How to 360 on Skis | an Intermediate Skiers Progression

In this how to 360 on skis video you get to tag along with me and Nico as I'm coaching him. He's a two-time camp guest so we're gonna see some nice intermediate common mistakes on 360s. We start out improving his popping then do 180s and finally some 360s. Enjoy the ride! All right Nico so let's warm up the pop and make sure we get that nicely dialed in before we start Let's undo the top of the ski boots. All right because if you open the ski boot they feel it feels more like jumping in your socks and we all can jump in our socks pretty well. Show me a perfect pop. That was pretty good I don't like your arms though they're like sloppy. Yeah get them out and keep them there yeah and you can be a little bit wider between your legs hip width is slightly wider just so that you're ready that's gonna help you with the spins later on. Nice and from the side it's gonna look something like this. Nice that's super sick. Should we try a couple spins too? Yeah sure. Look into the camera and show your best. 180 to get started. Nice one more. What you can notice within that many beginners do wrong is that they kind of go down really deep and twist a lot. If you twist a lot you gotta move your center of gravity onto one foot and then when you pop on skis you're gonna chuck the weight really crooked and that's not ideal. Let's see if we can do a 360. This is when things can get a little wonky. Oh pretty good. You're doing wonderfully. Good job from the feet, knees, hip it's all really nicely tuned together. Now it's just the arms they're like a little bit lazy. Okay. If you have the hands further out you can then set off more rotation with like less degrees of a wind up if they're far out. Oh pretty good. I think he's ready to go and practice some pops off jumps and then we start spinning. That's a nice pop Nico so we said and land with shin pressure. Oh yeah good landing mate. If you want to come here and learn too there's a link in the description for more information about our freestyle ski technique and freeride caps. Hope to see you at one of them. All right so Nico this is a really nice spot to practice spinning because we can drop in from here with almost no speed at all and the jump is flat and then it's pretty steep so I want you to when you pop instead of the rotation I want you to feel that the shoulders are moving forwards in that pop so that you land like on the heel perpendicular to the landing. Okay. That one's a little sketchy of me. Yeah that's the one. But you can see here when the toes are at the end of the jump you still haven't fully extended the legs yet and you're kind of looking down a fair bit. Should we do a 180 here as well? Yeah. I told Nico to be smooth like a nice smooth wind up and gently pop. Did you feel like you were hinging a little? Climbing wasn't great. Next time. Really sick. You had you dared to have so much speed too. Look at that pop there that's like pretty full extension. Maybe it's like half a ski boot too early but that's quite all right isn't it. First of all I'd like you to have the arms forwards and out a little bit more but if they'd be a little bit more out I think you would have nicer timing because here you've twisted the upper body 45 degrees already on takeoff so if you would have them a little bit further out and have a little bit of wind up you can have nicer timing so that when you extend at the end of the jump everything is more or less pointing straight down the hill. What do you think about that? Nothing. It's ----. I think the lack of speed made it harder for you to do everything right but look here you're already extended when the nose of the ski has barely left the jump so you're far too early and you're looking kind of down and behind you which kind of you know it doesn't help you to move forward. Just a couple quick tips on 360s. First of all you want to if you look at my zipper that's where the center of gravity is for me now try to keep it in the middle between your legs at all times so it's important to wind up that you stay in the middle that you don't move sideways so just a couple of degrees of wind up with the arms really far out and then you can do a 360 with ease. We saw with Nico that he started twisting the skis too early in the jump something a sign of pushing off from the heel I'd like to think of it more like a normal jump where you push off from the toe because then this edge is going to do a better job of gripping the snow when I'm pushing up but if you push off with the heel that happens but with the toe it has a tendency to grip the snow better. So the arms are out I'm winding up I'm popping and pulling nice pop nice pop big wind up yeah really big but arms far out yeah all right let's see if okay as a challenge let's see if I can do a five all right if I can do a five maybe I can do a three that was sick how can we do this better you think I don't like how you look at your head I was like boom you want to look down so much and I think it's doing you no favors on the pop because you can see how the whole body's tilting up the hill so I think we would need to go back to what we've been practicing all morning pop rotate all right Nico to fix your head let's try to do a couple of 180s to 200 to slope spin with a head perfectly up looking over the shoulder okay I like it to be one fluid motion so you get used to like really looking around that shoulder like this better kept my head up and I think that was the key how you feel about that not bad that's pretty great pretty good job obviously you gotta spin really fast so you're rotating like 90 degrees before you've taken off the snow but what you're doing so great is that the pop is quite powerful and look how you're looking like around the shoulders that are down now and you can spot the line nicely and you land pretty much perpendicular to the landing yeah freaking great we're getting somewhere all right nice now to the big jumps here's a tip for you watching this is quite common that things go well where the jumps are small and the speed is low because it's less fear would you agree yeah absolutely yeah and then when you go on the bigger jumps where it's more more speed more fear you start to overthink it yeah you know and everything we practice goes a little bit out of the window so it's a good idea to also like you try it and say medium size jumps 360 it's not going well bring it down to more beginner size for a bit and then make it bigger again and then smaller again and then maybe even bigger hope you enjoyed watching Nico's struggle and 360s it's been a hell of a ride but finally i i stomped some of them and let's take it from there yeah i wonder who enjoyed it most you guys watching the struggle or you doing the struggle and achieving it i think you enjoyed it the most ah i don't know maybe it was all my pleasure like and subscribe and see you in the next video