Modern-contemporary skiing

A modern, contemporary approach to the turn has many features, but the most important of them is its shape. Our goal should be turns shaped like the letter S rather than the letter Z. The basic rule of skiing is that a turn is round, and that matters far more than whether it is long, medium or short. As we move down the hill drawing one S after another, a variety of external forces act on us. We try to harness those forces so that they work in our favour. That saves a lot of internal effort and makes our skiing far more efficient. If, on the other hand, we actively push against the snow or build our stance mainly from the upper body, we will never feel the relaxed roundness of the turn.

In APUL's concept, the path to modern skiing leads through a few fundamental skills: rotation, edging, pressure management, a balanced position and the right timing of movements. Think of these skills as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that have to be put together to create the right picture: the right technique. How they are measured, combined and mixed depends mostly on speed and terrain.

The bike analogy

Improving your skiing is not only about the right approach to modern technique, but also about a modern approach to teaching. The key to understanding technique is a fundamental shift in your mental model of movement. One way to change how we perceive and understand movement is to use analogies and to relate skiing to movements we already know. Riding a bike is one of them: almost everybody knows it, and it is about as complex as skiing. Let's look into a ski lesson where we ask a student a few questions.

“When you ride your bike slowly, what do you have to do to make a turn?” If the answer is “I need to use the handlebars actively and steer the front wheel to keep my balance while turning”, we are on the right track, and we know the bike will be a good analogy for this student. We go on and ask what changes when we ride faster. “I don't need the handlebars so much, I can lean my body into the turn,” answers our imaginary student.

Riding a bike is so natural for most of us that we sense, without thinking about it, that as the forces acting on the rider and the bike grow, we can start combining the handlebars with leaning. The faster we go, the more the balance shifts from the handlebars to the lean. What does this have to do with skiing? On skis, our handlebars are our feet: by rotating our legs we steer the skis where we want them to go. The slower we move, the more important it is to keep rotating the skis to stay in balance. As speed increases, we progressively add inclination and the amount of active rotation goes down. In technical terms, edging becomes more dominant than rotation and the skis travel further away from the body. The track we leave in the snow gets thinner and thinner, and eventually, even though it is not the ultimate goal, we see just two rails drawn in the snow. And that, as you might expect, is carving.

Carving in APUL's approach

Carved turns are a key element of APUL's methodology. With the right blend of the skills above, the carving movement pattern becomes a versatile turn for almost any snow. In teaching there is no clear line beyond which a turn becomes a carved turn. It is rather a progression: skis steered parallel with active rotation are gradually blended with more skills, especially the lateral movement of the centre of mass and the independent, opposite movement of the lower body. Many skiers are stuck either in a skidded parallel turn or in a passive turn that only uses the sidecut of the ski. In APUL's approach, the carved turn is the way out of both dead ends.

You might ask why we introduce carving by improving rotation. Once we realise that carving is not about tipping the skis on edge and waiting to see where we end up, but about active steering, rotation makes immediate sense. It creates the right separation between the lower and upper body, which helps us keep our balance and lets us start the next turn with early edging. It also means there is no such thing as pure, stand-alone carving: skiing is efficient when it uses a variety of skills, constantly mixed in the right proportions to adapt to the conditions.

Start from your feet

Forget drills in which you turn your skis mainly with the upper body. That way you will never get round, well-steered turns. Start from your feet, and remember that balance on skis is not a result of upper body movement. A balanced position comes dynamically, from a well-steered turn with a strong core and active movement of the lower body in all planes. The basic rule of teaching is understanding first, then practice. Teaching built on lots of drills without understanding leads to skiing in static positions. Skiing is a dynamic movement, and the right stance cannot be simulated or forced. Play with your skis and feel everything that builds up in your ski boots.

We hope this article gives you an incentive for your own development, which you can start as early as the coming season. If you feel a bit lost and are not sure you understood everything, don't worry. It will all make much more sense with an instructor, right there on the groomer or in variable terrain. Time and money invested in that pays back many times over, in great days on snow and the pure joy of better skiing. We look forward to meeting you. You will find us on the hill.

Written by Tomas Mical and Jiří Nohejl. First published in APUL News, SNOW magazine 75, October 2013.