Learn How to Ski Short Turns on Steep Slopes

Today I want to work on something that a lot of students ask me. How do I make short turns on a steep hill and stay in speed control? So let's talk about that today. Let's talk about some of the basics that you have to have and then we'll practice a couple drills. So the first basic is there is a lot of steering with your feet to get your skis to come around quickly. You're not making carve turns down steep. You're trying to be in speed control all the time and your turns are going to be steered. They might have some carve toward the end but they're steered. Next, it's really important that my upper body remains over my downhill ski and my pole plants are down the hill. This is called a blocking pole plant and it stabilizes my upper body and stops it from moving. Too many people when they're on something steep like this do this into the hill. Now if you do that, where's your weight? It's not on the downhill ski outside anymore. It's on the inside uphill ski here because you're saying oops I'm afraid and I'm going to fall. Got to get that out of our minds. So let's talk about the first drill I want you to practice. Being able to pivot your skis and slip them. So how are we going to do a pivot slip? Let's learn how. So there is a lead ski in a pivot slip just like we were going to turn. My body is over my downhill ski and the pressure is on the downhill ski. What a pivot slip isn't is moving my body into the slope and putting my weight on the wrong the uphill ski. I can from this position just from this position without even going straight. I can start slipping my ski sideways. My weight is on this ski. My body's over this ski and it allows me if I release my edge to slip. Then all I want to do is take my feet and pivot them. So let's do that and pivot. As I'm rotating my feet and I'm pressuring one ski or the other. I'm not pressuring both. The next drill that I want to work on is how you can increase the pressure and thus increase the edging of your skis as you move down a steep slope. What we're going to do is we're going to practice something called a crab walk. Now a crab walk is in a wedge. Never get rid of a wedge. And what we're going to do and from the back it'll be easier to see me is we're going to actually if I'm going to pressure my left ski I'm actually going to pressure it not by pushing it but by softening my inside leg so I get more pressure and more edge to the outside ski. Let's go see how that looks. Here we go. So as we go down. So let's go look at what that little crab walk looks like when I'm coming at the camera. Here we go. You can see I'm really trying to activate one ski at a time by letting my inside knee inside leg soften and get lower and that basically what that does is it takes if this is my outside ski it takes the pressure driving from getting that low driving pressure this way and going the other way as I take this leg and make it softer it's driving the pressure to that ski so it looks kind of like that boom boom so statically that's kind of the thought process that you want to get this crab walk and edge. What we want to do now is work on a progression to be able to take our knees and ankles and roll them in hard like we were practicing with those little crab walks. So here's what that looks like. So here's what we want the turn not to look like. Watch how when I make this turn the snow goes down the hill. See how the snow is going down the hill? That's the wrong type of turn. What we want is we want to do a turn where the top of the turn has a little bit of steering with the skis and when we get to the middle of the turn we roll the edges and we finish the turn off accelerating and that's why we use this top section to slow down and get speed control. Let me show you what it looks like. So we come around the top of the turn steer hard here hard here hard the snow is moving sideways and not down the hill notice that each of those turns my skis are going across the slope my body is facing down the fall line my body is over my outside downhill ski okay so if you're the downhill I'm this way down each turn I'm never leaning into the slope ever let's just review at the top of the turn there's a bit of a steer as the skis start entering the fall line now I roll my tips I start pressuring the outside ski hard I come around to the bottom I am going to accelerate through that sections those last two sections of the turn but then at the top of the next turn I allow my skis to pivot like we were practicing to slow me down to have good speed control the snow is now going to the sides and I have full control I'm Greg Maness I am a certified PSIA ski instructor at Palisades Tahoe come learn to ski like a pro