Better Ski Technique The Basic Short Turn Part 2

Now there comes a time, and it is quite often a natural progression, where the method of unweighting the ski goes through a subtle change from down-slow-and-up-quick to down-hard-and-up-quick. If you drop down hard towards the end of a turn to put the pole in, the skis will unweight for an instant, allowing them to slide slightly further round against the fall line. As the weight on them increases, and because you are angulating, the edge of the lower ski will dig into the snow. This is known as setting an edge. It is in effect a braking movement as the ski will quite often stop dead. You can then jump around into the next turn. As I say the lower ski is quite often motionless for a split second, and if the snow is soft you should be able to see the imprint made by the bottom of the ski. The tracks of these short turns will differ considerably from the large S shapes of the long turns.


There will be little carving at this stage, although later on as you clock up the mileage you should start to carve a little before setting an edge. At this early stage, however, the tracks you are making will look more like a z than an s.


To really get into the swing of doing these short turns you must introduce a bit of aggro into your performance. As you push hard down on the snow, say something aggressive to yourself like 'Hard down! Hard down!', or 'Attack! Attack!'. I remember teaching two fit girls a few years ago who wanted to be extricated from the famous bog standard stem christie. I told them to say something aggressive and skied down a few metres to watch them. The first girl came down in a rather half hearted fashion, going a bit too fast, and not driving down hard enough to brake her speed and get some turns in. I asked her what she had said to herself, and she replied 'Hard down! Hard down! Hard down!'. When the second girl got going, she was really giving it some welly, and did about twenty turns in fifteen metres, collapsing in a heap at our feet. When she had got her breath back, I asked her what magic phrase had produced such a brilliant performance, and she replied, 'Screw you Simon! Screw you Simon! Screw you Simon!'.


At some stage you will mistakenly put too much weight on the uphill ski and fall over, so once you have got the hard down movements stored in the memory banks, you can say instead, 'Left ski, right ski', etc, to help keep the weight on the downhill ski as you come hard down on it.


Eventually there will come a time when you do a turn and suddenly feel the skis throwing you into the next one. You have arrived! You have applied enough pressure to bend the skis into an added reverse camber and they will have become real springs! You will also be polishing off the turn by carving a little! The skis will track round more accurately and smoothly before bouncing you into the next turn.


The pain of having splashed out all that valuable cash on a pair of performance skis will now turn to joy as you realise that it has all been worth it!


As a final exercise, and to give you something that will be completely knackering and set you up nicely for lunch, see how many turns you can do in a given distance, let's say in thirty metres. This will help your rhythm, and get you used to the braking action of the turn. It will also make you fitter, and help elasticise those natural springs, the old thigh and stomach muscles.


Remember - keep the upper body facing down the hill the whole time you are doing short turns.


Once you get the hang of doing these turns on easy open pistes, you are set up for more adventurous terrain, and for learning variations of the standard short swing turn.


Simon Dewhurst has taught downhill skiing in North America, Scandinavia and the European Alps for 35 years. He currently runs a ski chalet agency in the French Alps. His book "Secrets of Better Skiing" can be found at http://www.ski-jungle.net If you have any comments about the above article, he will be happy to answer them.