"Carving 101" — feeling the arc in a morning
This neither is nor is intended as a ski lesson and we urge that you do not attempt these exercises without first reading the entire series and then only under the supervision of a competent professional coach or instructor. This article is meant only to describe part of an approach we've found successful with our students.
Park and Ride
Let us start by emphasizing that skiing is a dangerous sport and there is always risk of injury. These drills involve moving down gentle terrain, but speed will build up. If equipment is not correctly set up and adjusted, skiers should not proceed until everything has been checked by certified binding and boot technicians. Skis that are out of tune, or tuned to other than factory specifications, can render exercises of any nature difficult and even dangerous.
Terrain is critical. This exercise should be performed only on smooth, gentle terrain with little traffic. Green terrain is best, moderate blue will suffice. Speed builds rapidly and safety is the prime concern.
During the exercise, what is not done is as important, maybe even more important, as what is done.
As the exercise progresses, we advise students to not proactively extend and retract, not make a conscious weight transfer from one ski to the other. We tell them not to fight these things should they naturally occur, but not to force anything, either. We suggest they just let things happen. At this stage we do not encourage pole plants; asking them simply to hold poles comfortably with hands above the waist and in front of torso.
Phase I: Knee Rolling
We start straight down the fall line. As speed builds, we simply roll both knees in the direction we wish to go. Roll to the right to go right; roll to the left to turn left.
At first, we recommend rolling knees in one direction and keep rolling them until the skier come to a complete stop. Above all, we want them to do nothing else, especially not steering the ski. We want to let the knee-rolling build the turn all the way around until the stop.
The goal is to etch a clean track.
How can we tell? Just look back at the track!
Skidded tracks (result of steering) look like this:
Clean tracks look like this:
Please do not attempt this (or any other training exercise) without reading and understanding the entire article—available on our Member site—and we further recommend that the exercises be performed only under supervision of a qualified coach or instructor.
