FROM PARALLEL TO CARVED TURNS | Tips for skiers to progress from skidded parallel to carved turns

Hi everyone, my name is Lizzie. I'm a fully qualified BASIE instructor and I work on the Maison sport platform. I'm Scottish but I'm out here in Kirshaville for the winter. So today we're going to look at helping you improve from a skidded parallel turn into more of a carved parallel turn and a few drills to help you practice that. So I'm just going to ski down here and show you guys a few of these parallel skidded turns and this might be where you feel your skiing's at and this is what we're trying to progress you into more of a carved turn. So you can see here I twist my heels out and let the ski pivot and the edge is only really engaged towards the end of the turn. The first drill I'm going to show you to help you go from more skidded parallel turns to more carved turns is just a really simple traversing drill. So look uphill, make sure it's safe to go and then just let the edges just dig into the snow as we traverse across the slope. So that drill there is just a really good example of just how we can feel the edges bite into the snow and cut through without having to worry about picking up speed, without having to worry about making a turn. So try and remember these sensations of the edges of the skis digging into the snow because we're going to use them later into the next drill as well. A J-turn is just one turn in the shape of a J using our edges and we don't have to go into the next turn we just stop at the end of the J. For this turn we're just going to put the skis on edge, we're going to let the side cut of the ski take us across the hill. The more pressure we can put on the ski the tighter the turn will become. Okay so I'm just going to check that it's clear, point my skis in the fall line, nice balanced position, a little bit of speed and roll the ankles and the knees up the hill. It's really important again to practice these J-turns on both sides. Into the fall line, check it's safe above. So J-turns are a really good way, a really good drill to practice using the ankles and the knees to edge the ski and this is what we want to do when we're carving. Okay so the third drill that we're going to try down here is called, you might have heard it being called railroads or rollerblade skiing, so all we're trying to do is just use the edges of our skis. It's really important that we choose some nice easy terrain for this because we're not coming across the hill at all it does mean that we'll start to pick up speed quite quickly so maybe just aiming for six or seven of these turns and then coming to a stop and resetting is a really good idea. And all you're trying to do is roll from the ankles and the knees and we're making sure that there's an even gap as well between our knees so that both skis are doing the same thing and are being put on the same edge angle. A little bit of speed and just going to roll ankles and knees. So the next stage of this example would be to turn our railroad turns or rollerblade turns into more c-shaped turns that way we come across the hill a lot more and we can keep our speed control down. So down here I'm just going to do a couple of our railroad turns and then I'm just going to bring them across the hill into more of a c-shaped turn so that I can keep my speed control down. So from those railroad turns we're just trying to develop them into more c-shaped turns that way we hold the edge angle for longer so that the ankles and knees roll into the slope we let the skis bite the snow and come across the hill. By coming across the hill we'll be able to manage our speed so that we don't pick up too much speed and have the tendency to twist our feet. The best place to develop your carving is on easy terrain. Once you feel you've cracked it you can take it slightly steeper and see if you can still hold it there. Another really good way to tell if you're carving is to look up at your tracks in the snow. If you've got two clean tracks in the snow you've nailed it. Okay so hopefully these drills have helped you progress from a skedded parallel turn into a more carved parallel turn learning to roll your ankles and knees and get on the edges of your skis more and control your speed which is super important. If you like that and you'd like to learn a bit more my name is Lizzie and you can book a lesson with me on Maisonsport.