Mogul Skiing And Powder Skiing - How The Width Of Your Stance Impacts Balance

control | balance | tactics

Selection of the best or optimum stance to use when skiing is dependent upon what terrain you want to ski. The optimum, or most functional, stance differs depending upon whether your goal is to most efficiently ski groomed runs or off-piste terrain (moguls and powder).

How Your Skiing Stance Impacts Your Ability To Stay Balanced When Skiing Moguls And Powder

If Your Goal Is To Ski On Groomed Runs: Over the last fourteen years the industry has stressed the use of carving techniques on groomed runs. When carving on "groomers" the most functional stance is approximately a shoulder width stance that facilitates tipping the skis to the maximum edge angles and prevents cramping the range of motion. Because groom runs have a consistent surface there is no penalty for the use of a wide stance.

If Your Goal Is To Ski In Moguls Or Powder: Skiing on three dimensional terrain with variable snow conditions presents a different challenge than skiing on a prepared, consistent, smooth groomed run. To efficiently ski off-piste terrain a more narrow stance will produce better results.

Why a narrow stance?

The closer your feet are together the greater the likelihood that both your right and left ski will be on, or in, the same consistency of snow.

If the snow consistency is the same for both skis the potential for becoming out of balance is minimized.

For example, with a wide stance, if one foot is in a mogul trough and the other foot is on the side of a mogul, that would result in an unbalanced position. Or, if one foot hits a heavy clump of powder and the other doesn't then the one foot in heavy snow would likely slow down and spin you out of balance.

Likewise, if one foot sinks in soft powder and the other foot stays high then you also have an out of balance situation. The narrower the stance, the better the chance of remaining balanced when skiing moguls and powder.