Better Ski Technique - The Basic Short Turn - Part 2

Now there comes a time, and it is quite often aHard down!'. When the second girl got going, she was
natural progression, where the method ofreally giving it some welly, and did about twenty
unweighting the ski goes through a subtle changeturns in fifteen metres, collapsing in a heap at our
from down-slow-and-up-quick tofeet. When she had got her breath back, I asked her
down-hard-and-up-quick. If you drop down hardwhat magic phrase had produced such a brilliant
towards the end of a turn to put the pole in, the skisperformance, and she replied, 'Screw you Simon!
will unweight for an instant, allowing them to slideScrew you Simon! Screw you Simon!'.
slightly further round against the fall line. As theAt some stage you will mistakenly put too much
weight on them increases, and because you areweight on the uphill ski and fall over, so once you
angulating, the edge of the lower ski will dig into thehave got the hard down movements stored in the
snow. This is known as setting an edge. It is in effectmemory banks, you can say instead, 'Left ski, right
a braking movement as the ski will quite often stopski', etc, to help keep the weight on the downhill ski
dead. You can then jump around into the next turn.as you come hard down on it.
As I say the lower ski is quite often motionless for aEventually there will come a time when you do a turn
split second, and if the snow is soft you should beand suddenly feel the skis throwing you into the next
able to see the imprint made by the bottom of theone. You have arrived! You have applied enough
ski. The tracks of these short turns will differpressure to bend the skis into an added reverse
considerably from the large S shapes of the longcamber and they will have become real springs! You
turns.will also be polishing off the turn by carving a little!
There will be little carving at this stage, although laterThe skis will track round more accurately and
on as you clock up the mileage you should start tosmoothly before bouncing you into the next turn.
carve a little before setting an edge. At this earlyThe pain of having splashed out all that valuable cash
stage, however, the tracks you are making will lookon a pair of performance skis will now turn to joy as
more like a z than an s.you realise that it has all been worth it!
To really get into the swing of doing these shortAs a final exercise, and to give you something that
turns you must introduce a bit of aggro into yourwill be completely knackering and set you up nicely
performance. As you push hard down on the snow,for lunch, see how many turns you can do in a given
say something aggressive to yourself like 'Hard down!distance, let's say in thirty metres. This will help your
Hard down!', or 'Attack! Attack!'. I remember teachingrhythm, and get you used to the braking action of
two fit girls a few years ago who wanted to bethe turn. It will also make you fitter, and help
extricated from the famous bog standard stemelasticise those natural springs, the old thigh and
christie (now called a plough parallel). I told them tostomach muscles.
say something aggressive and skied down a fewRemember - keep the upper body facing down the
metres to watch them. The first girl came down in ahill the whole time you are doing short turns.
rather half hearted fashion, going a bit too fast, andOnce you get the hang of doing these turns on easy
not driving down hard enough to brake her speedopen pistes, you are set up for more adventurous
and get some turns in. I asked her what she had saidterrain, and for learning variations of the standard
to herself, and she replied 'Hard down! Hard down!short swing turn.