Trying to level up your ski skills?
No doubt, skiing is fun at all levels. But, after a while of cruising the bunny slopes and the trails you’ve come to know like the back of your hand, you might find yourself eyeing some of the other terrain around you. Getting stronger and more skilled at skiing helps you explore more of the mountain. It opens up possibilities and gives you variety. Sometimes all it takes to level up your skiing is a round of fresh skiing tips to think about next time you’re on the mountain.
Whether you just bought your first pair of skis and are trying to feel solid on blue runs or you’re an advanced to expert skier who wants to ski faster down big lines, the right tip at the right moment can make all the difference.
Skiing Tips for Beginners
Finding the right stance
The first few times you go out skiing, the whole motion can feel unnerving. A big ski progression is feeling comfortable in a strong ski stance. Even if you’re still rocking the pizza, a solid stance will help you dial in good habits that you’ll carry with you for your whole ski career.
You’ll want your weight slightly forward. Try to keep your body as upright as you can, with a slight bend in your knees and most of your weight over the balls of your feet. You want your shins pushing into the tongues of your ski boots. Think of a ready, athletic stance. You don’t need to be in a squat position, more like a stance where you’re ready to take a small hop.
I like to tell my students, keep your hands up like you are holding a steering wheel. Instead of falling in the backseat, you stay in the driver’s seat.
– Annabelle C., former Loveland instructor
Your hands play a huge role in keeping your weight forward. An easy habit is to let your hands fall down to your hips, especially when you’re focusing on trying to do everything else right. But forward hands will help keep you in a forward position. From there, you can incorporate pole plants for added control and precision.
Look where you want to go
It’s natural to glance down at our feet on a run, our bikes on a ride, or down at our skis while skiing. It feels more secure to see what the equipment is doing below you. But, it tends to hold you back from proper skiing technique.
Instead of looking down at your skis, practice looking at where you want to go. This keeps your body upright, and encourages you to stay more fall line, rather than zigging and zagging across the slope. That’s not a bad thing when starting out, but practicing looking up will be a huge help in feeling the correct body position we described above. Weight forward, hands up, and body heading down the fall line.
It also helps keep your head on a swivel and keep an eye out for other skiers. If you’re looking down at your skis, you can get tunnel-vision and start to neglect your surroundings.
Skiing parallel
Transitioning from a pizza wedge to parallel will help you start to feel more confident all around the mountain and on different slopes. While the wedge feels like a safe way to control your speed, you’ll have to break out the French fries to explore steeper terrain. Take small steps by tightening the pizza to scrub less speed while you’re skiing. You’ll move a bit quicker, but that’s what the turn is for!
Keep the upper body stable and pointed downhill. Your legs do all the driving here. Weight your downhill ski more heavily than your uphill ski. That allows you to steer the uphill ski closer to parallel with the other ski throughout the turn. It can help to imagine skiing on one foot, with all the emphasis on that downhill ski. This allows you to release the inside edge of your uphill ski, letting it slide into parallel position with the downhill ski. This creates a stable platform, allowing you to bend the ski and use your edges.
Once you’re parallel, create more fluid turns by imagining your ten toes rolling over in a sequence. To take a right turn from flat, start rolling your toes over starting with the right pinky toe rolling to the right, and slowly stack each toe on top of the other. Then, when you’re ready to go left, bring the right pinky toe back up and let the other toes follow in sequence back to flat. This is much more of a visualization than actually stacking your toes, but helps bring attention to keeping your weight more forward and on the balls of your feet.
Skiing Tips for Intermediates
Avoiding the backseat
It happens to all of us. The end of the day rolls around, or it’s right after lunch, and we feel a little loose on some turns and lean back a little. You’ll forever find yourself in the back seat from time to time. The strongest skiers will still sometimes find themselves in the backseat after hitting a big jump or when skiing through variable snow. The trick is recognizing it and correcting it.
Start with remembering that good form. Weight forward, with your knees generally slightly bent and over the toes. Your shins should be contacting the front of your boots. Keep those hands up and forward, like driving a steering wheel.
If you find yourself ripping at speed in the backseat and are having trouble regaining control, try to turn the speed down. Even if you’re back on your tails, try to shed some speed by slashing sideways or simulating a hockey stop. Once you find a more manageable speed, recorrect your form and stand back up straight. Take a moment to overexaggerate flexing your boot. That will help get your feet back in the right position in your boot, lock the heel back, and get you back to a forward stance.
Bump skiing basics, and venturing off-trail
As you venture solidly into the “blue” category, many of those runs can turn into full-fledged bump fields. Bumps feel like a big deterrent when you’re fresh to skiing, but becoming a proficient bump skier will expand your trail options on the mountain.
