5 Vital Beginner Skiing Skills

When beginner skiers transition through the easy blue run phase on the pathway to parallel skiing, there's five key skills which are going to be really useful as you progress towards becoming an intermediate. This is basically what I'll help people to learn alongside the actual act of parallel skiing. Let's get right into it. Firstly, the parallel stop. Now, snowplows are a rubbish way of stopping. As soon as possible, you want to learn how to parallel stop. Point your feet to turn the skis sideways and tilt them onto the edges and scrape the edges across the snow. Now, considering how much I bang on about the first golden rule of balancing the outer ski, be sure to do most of the stopping with your bottom ski. This is the one which is doing most of the work. The inner ski, which you might want to think of as the top ski, also needs to be tipped onto the little toe edge so both skis are tilting in the same direction. This is the key difference between parallel and snowplow. By the way, in order to make a successful parallel stop, you'll probably need to go past 90 degrees in order to actually stop. Number two, skating. You don't want to be slow and have everyone waiting for you all the time. Learning how to skate will definitely help. Learning to skate on skis is a much quicker and much more energy efficient way of getting around than simply just pushing with your poles. To do this, we make a V shape with our skis and rock from side to side. Tip the skis onto the inner edges so that you can push yourself forwards. Push and slide on each ski. Then start adding in some pushing with the poles to really get yourself going. So, if you ever struggle to keep up with people in your group, or even if you just want to ski further, then learning and practicing your skating will win you a lot of time. Before we move on to skill number three, I just want to take a quick moment to answer the many of you who have been asking where I film these videos. I'm in Avoriaz, which is a car-free winter wonderland ski town perched on a plateau above the clouds near the border between France and Switzerland. It's an easy commute from the bigger town of Morzine and it's the highest altitude resort out of 12 ski areas, all connected by the gigantic Port de Soleil lift network. I've been coming here since I was a kid and I still haven't skied at all. So, if you're interested in combining mind-blowing scenery with skiing terrain for all abilities, Avoriaz is an epic place to ski. Carrying your skis. Now, there are loads of ridiculous and awkward ways that people try to carry their skis and the most obvious way that you know if somebody is a muggle or a wizard is the way that they carry their skis. So, if you're in a crowded place, one of the easiest ways to carry your skis is firstly to slide them together and you'll notice that the brakes overlap and hold the skis together. Pay attention to which brake is underneath and just put your toe piece to the binding and then you can carry them like this but you do need to pay attention to the brakes because if you do it the wrong way and you try and pick it up then the skis are just going to come apart. So, if you're in an open place and you've got a bit more space and maybe you're going for a bit of a longer walk then by far the easiest way to carry your skis is again to lock them together so the brakes hold the skis together and again pay attention to which brake is underneath and we're just going to put the skis on our shoulder with the toe piece behind the shoulder and then you can put your arm on the tip of the ski which is in front of you and then tip it until that weight is spread evenly on your spine. If you're doing this pay attention to people behind you because if you forget about the amount of ski you've got behind you it's easy to swing them around when you're changing direction and then you can hit people in the head behind you with your skis which is poor etiquette. So, either way whether you're carrying your skis on your shoulder or if you're carrying them in front of you like this either way you're going to have one hand free that you can use to carry your poles but the natural thing that you're going to do when you're trying to walk around in big clumpy boots is you're probably going to be swinging your poles around behind you like this but please try not to do this because it's very antisocial to the children who might be standing behind you. We're swinging the sharp end of our pole at eyeball height so instead of swinging them around behind you like is natural just hold the poles more in the middle and just try and keep that hand pretty stable so you're not swinging the poles around behind you please and thank you. Another important skill for beginner and intermediate skiers to get to grips with is side slipping. Not only is this a safe and slow way to get down if ever you're in tricky situations but also tilting both skis in the same direction and scraping the edges across the snow it's going to help you to crack your parallel turns. Practicing your side slipping at first is going to be pretty frustrating and awkward and kind of scary but stick with it because the time you spend on this is going to really accelerate your learning curve through beginner to parallel skiing. So to practice side slipping you do need a bit of gradient to the slope. If it's flat it's actually really difficult so you want something that's a little bit steeper. You're going to be tempted to put your poles in the snow. I've only got one because the camera's on the other but you're going to be really tempted to put your poles in the snow but try not to because if you slide one ski into your pole then it's going to trip you up and you'll go down so keep your poles out of the way. Put your balance and your body weight on the bottom ski and then when you want to slide you're going to just flatten the skis a little bit and then when you want to stop you're going to lean them both in the same direction. It's the most common mistake when you're learning to side slip is this top ski is going to try and go into a snow plow but do not let it. Make sure both skis are tilting in the same direction, flatten the skis slightly and then slide and then both skis in the same direction when you want to stop. Now practice this because it's a super important skill and it will help you to parallel turn. And the fifth skill which is going to be pretty useful is sliding along backwards and no I'm not actually joking here. On an easy blue lesson I'll often find an almost flat quiet bit of the slope and give learners a chance to ski along backwards in a snow plow. This teaches you what to do whenever your skis slide even slightly backwards so practicing this takes some of that bit away. So have a go at sliding along backwards in a reverse snow plow. You can use the snow plow shape to slow yourself down and to brake and look over your shoulder. Try to twist your upper body to look where you're going and when you want to face forwards again balance on the bottom ski lift the other ski around. So there you have five skills to learn alongside your parallel skiing as you transition from being a beginner to being intermediate. Have fun, hope it helps and I'll see you in the next one.