How the World Most Practiced Drill Will Transform Your Skiing (Forever) - Pro Lesson

Hello and welcome back. This is Steve from Ski Coaching Online. I'm here in Zermatt with my friend Marco and Marco's really into the Carve technology and we're looking at today whether we can improve our outside ski pressure. So there's a classic drill that we use as ski instructors called the Stork Turn. We're going to use that to help move most of our balance over to our new outside foot at the start of the turn, which we'll then look at our data on Carve and see if it's improved our inside ski pressure. Wish us luck. We're going to go down. I'm going to ski in front. I'm just going to set the pace and the tempo. One thing I want you to look at is hopefully how smooth my extension of my new outside leg is. So I'm not brushing it. I'm not pushing my foot away. I'm actually moving more of me, like my hips, up onto the new outside foot. I know I'm successful when I feel the bottom of my outside foot being a bit heavier. Okay. Good. So down here skiing with Marco, you can see that there's occasionally a bit of a sequential movement with the legs. What we're going to aim to do then with the Stork Turn is just try to practice making the timing of the movement of both legs happen together. So one leg will extend as the other leg will flex. And so when we do that, what that'll do, that'll help him to move more consistently onto the outside ski. This is good skiing. Obviously, looking at me, drifting in front of the Matterhorn on some good snow in the summertime. It's nice skiing, doing some short turns there, but he really wants to improve his metrics. That's what we're going to play with today. How does that feel? That feels great, but the monitor is still not happy on one side. Okay. The monitor still thinks that on the left leg, I don't transfer weight, so it's still on the low 40-50. Okay. No worries. But the right-hand side was up? Yes. This makes sense with what we were talking about on the chairlift then, on the T-bar, sorry, with how if we do have one side that's slightly weaker, so for me it's my left, I have to give it just a little bit more time, a bit more proactive effort to be on it. So like we said there, we're slowing down our extension of our outside leg. We're not trying to rush it. So maybe we need to be a little bit more conscious when it's our left leg that we're lengthening. We're giving ourselves that little bit more time to really secure it. Okay. Good. Should we give that another go down here? Yes. So we've done our warmup ski. Marco's had a ski down here. He's had a play around trying to warm up his legs, get back on the skis again. Just a quick one that I've noticed there is that we're going to use the stalk turn to help make it so that both legs work simultaneously together, so that we're not just focusing on one foot. I know with outside ski pressure, that's obviously the metric we're going to improve, but we need to be able to utilize both skis and both legs to make that work. So I'll show you here what I mean by that and how we can focus on that using the stalk turn. So as we're going down here, what I could see with Marco is as we're trying to move from my left foot to my right foot, there was just a little bit of a push away as we do it. So you can see that this leg is staying the same length and this one is just starting to push away and you can see that there's an ever so slight slide onto that new outside ski. What we're looking for when we do it is I want it so that I actually come up slightly, therefore there's going to be an ever so slight lengthening of this outside, the new outside leg. So yes it lengthens, but my foot feels like it stays underneath me and as this lengthens, this leg lengthens, excuse me, my bum comes up slightly on top of my new outside foot. That's going to help me then to feel more on top of my outside ski. Here is to stand with onto your new outside foot. So let's say all of your weight is on your left foot there, what I want you to do is just extend your right leg ever so slightly until you feel the shift, there you are, onto that outside foot. Good. So we've just seen the shift there from this left foot onto the right foot through lengthening of that right leg. Let's see it again from the side here. Great. Now back onto the left, good. Now onto the right, good. Now onto the right leg, extend that right leg, great. And so ever so slightly here you can see that the hips move forward and what do you feel underneath your foot there? Do you feel all the balance point under your foot? Absolutely. Yeah, good. So it goes from your left to your right. Excellent. Let's try this now as we slide across the hill. So we're going to try it now going across the hill, so we're really going to empathise coming onto that right leg, extend that right leg, great. Let those hips come forward, very gently moving that pressure to that outside foot, good. Keep that leg extended, keep it long, good. There you are. It's hard to balance at this slow pace but it's really good to help you to feel what's going on underneath your feet. So extend that right leg, keep it extended and try to balance on that