4 ADVANCED SKIING MISTAKES | And How To Fix Them

Hi from beautiful Zolder everyone. My name is Thomas Mittal and today I'm going to talk to you about common mistakes made by advanced skiers. A typical mistake made by advanced skiers is a park and ride. What do I mean by park and ride? Have you ever noticed, have you ever seen skis carving from one side of a slope to the other side of a slope locked on their edges? It's exactly what I mean by park and riding. A skier who makes this mistake lets the skis to do all the work and just enjoying his life locked on his edges from one side of the slope to the other. A good skier as opposed to a park and rider is driving the ski through the turn and the track left behind his skis A great way how to get rid of a park and riding is you think about a ski as a trampoline. From the very beginning of the turn you really want to feel like you are bending the trampoline like this. You are bending the trampoline into the apex of the turn where the ski is bent the most. We are building the edge angle from the very beginning of the turn progressively into the apex. In the apex the edge angle is the highest and the pressure is the greatest. This is the point from which we are starting to release our skis to release our pressure in order to initiate and start a new turn. If you want to use our ski properly our turn shape is supposed to be nice and round. Another mistake made by advanced skis is too much extension at the beginning of the turn. If you get too tall at the beginning of the turn you risk you lose a contact with the snow. Instead of extending up too much throughout your transition as you're starting your turn try to stay a bit more lower, a bit more compact and try to more focus on moving from one foot onto the other as you start your turn. You want to extend your new outside leg into your turn progressively with the leg the longest in the apex of the turn where the pressure is the greatest. Be patient with your extension. Make sure you are not getting too tall too early in your turns. A good stance and balance is essential for good skiing. A common mistake with beginners and also intermediates is they are standing slightly back. A common mistake with advanced skiers is they are sometimes balancing too much forward. In order to steer our skis really effectively we really want to stand right in the middle of our feet. Let's imagine that the foot is a tripod. We want to have three points on the foot supporting our mass. Big toe ball of the foot, pinky toe ball of the foot and the heel. Try to maintain those three points underneath you as you are skiing down the mountain. Leaning too far forward you are risking washing your heels out and skidding your turns instead of steering. You want your heels to follow your toes not washing out. Leaning too far forward you are losing the access to some movements you need for a strong solid steering process. Stay on your tripods and stay strong in your turns. Another mistake made by advanced skiers occurs in the bumps. Skiers sometimes bend and flex their knees up towards the chest too early in order to absorb the mogul. They are risking being backed off the top of the mogul and losing the contact with the snow. Instead try to be more patient and try to really extend your legs against the bump and wait for the bump to push your feet and the knees back underneath you just as much as needed. Even if you are good skiers there's always room for improvement. Today we went through a few typical mistakes made by advanced skiers. Make sure you are making nice round turns. Make sure that you are staying more compact in the turn transition. Make sure that in your skiing you will stay balanced right in the middle of your feet and also make sure while skiing bumps you are patient enough and you are allowing the terrain to push your feet back underneath you. I hope today's session helped and you enjoyed it and for more great skiing stuff subscribe and see you next time!