Jon holds the top qualifications from France, Switzerland and Britain, and we can say firsthand that he is a great ski instructor! Jon heads up the team at Altitude Ski School – Verbier’s most established British ski school. Each month Jon or one of his team will provide us with a few tips and words of wisdom to help improve our understanding of skiing. This month – carving!
Carving
Carving is one of the most fun things you can do on piste. Thanks to modern shaped carving skis, feeling like a world-cup racer is now easier than ever. But what exactly is carving? In short, it is using only the shape of the ski to turn. With modern shaped skis which are bigger at the tip and tail than underfoot, if we simply tip the ski to the side a little and do nothing else, it will trace out an arc. This is the basic idea behind carved turns. However, there are a lot of other technical aspects too. This month we will look at how you can improve your carved turns.
Initiating The Turn
For most people the hardest part of carving the turn is the start. At first, rather than cleanly carving, many people will skid or rotate their skis to commence the turn. To avoid this we can have a very simple focus: take your time. Do not be tempted to rush the turn. At first we may need to use a very wide slope and do huge turns to keep our skis cleanly carved.
Try this drill. When you finish one turn and roll your skis flat, pause at this point and hold it. Then begin the next turn. You can try a clap or a stamp at the pause for exaggeration. Be patient and trust that even with a very small angle, the skis will do the turn.
Balance
As with most of our piste skiing, how we balance from side to side, or laterally, is key to staying in control of our skis. We want our balance to be towards the outside ski, especially through the second half of the turn. To do this we create an angle with our bodies, bending at the midriff and knees to keep our shoulders flat as you can see in the picture.
Practise trying to lift up your inside ski through the end of the turn while still clean carving. At first you may only be able to quickly pick up your inside ski, but with practice it will become a more stable and controlled movement.
Alignment
While trying to bring in the angulation motion, a common mistake is for clients and trainee instructors to “break” at the hips. This means twisting at the hips so that your pelvic bones no longer follow the skis. As you can see in the pictures, our instructor’s hips are aligned with the skis and follow the direction they move. This a strong, stable and more balanced position. It is very hard to build awareness of what your hips are doing in the turn.
A good drill to try is to hold your poles at your sides so they point forwards from your hips and do some carve turns. If you see that your poles end up pointing downhill most of the time, try to pull them back in line with your skis.
Go Bigger
Once we have built good alignment and are well balanced on the outside ski, it’s time to take our carving to the next level. If you are ready, try heading to steeper terrain, though not too steep too fast. See if you can stay in control, leaving clean tracks on a more challenging slope. Or, see if you can get your skis to tip over at an even bigger angle.
Remember: the more we tip our skis over, the smaller our turns become. The trick is keep good alignment and lateral balance, trying to move further into the turn. You can see from our picture of Harry how far you can go. It’s a lot of fun – give it a shot!
The Altitude winter company portfolio includes the ski and snowboard school, the Futures instructor training programmes and FREERIDE VERBIER, a new school dedicated to off-piste coaching in Verbier.
For more information please contact us on : 0041 27 771 6006; [email protected]
altitude-verbier.com (ski school verbier )– altitude-futures.com (gap courses )– freeride-verbier.com (off-piste)
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