How to Ski in One Day | Beginner Learns Basic Turns

Hey guys, we're out here in Laax today and I'm going to teach Osman, an absolute beginner, how to ski. I've been skating, surfing like throughout my life, so like the first kind of thing I was drawn to was snowboarding like as a winter sport. So you've slid on snow before? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that could speed up the process a little bit today. I hope so. I'm not used to these ski boots though, that's for sure. Wow, you look even taller there. Do you want me to sit down? Shit, do I look like a midget? Good idea. All right, so I went up. Voila, there we go, instantaneously two feet taller. First thing we're going to do, we'll just quick warm up, then I'll teach you something about the skis, then we'll get some moving, turning, etc. Perfect. You ready? Sounds dope. Yeah, yeah, stop. Yeah, let's hit it. Oh, one of those too. Yeah, yeah, don't leave me hanging, right? I'll show you how that looks. If the binding is like that, you have to press on the back to be able to take it on. This part releases upwards and the front part releases sideways. Right or left? It doesn't matter. Really, it doesn't matter? No. Am I in? No, not yet. What? Give it a little press. There we go. Whoa. All right. Stop. Stop. Okay, that's how it works. All right, first thing we're going to do is make sure we have the right posture. So we're going to go through a little checklist. If you're just relaxing your legs, you're going to sink down into the boots. A nice little angle on the ankle, knees and hip. It should be more or less the same angle. The arms should be out. Ideally, you should look forwards. You can try leaning to the left. One analogy I have is that you're down by the equator. Yeah. And the sun is straight down on you and you get a shadow right under you. Yeah. And that's your center of mass shadow. Got you. And then you move it to the side, even maybe on the outside of your skis. Yeah. But if you like this is really unpleasant too. Yeah. So we never want to be in those positions for now. Try this. Lift the right foot. Is it hard? Yeah, it feels super weird. And then rotate the ski. We're going to use this rotation to steer later on. Super weird. Do you miss your snowboard already? Absolutely. And you can have your poles on the outside as you push forwards. Remember that shadow. Move it up the hill a little bit. Okay. I would quite like to slide some speed. With some speed? Yeah. Now it's time to straight line. Yeah, not that gnarly. Yeah, gnarly straight line, dude. And the little kids make it look so easy. Let's make it a little gnarlier and get some more speed. Thank you. First, I'm sliding down a slope. Look forwards, man. Yeah. Yeah. Look at that. Yeah. I'm going to teach you how to snowplow. Okay. And the first drill I'm going to show you, we need to take our skis off. Try to rotate your foot, sort of with the thigh and this muscle up here. Yeah. And if you twist it like this. Oh, that's perfect. First try. Wonderful. You lift your foot away. It looks like a little bow tie. Like that. That's a little snowplow. All right. And then you're going to be on the inside edges of both skis. Okay. So let's try it with the skis on now. Why snowplowing? It looks silly. I know. But it's a really quick and easy way to learn to ski. And if it's taught right, it actually builds on the techniques later on. Oh, you're getting it perfectly. Look at that. What I want us to do now is to straight line with the skis in a snowplow. Awesome. The snow is going to try to push the skis into straight, you really have to push them out a little bit. Okay. Yeah, man. Nice. I like your smile. You look pretty happy about it. Yeah, for sure. We slide in that plow. Yeah. Then you go to parallel and then plow, then parallel and plow. Parallel now. We get a little bit of speed into the plow. Heck yeah. Look at that. Great work. Oh, sorry. We had an accident. How's it going, Osman? Yeah, feeling good. Let's learn how to turn now. Let's do it. So we'll learn to get into a snowplow position, right? This is sort of shaped like a Star Destroyer. By rotating the feet to the right or to the left, you can then start to turn. Okay. And I want your upper body like tighten your core a little bit, so you're nice and steady and then just work with the feet. Okay. So I'm just pointing the toes where I want to go. Yeah, so far so good. I mean, I think just because I've done the snowboarding before, at first I was getting used to how the skis are working, but now there's a little bit, but not confidence, but I start to say, okay, I can, I trust them a little bit more. You know what I mean? He's getting it. Yeah, not as curvaceous as yours, but. Curvaceous. Like my body, you mean. And I'm so happy that when you were doing the turns, your knees were like straight. They didn't collapse like that. Okay. That happens to many of you. So really pay attention to your knees that you don't just do that. Stand nice and tall, have that good posture and you'll be fine. I think what you said about the core being active was really nice. That's something I need to think about. Yeah, we're gonna have a little bit more speed. Okay. And have a little bit curvaceous turns, as you called it. Right. A bit curvier curves. Nice job. Did you feel like at the end of the turn, how it was quite some pressure on the downhill? Yeah, absolutely. I wasn't sure as well that, like I was really focusing on trying to stay like with some kind of resistance against the snow, you know? So I think this was something I was, I felt in my legs, you know? Great point. And it's important that you don't just extend the outside leg to deal with the pressure because then you're going to end up back seated. Okay. So what I want you to do this time when you come around and you feel like the speed is controlled, so at the end of the turn, then this leg, you can flex it a little bit. Then you can just absorb it a little bit. A little bit more. Just at the end of the turn. See how that feels this time and it's going to help you manage some of these like pressures and forces that are building up throughout the turn. A little bit of pressure in my hands at all times. Yeah. And what I'm going to do is like pressure it like that. And then in the direction we want to go. Right. While doing this. Got you. How is that feeling? Yeah. So now you try to be the one in charge of the hands. Okay. And you sort of got to imagine the hands of your feet. Yeah. I would go this way. Yeah. This way. And then we go that way. So into the right, into the left. What we're doing now, you just keep challenging Osman's comfort level and we do it faster with a little bit more closed turns and more forces are building up and you have to start doing a little bit of that pedaling as it's called. So that was part one of Osman's journey to learn how to ski parallel in one day. And the next video is going to be there that we haven't filmed yet. Hopefully you learn to ski parallel after lunch, but it's going to be there and a playlist with more how to ski videos. If learned anything from this video, give a like and subscribe. We make a lot of content on this stuff. How has it been for you? Yeah, super awesome. A little shaky at the beginning, but I think your instruction was super clear and I'm feeling excited for the rest of the day. Perfect. Let's get some lunch buddy. Let's do it. Let's do it.