How to Make Parallel Turns—Tips for Improving Your Skiing || REI

I'm Robin Barnes from the Professional Ski Instructors of America here with REI Co-op. Last time we got together we talked about what to do as a first-time skier all the way up to making beautiful wedge turns on a beginner run. Now we're going to work on some skills to get a little parallel into your skiing. Before we move on I'd like to revisit the importance of skiing in a balanced stance. For more details on that check out our how to ski video. Beyond that the things we're going to cover are shrinking the size of your wedge, using your legs to turn, rounding out your turns, releasing your edges, and transferring your weight. So the reason we want to shrink the size of our wedge is because if we have a big wedge like this our skis are going to scrub against the snow a little bit. If I shrink the size of it they're going to glide nicely on the snow and make it way easier to turn. So to shrink the size of your wedge you're literally just going to bring your legs a little bit closer together so that you have a smaller wedge. Remember your skis will glide a little bit more on that smaller wedge compared to the bigger wedge so remember to really draw your turn across the hill to control your speed. We want to use our legs to turn our skis. If I try to use my upper body to turn my skis by the time this movement of turning my shoulders gets down to my skis it's going to be really late in the turn and I'm going to lose that good balance position that I've developed. So I want to use my legs, they're closer to my skis. Turning my legs is going to give me great stability in my turns. This is what it looks like when I turn my legs without turning my hips and upper body. You can see that my legs twist but my hips and shoulders aren't. So that's what our goal is in using our legs to turn our skis that you can see my feet and legs making the turn happen and that my upper body is not really moving hardly at all. Here's some things that we can do to practice turning our legs while we're skiing. You can see my boots going from side to side and because I'm seated I can't move my hips and upper body as much just my legs are turning. We'd like to work on rounding out our turns so that we can really use the shape of our turn to control and manage our speed. As our wedge starts to become smaller and as our skis even become parallel in certain parts of the turn it's going to be really important to keep shaping that round turn in order to control our speed. It's important to think about having a beginning and a middle and an end of the turn so that we're controlling the speed in all parts of that turn whereas before when we had kind of a bigger wedge the turn shape could be a little bit more in the fall line maybe not quite as rounded so make sure that has that beginning that middle and the end as your skis are gliding that's going to help you really manage your speed to how you want it to be. Releasing your edges is important in all levels of parallel skiing particularly in the early phases of parallel skiing releasing our edges is going to help us go from a wedge to a parallel position with our skis. As I'm skiing in a wedge and let's say I'm finishing a turn going to my right and I'm going across the hill this uphill ski's edge can get caught in the snow a little bit and make it difficult to pull that ski over. If I flatten that ski just simply by rolling this knee and foot up the hill a little bit now my ski is flat and I can steer it over to a parallel position beside my other ski. Release the edge, ski gets flat, steer the ski. Release the edge, ski goes flat, steer the ski. Release the edge, ski gets flat, steer the ski. Reflecting on the idea that our goal is to bring more parallel into our skiing in the beginning we're going to try to release our edges and bring our skis parallel at the end of the turn. As we get more comfortable we're going to try to release our edge and bring our skis parallel in the middle of the turn and as you get more advanced and more comfortable you'll try to do that to begin the turn so your skis are parallel the whole time. The next skill we're going to work on is weight transfer which basically means the ability to keep more weight on your outside or downhill ski and less weight on your inside or uphill ski. Weight transfer may be a little bit easier than you think. It's a skill we work on every day just when we're walking as we transfer our weight from one foot to the other In skiing if my skis are in a wedge and I basically lighten up that inside ski a little bit that transfers weight to the outside ski then I can bring that ski over to parallel much easier. This is what it's going to look like. Lighten the inside, weight goes to the outside, steer to parallel. Lighten the inside, weight goes to the outside, steer to parallel. Lighten the inside, weight goes to the outside, steer to parallel. I hope these five skills that we've showed you bring you closer to parallel skiing. Go out and practice, go out and have fun, explore the mountain. I'll see you out there. If you've enjoyed this video please subscribe to our channel, watch more videos, and learn more cool things.