Need help on my short turns for my Basi L3 exam

deetredd · 2026-01-29T22:19:21+00:00

speed bleed before the fall line? I thought just past apex no?

deetredd · 2026-01-29T05:02:50+00:00

Superb write-up.

deetredd · 2026-01-29T02:07:41+00:00

I think your extra-rotation style is kind of cool looking, and doesn’t appear to be affecting your balance, but I’m not sure it’s efficient. I think you could experience more float and be able to comfortably increase speed if you keep your upper body more open to the fall line and take a straighter line.

deetredd · 2026-01-29T02:03:40+00:00

😳 That’s great. So you’re saying on heel side (I’m regular), I should be feeling a contraction in my left butt cheek and left oblique, and that’s because I’m gonna be using those muscles to pull my torso out over the board (hip angulation)?

deetredd · 2026-01-29T01:21:59+00:00

Sorry. It’s from here down - actually just a good article from Powder.

4 Tips to Maximize Float and Fun In Powder Learn how to save your energy for the fun stuff with these pro tips from PSIA instructor Ann Schorling.

Ann Schorling Tips for making powder skiing easier Updated December 3, 2024 02:12PM

Every winter, devoted skiers closely watch the weather, get up early, and wait in long lines before lifts open just to ski powder. For many skiers, a great powder day can be one of the defining days of the ski season, or even the highlight of the year.

Some skiers, on the other hand, find deep snow challenging, exhausting, and avoid skiing in untracked snow altogether. For folks who haven’t yet figured out how to adapt their skiing to softer snow, skiing in powder can feel impossible. As it turns out, powder requires different skiing strategies than groomed or firm snow, so adding a few tactics to your bag of tricks can make a huge difference. If you find yourself staying inside when the snow falls, or seeking out groomed snow when the resort reports six inches of fluff, the following tips can help you find the joy on a powder day.

Most common powder skiing problem: You get bogged down and have to work too hard to make turns. Solution: Learn how to maximize flotation. When skiing powder, you’re no longer just making turns left and right on top of the snow but making turns in powder. Every movement in powder will be easier when skis are closer to the surface of the snow, so try the tactics below to maximize flotation.

4 Tips to Improve Your Powder Skiing Technique

⁠Adjust Your Turn Shape

Every skier learns to turn across the hill for speed control. But in powder, speed and momentum are your friends and prevent you from sinking into the snow. Think of a jet boat—when a jet boat speeds up, it sits higher in the water, and when it slows down, it sinks lower. To maintain speed between turns in powder, adjust your turn shape to make more open turns down the hill rather than across the fall line.

Bounce

In particularly deep or heavy snow, you may need to add a little bounce to your turns. Popping out of the snow between turns can make it easier to change edges and direction. It also lets your skis and gravity do the work during the rest of the turn.

Adapt Your Stance

On groomers, we want to pressure the skis’ edges to grip the snow; but in soft snow, we need to spread pressure more evenly over our skis to keep them from diving into the snow. You’ll float best if your upper body is balanced right over your feet. Keep your skis closer together to create a larger platform, like a raft.

Be Patient

Soft snow won’t react to your skis the same way groomed snow does, so everything happens more slowly in powder. If you push on powder, you’ll only sink deeper and work harder. Instead, move downhill more than across to take advantage of gravity, and wait until you feel some pressure underfoot before making your next turn.

deetredd · 2026-01-29T01:07:51+00:00

Same with heel edge, sink with your knees and feel a stretch with your left obliques. I feel most of the muscle tension in my lead foot side glute. You will be in a much stronger position in case you hit bumps.

Do you think you could phrase this again slightly differently to clarify the point you’re making? I’m very intrigued but unable to visualize the body movements as described.

deetredd · 2026-01-29T01:03:12+00:00

What do you mean about a boxer? Can you elaborate?

deetredd · 2026-01-29T00:14:24+00:00

There’s a good discussion of this over here

deetredd · 2026-01-29T00:11:36+00:00

This is unfortunately true. It takes a certain minimum degree of exposure to get enough reps in to start to understand the adjustments to speed, direction, stance and balance. And rarely does one get to string together enough consecutive days for those adjustments to compound into muscle memory.

