Keep your hips centered over the feet
- Make sure your “nose is over the toes”
Edging
Proper edging results in a beautiful clean carve, while inconsistencies and poor movements can cause the skis to slip and skid. This becomes obvious when you watch a novice skier compared to an advanced skier. Proper edging is also one of the most crucial elements if you want to learn to ski faster. Try improving the following 3 elements of edging:
- Edge similarity — Tilt your skis together, keeping them as symmetrical as possible.
- Max edge angle — Work on increasing the angle at which you tilt your skis relative to the ski slope. A higher edge angle sets up a better platform for carving ski turns.
- Duration of max edge — This refers to the percentage of the turn you spend with your skis edging into the snow. While a bit hard to quantify on your own, you’ll want to strive towards digging further into a carve each time you turn.
Rotary
If you’ve ever been taught the “pie” or “pizza” technique to start out skiing, it’s time to ditch that. The only way to achieve a proper ski technique is to keep your skis as close together and symmetric as possible. This is referred to as yaw. One of the best ways to become a better skier is focusing on keeping your skis as parallel as possible.
The next time you’re at a ski resort, closely watch a beginner skier next to someone more advanced. You’ll immediately notice how clean their motion is. If you find that your movement is jerky and inconsistent, try finding a nice easy/moderate slope, and focus on making your more fluent turns with your skis parallel and close together. As you feel yourself becoming more smooth with each turn, apply the form to more difficult ski slopes.
Pressure
When you push into a turn, most skiers naturally put too much pressure on their inside ski. In reality, you’re going to want to start focusing your pressure on the outside ski quickly once you start the direction shift of your turn. Consciously think about the pressure change in your boot as you make the shift. Getting a solid grasp on this skill early on will be especially useful if your goal is to ski faster.
Conclusion
Each of the above elements are important, and it’s tempting to want to improve everywhere at once with your skiing. But ski instructors and the pros have emphasized that it’s actually best to determine where you can improve the most, and focus on a single element at one time. Trying to improve your skiing technique all at once can be overwhelming. You’ll likely find it hard to improve anywhere. Tackle one new skiing skill at a time, and then build up from there.
At Carv, we’ve compiled all of these elements into a Ski:IQ to measure how you perform in each of the above elements. Carv’s ultra-thin smart insole takes detailed measurements on over 35 metrics. Analyze each run to find out where you need to improve, and then receive real-time ski instruction as you ski.