foot. Yes, nice, Marco. I like it. Left foot, extend the left leg, great. Let's let the pace increase a bit down here, Marco. So point a little more down the hill. Right leg, extend, good. Left leg, extend, great. Right leg, extend, take your time, good. So challenging it here on something flat, not going very fast, really emphasises what you're feeling under your feet. So with Marco here, what I can see is making him do it slowly, it's really forcing him to take his time and to shift that weight in a positive way to his new outside foot and not just relying on speed and the forces of the turn. So moving, there we are, moving those hips up and forward a little bit towards that new outside foot enables him to feel that balance over the bottom of his whole foot. So we were going up and climb on the other side, over there, so a magnificent day in the glacier. So we're going to continue with the drill and hopefully increase these metrics as we go. So we're going to go on this one now, just with lifting up that tail of your foot, so that'll help with especially on your left foot, it'll help just keeping your body on your shoulders a little bit more square, level with the slope and keeping more on top of that new outside ski. I think with the right foot, you can see that extending that leg helped and keep that foot a bit more underneath you, but occasionally on that lactic, it kept pushing away. So we're just going to have a practice on the next one of just lifting the tail. One nice way to think about it is whichever way you're going to go, lift up the tail of that ski. So if you want to go to the right hand side, just lift up your right tail. If you want to go left, just lift up your left tail. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Lovely day, huh? Yeah, that's fantastic condition. Summer, just 38 degrees in somewhere in Italy, which is by the way over there, I guess. I see Mont Blanc in the distance, just over your head there. Oh, okay, Mont Blanc is there, look. Yeah, Matterhorn there. It's a little faster today up here, isn't it? A little cooler today. So definitely recommend it if you want to improve your skiing. Also, summer is an option. Exactly. Still skiing. No one believes there's any time you can ski here, right? We walk through time with our skis and people think we're a bit strange. We should be in the good hands. Yeah. And today we are with Connect School. Yeah. And I'm enjoying every moment of it, I must say. And hopefully, we're going to improve also our medics as we go. Cool. So we've just had a play with extending onto the outside leg and it's improved our performance on the one side, but not on the other. What we've been noticing on the left-hand side is that Marco still tends to favor his right foot. So with the stalk turn, what's great about it is that you have to, one, extend this outside leg, but now the second step is also to lift up the inside ski. So what that will do will hopefully shift all of that weight towards the outside. So it's a two-parter. So I'm going to think about it in a little sequence as I go now. Okay, here I am. I'm on my right foot. I'm going to step up onto my left foot. As I do, I just lift up the tail of my right ski. What that then allows for is that it allows for me to see if I can keep that balance as I extend this right leg. I lift up the tail. That then keeps my upper body in check. So it allows me now, as you can see with Marco there, on the right foot he's standing on it, but on the left he's still kind of pressing his foot away. So lifting this right ski up into the air will help keep his balance on top of that left foot. We'll try this out and see if that helps with the metrics, keeping him more balanced on the outside. Okay, I'm going to stop here a second, Marco. Good job. How was that? Was good. Was good. Was good. Good job. So we've had a good play up here then on the flat bit. We've got a good grasp of what we're playing with. Let's go take it now for a bit of a fun run down to the bigger area where it's a little bit steeper. We'll put it to action in our build. Super. Yeah, let's go get it. Follow you. Okay, yeah. Let's go. How was that? Great. My legs went up crazy. Oh, good. That's good. Very, very good. Love it. Love it. No, it's good. I didn't say that's awesome. I started to know actually. I've used carve before and it's been great. It's good to do it like this and have the metrics immediately That's cool. Really good. Nice one. Good job. Thanks. Yeah. On to the next. On to the next one. Yeah, I like it. So this is like for me as a ski teacher or coach, I like how I can get metrics straight away. But what this helps me to realize is that you're a keen beam like I am. You want to go, go, go. Whereas when I come out on the hill, it's actually good to do a drill like this for the first run or two. And it really sets you up for success, right? So like now we're like good, fired up, ready to go. We can go in. Whereas like what we know is that when we come out straight away, we're not quite balanced yet. And I'm a good grad student, yes. Preparing on the right feelings. Yeah. I think it's helping. Looking forward for putting more skiing. Yeah, no, wicked. So it's great.