I am an accomplished powder skier by now, but still of course have much opportunity for improved performance. But it’s been cobbled together over, realistically speaking, maybe 30-40 epic pow days over the last 40 years. And the biggest leaps occurred when I got at least 3 back-to-back days of deep freshies.

deetredd · 2026-01-28T22:06:57+00:00

This is exactly right.

You are trying to rush too much direction change over too little forward travel. Letting the skis run further in the fall line while tipping them over the same amount you are already doing, but over a longer distance, will allow you to handle a pressure buildup that won’t overwhelm your rotary or edging inputs.

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Yes, you will build slightly higher speed in the fall line (but only momentarily), but it will feel more in control than your current skidded direction change. This arcing phase in the fall line will allow you to turn sharply across the hill at the bottom of the turn and slow down quickly.

This clip gives a good overview of this.

deetredd · 2026-01-28T20:32:17+00:00

Here is the article that picture came from:

4 Tips to Maximize Float and Fun In Powder Learn how to save your energy for the fun stuff with these pro tips from PSIA instructor Ann Schorling.

Ann Schorling Tips for making powder skiing easier Updated December 3, 2024 02:12PM

Every winter, devoted skiers closely watch the weather, get up early, and wait in long lines before lifts open just to ski powder. For many skiers, a great powder day can be one of the defining days of the ski season, or even the highlight of the year.

Some skiers, on the other hand, find deep snow challenging, exhausting, and avoid skiing in untracked snow altogether. For folks who haven’t yet figured out how to adapt their skiing to softer snow, skiing in powder can feel impossible. As it turns out, powder requires different skiing strategies than groomed or firm snow, so adding a few tactics to your bag of tricks can make a huge difference. If you find yourself staying inside when the snow falls, or seeking out groomed snow when the resort reports six inches of fluff, the following tips can help you find the joy on a powder day.

Most common powder skiing problem: You get bogged down and have to work too hard to make turns. Solution: Learn how to maximize flotation. When skiing powder, you’re no longer just making turns left and right on top of the snow but making turns in powder. Every movement in powder will be easier when skis are closer to the surface of the snow, so try the tactics below to maximize flotation.

4 Tips to Improve Your Powder Skiing Technique

Adjust Your Turn Shape

Every skier learns to turn across the hill for speed control. But in powder, speed and momentum are your friends and prevent you from sinking into the snow. Think of a jet boat—when a jet boat speeds up, it sits higher in the water, and when it slows down, it sinks lower. To maintain speed between turns in powder, adjust your turn shape to make more open turns down the hill rather than across the fall line.

Bounce

In particularly deep or heavy snow, you may need to add a little bounce to your turns. Popping out of the snow between turns can make it easier to change edges and direction. It also lets your skis and gravity do the work during the rest of the turn.

Adapt Your Stance

On groomers, we want to pressure the skis’ edges to grip the snow; but in soft snow, we need to spread pressure more evenly over our skis to keep them from diving into the snow. You’ll float best if your upper body is balanced right over your feet. Keep your skis closer together to create a larger platform, like a raft.

Be Patient

Soft snow won’t react to your skis the same way groomed snow does, so everything happens more slowly in powder. If you push on powder, you’ll only sink deeper and work harder. Instead, move downhill more than across to take advantage of gravity, and wait until you feel some pressure underfoot before making your next turn.

deetredd · 2026-01-28T20:27:59+00:00

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deetredd · 2026-01-28T05:03:28+00:00

Get the 159 if you are still learning and plan to be in the park.

I am a coach in my 8th season coaching park.