Some groomed runs will have “off-piste” sections along the sides of the trail. These mini-bump runs are great practice and are usually more forgiving. They also, conveniently, don’t require you to commit to an entire bump run (which is a lot less intimidating).
Basic bump technique involves controlling your speed and taking a solid line. I like to approach the peak of a bump—the tallest point—then pivot my skis the direction I aim to turn. The pivot helps shed speed and line my skis up for the next turn. Then, you ride around the wall of the bump, to the next high point of the following bump. This can be hard to visualize, so here are some great breakdowns visually.
One big hurdle is focusing on keeping that good ski stance. Keep your upper body as stable as possible, keep your hands forward in the driver’s seat, and keep it facing downhill. That will help keep you linking turns smoothly, and avoid getting caught in the endless “oops-I-missed-a-turn-and-can’t-stop-traversing” curse.
But, the best advice we can give you? Go out there and give it some turns and burns. Practice makes progression (because there’s no such thing as perfect bump skiing).
Looking two to three turns ahead is the best advice I’ve ever gotten for skiing in bumps and off-trail. If you’re looking immediately in front of you, you’ve already missed the point where you can adjust your line. Looking several feet ahead of you helps you line up more fluid turns (and find patches of soft snow).
-Alex, mediocre bump enthusiast
Make pole plants effective and helpful
Poles do much more than help you escape long cat tracks or traverses, they help you dial in your form. Timing pole plants can help you link turns up smoothly and give you a bit of rhythm. It’s also very fun.
Pole plant on the side you are taking a turn towards. Time the pole plant just as your reaching the middle of your transition towards the side you’re turning, right when the bases are running flat. Then, roll those toes and intiate the turn towards that side. You can start to get freaky with different pole plants, but this is a solid baseline to help you find some flow.
You can especially use those poles plants when navigating bump lines. Plant your pole on the top of the bump, and you can use the pole to sort of pivot around. Imagine a hockey stop with your pole in front of you, then making a turn around the pole, to be in a hockey stop position with your pole behind you. Top it off with your chest remaining facing downhill throughout the whole process, and you’ve got yourself some solid technique.
Skiing Tips for Advanced Skiers
Skiing steeps
The steeper the pitch gets, the more emphasis you’ll want to place on the aforementioned tips. Forward in your boots. Aggressive stance. Hands up. Attack the fall line.
On multiple podcasts and when we met him at Hestra HQ here in Colorado, pro skier Cody Townsend likes to talk about one key piece of advice for handling steeper terrain: keeping your shoulders perpendicular to the slope angle.
It’s counter-intuitive, for sure. Our bodies naturally want to fall away from the slope below us, not into it. But when you make a turn, if you can focus on keeping your shoulders perpendicular to the slope, you will maximize your edge hold. This is because the aggressive body position bends your ski and engages all available edge.
Use your pole as a pivot point and then repeat in the other direction.
How to ski faster
If you mountain bike a lot, you’re familiar with the concept of pointing it through sketchy spots and trusting your gear. The concept applies in skiing, too. So, too, does the concept of maintaining a dynamic and loose body position. Think of the way the suspension on your mountain bike absorbs shocks rather than getting knocked around by them. If you ski stiff and rigid, you’re more likely to get knocked off course by bumps, chop, etc.
A key to skiing faster is finding the right balance between loose and rigid. You want a strong stance and aggressive body position, driving your skis down the fall line. But you also want to separate your legs from your torso to absorb undulations and bumps and stay on course.
Being able to ski faster also hinges on, well, being able to stop. Stay aggressive and forward, and work on throwing your skis sideways quickly and without deviating from your line. The hockey stop! Practicing high-speed yet controlled hockey stops on wide open groomers will help you take them to gnarlier lines.
Hitting drops and features
For airs (and big ole backflips), we’ll give the mic to Powder7 athlete and big-mountain charger Owen Leeper.
Bonus round: Tips for Everyone
Invest in good boots!
This one is quick, and not really a skill, per say. But, it is one of the most important. For folks getting serious about skiing, it’s essential to have well-fitting boots. Too much wiggle room can prevent you from properly engaging the skis. Boots that are too painful are…distracting. Sit down with your local bootfitter, get measured accurately, try some different models on, and be honest with your fitter about where you’re at and your goals. Well-fitting boots change the game in all day comfort and feeling more confident in your ability.
Have FUN!
I realized the best way for me to learn is to just have a beer, and chase people who are better than me around the mountain.
Kris Lange, friend of the shop and skier
