How to Ski | 10 Beginner Skills for the First Day Skiing

Hi, I'm Jens Nylström at Stompitutorials.com. When I first started skiing, I had nobody there to help me. I just went out and tried it. Was it traumatic? Yes, it was. So I made a video that I wish I saw before my first day of skiing. In this video, I'm going to teach you 10 different skills and tips that are really important to safely ski alone on your first day of skiing. Remember, this is not a good substitute for a ski instructor, but I know a lot of you guys out there are not going to see a ski instructor on their first day, so this video is for you. Before you even head up the mountain, get yourself a slope map so you know where you're going to go. When you're at the base station, you need to plan where to go. As a rule of thumb, first look if there are any green slopes. They are the easiest slopes in North America and some parts of Europe. Then in some other countries in Europe, the easiest slopes start with the color blue. So look for green first, then blue, and you'll be safe in most places. The slope should also be rather short next to a magic carpet lift. They are the easiest ones. On the map, you can also see what kind of lifts there are. If it's a chairlift, t-bar, or for example, a cable car. It's likely that you've heard that ski boots are really uncomfortable and it sucks, so that's why I'm going to show you how to get them on properly so you have a bigger chance of having comfortable shoes and better time simply. When you take your ski boots on, it's great if they're warm because cold boots are stiff. Undo all the buckles and bend the shell out and pull the tongue up. Push the foot down with the toes pointing straight down, then bang the heel into the ground to make the heel slide into the heel pocket. Then tighten this strap, then the top buckle. Repeat and it feels nice and tight, then tighten the strap. Gently buckle the lower two buckles. If you do them too tight, you press the foot arch down too much and this will cause pain in cold feet. This is important. You put one slightly higher than down and these two guys, they lock the ski in place so that you can lift both skis in this one. So if you then would carry it something like this, you can actually carry some weight over the wrist in the binding. I find out a pretty neat way of carrying it. Carry them straight and the poles too. Don't carry anything like this in the beginning because you'll stab people in the legs and stuff. Don't be too tempted to carry the skis on your shoulder. Oh ----, now I have it on the wrong side. Pay attention to this as I mentioned. Terrible. Anyway, so carrying the skis on the shoulder can be quite dangerous. You need to know how to get the skis on. In the front, you have a toe piece of the binding that ejects sideways. The rear piece of the binding ejects up. Before you take the skis on, you need to check that there's no snow under the boot. Or do like this. This is my favorite way of getting it off. You use the poles to balance and then you stick the toe in. Make sure that you align the heel and you push down. To take the skis off, you can use the ski pole. Find that hole back there and then push. But to be honest, I never do that. I just use the ski or boot and kick and I use the two poles for balance. All right, now when we've got the skis on and helmet, back protector is also a good idea. We need to learn how to move forwards to get to the lift. You take the poles on like this then down because then you can push with a lot of force downwards. When you drop the pole, it's rather safe. To just use your poles is the easiest way of moving forwards. But it's not very powerful. That's why we're also going to look at how to skate briefly. Poles down and then push forwards. You can use your legs a little bit that you go down when you push forwards. Then you put your feet in an outward V. Lift one foot pretty high. You start with the poles, push and then out with your feet. So hands, feet. Hands, feet. Okay, you managed to push yourself over to the lift and then look at what other people are doing and they will give you an idea on how quick you have to be. All right, so wait for the gate and then and then and then you go. Easy push yourself forwards, poles in one hand, look over your shoulder. This one is likely quite slow. Grab it, sit down. It's important that you pull this thing down. Put your feet nicely on it. Let's enjoy the ride. Don't do that, you can only do that in some lifts. Some lifts fall out. Take your poles in one hand, take your feet off the bar and then slowly put it up. Lean back so you don't fall off and it's going to be a bit downhill now. So we'll have to use that little snow plough to maybe safely ride off to the side and stop. If you want to get on a button lift, take it easy. Both poles in one hand, the same thing as on a t-bar and you look where it's coming from. First of all it's important that you point your skis in the direction of the lift. Then you look where the lift is coming from and reach out and grab it. Put it between your legs. If it was a t-bar you could grab the side here too. Just cruise off gently and look where you go. On the top just drop the bar and ride safely off to the side. So now we're on a slope and we need to be able to take the skis on on the slope. As you see here, downhill is that direction and I have pointed the skis 90 degrees. It's important that you start with the lower ski. Push it in. The reason why you want to take on the low one is because you can edge into the snow now and make it easier to take on the top one. So both skis are on. In order to walk up, we have to walk sideways. Like the skate, you can do it but it's really hard in the beginning. So what you want to do is edge the skis up like this. You use the knees and hips a little bit. You don't have to do very much and then take steps sideways like this. Remember to use your poles so in case you start sliding forwards or backwards you can use the poles to slow you down or stop you. Here I'm obviously faking a crash but this is how people tend to land all the time. Head down the slope with the skis crossed and the way to get up again is that you first extend your legs a bit. Do a bit of a split like that to uncross the skis and then you have to get your feet under here. So now it's downhill in that direction and I'm 90 degrees at an angle with the downhill. Get your feet really close to your bum. Then you can use like the fist or the hand to get up. That takes a bit of muscle power. If you're a little bit bigger than I am that's not so easy. Then you can put your poles like this. I'm grabbing on the top and then this hand on the bottom and then you can use the poles to make yourself stand up. If you crash then it's likely that it's going to eject in the front and leave the back binding down. What's annoying with that is like that you can't really get in the ski. Then you need to push this one down. Use your hand