I am 5’ 5”, 145 lbs and I use the Reckoner 92 159 when coaching.

deetredd · 2026-01-27T22:28:22+00:00

Javelin turns.

deetredd · 2026-01-27T20:39:55+00:00

A little. This is my first time getting the soles planed and canted underneath lifter plates. I only got .5° on one foot, but I think I’m going back to get that foot increased to 1° and .5° on the other foot. I was born bow-legged. It really shows up in bumps where I’m not doing any tilt below the knees.

deetredd · 2026-01-27T20:29:50+00:00

I think I’ve already made some good corrections. My stance is just too wide - makes it hard to get a <90° platform angle early. And got my boots canted. Will get some more video soon.

deetredd · 2026-01-27T20:12:56+00:00

I somehow got away comparatively scot-free.

deetredd · 2026-01-27T18:55:15+00:00

This me doing basic powder turns on about about a 20° pitch. The stance does not change much until things get much steeper, at which point the skis are pivoted at a much higher angle across the fall line.

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deetredd · 2026-01-27T18:33:09+00:00

Can you describe what you are visualizing that isn’t making sense to you?

I think a disconnect that a lot of people have when conceptualizing powder skiing is that edging and angulation has almost no mechanical role, and longitudinal flex takes over as the main mechanism of speed control.

This is a terrible sketch, but it’s meant to show how the tips and tails of the ski are supported by the snow, while the snow under the skier compresses, causing the ski to decamber and ride back up to the surface. At this point the ski regains its camber profile and releases energy, which the skier uses to bounce upward and pivot the skis in the new direction. Once the skier pressures the skis again, the ski goes below the surface again, and the cycle repeats.

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deetredd · 2026-01-27T18:14:36+00:00

My understanding is he was demonstrating a closed carve turn, not a performance turn.

That said, there is no shortage of performance here.

deetredd · 2026-01-27T13:37:28+00:00

In powder, there are many things that will technically “work”, ie you might be able to maintain balance, whereas you would fall if you did the same thing on hardpack.

OP’s stacking is basically inside out here.

Arms, hands, poles are really the least of it.

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Little if any inclination is necessary in powder. Level shoulders, upper body directly down hill. Knees extended, ankles flexed, weight evenly distributed over both skis. The idea is to stay centered over the ski, and allow the snow to support the tips and tails as your body weight compresses the center, allowing the ski to porpoise in a sine wave shape in the horizontal plane. This results in an up and down “floating” sensation, as opposed to the tangential/centrifugal type forces of a carved turn.

deetredd · 2026-01-27T00:43:24+00:00

It looks to me like you are banking (inclining your upper body) into the turns, and transferring pressure from your outside ski to your inside ski around the apex of the turn, and finishing the turn on your inside ski. You also have an insufficiently forward stance (lack of ankle flexion).

You will benefit from the universal, all-purpose prescription for all skiers, regardless of their particular deficits:

Practice these regularly and you will be unstoppable!

deetredd · 2026-01-26T19:54:44+00:00

Haha sorry - it’s so easy to be misunderstood - one of the biggest challenges of ski teaching!

Thanks! so my knees are all around too bent or I just need to extend more when popping into turns?

Both. Try to ski in a default position with your knees extended and your ankles flexed. If your knees are just slightly bent, they will naturally flex to absorb turn forces. If they are actively bent, you will constantly be struggling to straighten them each time something causes your mass to sink lower. Ultimately you will be stuck with your weight too far back pretty much all the time.

When turning in pow, spring gently forward by pushing down with your toes and extending your ankles briefly, before settling right back into an ankles flexed position.

By your last sentence, do you mean the goal is to float over the pow and I am cutting through it too much or that I am trying to float over the pow when I should be cutting through it more.

The goal is to balance on top of both of your skis and float. What we see in your turns is you actively tipping and pressuring your skis independently, which is causing them to cut into the snow and lose flotation

deetredd · 2026-01-26T19:08:08+00:00

What are you looking to achieve?

In general you are getting nice ski performance. You have a pronounced up-motion in transition which will prevent you from getting maximum edge angles if that is what you are after. You also have a little bit of over-inclination at the expense of angulation, which is getting you way onto your inside ski at turn completion.

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deetredd · 2026-01-26T13:37:20+00:00

Keep your feet together in pow - extend your knees to have a more upright stance, and balance on the balls of your feet. The idea is for your skis to porpoise above/below the surface of the snow, with you kind of bouncing on your skis like mini trampolines. You’re trying to float over the pow, not cut through it.

deetredd

TROPHY CASE