The Most Important Things To Know About Good Balance

control | balance | tactics

The Most Important Things To Know About Good Balance

The concepts of balance and turn mechanics discussed here are designed for off-piste skiing rather than on-groomed-runs carving.

Balance in skiing is about dynamic balance ... the process of maintaining balance while in motion. As a skier, you are constantly having to react to various external forces that may contribute to you becoming out-of-balance. Examples include pressure changes on the skis as result of changing terrain, changes in friction from varying snow conditions, centrifugal force produced by a turn, gravitational force, wind, etc.

While all those forces are real, and are essential to deal with, we have another observation about skier balance. That is, an out-of-balance situation is most likely, and more frequently, created by the skier themselves rather than by exterior forces.

What often happens is that as a skier initiates a turn, the skis move into the fall line and then speed increases. The skier's eyes then become enlarged, often four letter words are muttered and then the skier defensively sits back, or rotates shoulders, hips or whatever is necessary to bring the skis across the fall line faster than the natural turning arc of the ski would dictate. And, that scenario gets magnified when the pitch of the ski slope increases and/or as the terrain becomes more challenging (moguls and powder).

The process of sitting back or rotating upper body parts often solves an immediate perceived problem (the desire to avoid personal tragedy) but it simultaneously causes the skier to become out-of-balance. Use of this technique is often described as skiing in a series of "linked recoveries".

Since skiing is a balance sport it is desirable to maintain good balance at all times during a ski run. So, the challenge becomes, how to do that.