or your foot so you can open the binding and finally take it off. We're gonna do a snow plow. This is what a snow plow looks like. You push the tails out and keep the noses close-ish together. Keep a little bit of a distance because otherwise they can get tangled up like this and get stuck. You can ski a little bit and then you press them out. Circling forwards. It's a pretty neat way of stopping and the simplest form of braking. One cool thing about the snow plow, the right ski in this case want to ski that way and the left that way. If you stand straight like they cancel each other out so you go straight. When you're in this position if you move the body weight a little bit onto the left ski in this case it's gonna start turning that way. You need to be centered to feel the front of your ski boots. Just rest in them a little bit. You don't need to lean much forwards or absolutely not backwards. Just easy shin pressure and arms in the front. If you can see them they're in a pretty good place. I'm gonna start sliding this way and put a little bit more weight on my left leg. It's gonna make one turn to stop. Then we try the other way. We're going to the snow plow. A little bit more weight on the left. Put a little bit more weight on the outside foot. It makes me turn until I go slightly up the hill. I use the terrain to slow me down. Now we're gonna put more weight on the right foot to make a turn to the left. It's confusing in the beginning but it's not that hard. Get into this nice snow plow. Put more weight on it. Sick right? Try that a couple of times. We isolate it. Do one turn at a time. Now we'll try to link the turns together. We go straight down the mountain. More weight on the left foot. Then we put some more weight on the right. Making this turn this way. Do that for several runs until you start feeling comfortable. Now we'll try to at the end of the turn bring in the inner ski to parallel. Then in between turns you're parallel for a moment. Then we plow again. Make another turn and bring it in again. The ski comes in naturally but doing this you need a bit more speed. Then the knee comes in. You'll notice that when you're snow plowing it can feel like the ski is stuck. If you then push that knee out it's gonna make the ski slide in easier. Try that several runs. This is quite difficult. Next good skill to know is side slipping. If you come by a steeper section of a slope that you're not comfortable with this can save you. Side slipping is when you slide sideways sort of like a snowboarder would do but on skis. So as I told you when walking up we angle the skis up to be able to grip the snow and walk up. But if we angle them down then we can start sliding like this. Make sure that you find a flat area where you do this. If it's bumpy this is very difficult to do. So I angle them down and I start sliding down. Angle again to control the speed. To side slip in a smooth motion it's important that you keep your feet rather close together. Makes it easier to keep the feet parallel and reduce unwanted movement in the skis. The next thing you have to have in mind here is that if you lean forwards then the edges here are going to grip the snow more than the tails. Then the tails are going to slide out and you're going to ski backwards. This is scary. So what you have to do if this happens is that you lean back a little bit down here. You don't sit back. You hang like back a little bit there. Then the tails of the skis are going to grip the snow more making the skis or noses point downhill and then go forwards. So if I just side slip and lean back I'm going to start moving forwards. So if I then lean forwards I'll start going backwards and it's a very small tipping motion I'm doing here. It's very small just this little makes me go forwards or backwards. So here it's a little bit steep, too steep to snowplow so we'll side slip down. If I'm leaning back we go forwards. If I'm leaning forwards I go backwards. Always looking where you want to go. You can make a scary steep section very easy if you get control of the side slipping because you can brake much harder than with the snowplow. Here's a quick simplification of the parallel turn and it's just so you get a feeling for how you can start it if you're out there practicing this alone. How I was taught this first when I started ski instructing as you know you start doing just a parallel like traverse and then you extend your legs forwards then you unweighten the tails a little bit so they can start sliding a little bit and then you're like you look over the neighbor's fence over here and then start then a left turn and at the end of the turn you compress and then you traverse a little bit and then you repeat that movement again. I'm bent, I extend the legs, patiently wait, go down and then repeat. It's quite difficult at slow speed so maybe you could see there in the end you got a bit too flat and too slow and that is a little bit tricky so you need to have a bit of courage and do with a bit of speed but make sure anyway that you're on a really flat slope but you go at decent speed on this flat slope and this up and down movement is crucial otherwise it's not gonna happen for you and as mentioned you know see a ski instructor get this right in the beginning a great idea but at least with this video you get a bit of a feel for how to get started with the parallel turns and all the things we've been talking about. If you're getting the turns quite all right let's try a couple of jumps. Some people say it's too early but freestyle is so much fun it's worth having a sneak peek of as soon as possible. When you jump you bend down a little bit first look forward and then you quickly extend your legs and it's important that you extend all the way forwards so your legs are completely straight because you have to really move forwards because when you hit the jump the jump tilts you up then you have to pop so you go forwards so you land perpendicular to the landing something like this if you see it from the side the hip goes all the way forwards let's try it with some speed on the flat something like that then you go something like this from a plow parallel jump jump if you felt good you can try jumping over a roller or something that resembles a tiny jump because here you have to bring the hip forward so you land perpendicular to the landing. I hope you enjoyed this video I know it's quite the simplification of skiing that is difficult so maybe you want to see an instructor but if not good luck learning from this video. If you want to learn some tricks in the park later on you can check out our first 10 tricks video or you head over to stompittutorial.com slash beginner and get our beginner pack which is two hours of beginner trick tips and techniques it's pretty good for you who are just getting started or joining one of our camps. I am looking forward to see you again so hit subscribe and you'll be notified when we drop the next video thanks