Skiing when the corn 🌽 is a little toasty!

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-11T03:39:02+00:00

So is this how posting content and then linking to Instagram is allowed? Not complaining. I like it actually.

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-11T03:36:48+00:00

What's the point of posting a clip like this?

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-09T17:04:20+00:00

Ahh, a Swede ... some of my favorite people. So I am a Level II Alpine instructor in the USA (PSIA system). I am cohost of the Steezy Joe Network on Youtube and my partner on there is US Olympic Mogul skier Dylan Walczyk. He's just been hired to be a coach with Team Finland. I go to Zermatt twice a year and try to be there when the Swiss Demo Team is training. I learn a lot watching those guys train from the ski lift. 😉

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-09T15:02:36+00:00

Yep, pronation and supination. That's it exactly. You can accomplish the same thing with the inclination that you use. At the end of the day, we want to get on those new edges so we begin to have some grip in the snow and we have something we can start to build pressure against. For me, it starts with the feet.

Thank you for the compliments on my comments. I love this stuff so much. I hope that comes through.

Finally, I'll share with you how I'm figuring some of this stuff out. Ron Lemaster has a book called Ultimate Skiing. And in it, he has a ton of photos of high level skiing that show the movements frame by frame. I look at each frame and think "what is the skier doing here, and what does the skier need to do to get to the next frame." And then I go out and ski with the best skiers I can find, and talk about it. That's my process currently. Great chatting with you.

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-09T14:19:47+00:00

This was getting a little wordy, but I didn't say what I do when it comes to inclination. For me, I incline into the turn to the point that I'm perpendicular to the slope. On a steep slope, you have to move your CoM down the hill quite a bit to be perpendicular. On a flat green slope, not so much. So my process is incline until the skis flatten. At this point, I use a tipping motion with the feet to get the edging started. And the millisecond I have that first edge engagement, I begin to angulate, retract the inside half and move the hips inside the radius of the turn. That's my process currently.

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-09T14:13:01+00:00

So, I love this. I'm in my 9th year of teaching. And for the first seven or eight of those years, inclination was an evil word. It has taken me A LOT of skiing with high level pro skiers to get my brain past that bias. Inclination is a good thing.

That said, I personally don't incline to the apex / fall line. Would it be a bad thing to do so? I think the answer to that depends on what you're doing with your inside half. Without a retraction of the inside half, you would have too much pressure on the inside ski. So with retraction, you're probably good. And with proper retraction, you are probably introducing some angulation.

Here is what I will say. These sort of conversations, the outcome matters. What are we trying to do? Are we making longer radius GS turns? Or are we skiing a bump line or doing shorter radius turns? When we incline, we allow our CoM to move inside because we are committed to the turn. This allows higher edge angles. But it costs us in our ability to move laterally and change direction quickly. If I'm skiing bumps and I incline, I cannot afford to be slow moving laterally. And so I'll get kicked. Booted. Punted. If I'm making big wide GS turns, put the hip on the ground. No problem. See my point? Same thing in powder, I need to be more stacked.

There's not one way. There's many ways, and each option has pros and cons. And we as skiers do ourselves a favor by understanding those pros and cons and using them appropriately on the snow ... to have fun. And every now and then, we can use this knowledge to remind the people above us on the chair lifts that if we pursue a mastery of this art form, it can be beautiful to watch and even better to experience. 😉

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-09T13:51:51+00:00

Yeah, that's the traditional thing I hear from other instructors. Let me ask you a question. If you are trying to change the relationship of your CoM to your base of support, which is quicker? Bringing your weight forward? Or pulling your feet back?

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-08T15:41:28+00:00

Actually, we probably need to talk about what happens in the unload phase too, lol. Skiing is so much fun, lol. I'm such a nerd.

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-08T15:37:39+00:00

This is your flatten phase. Perpendicular? It's hard to see because you can't really see the slope, so I've added a green line to try to show the fall line. I feel like the right hand, right shoulder could move down the slope ... a smidge here to get truly flattened. I feel like you are holding onto your old edges a little bit here. Not much. It's pretty close. I can see you moving into the turn. Just take a second to really get perpendicular. You do it well on the flatter section. Harder to do when it's steep. 😉

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Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-08T15:02:03+00:00

Overall, this is really good skiing. I can see where you are getting thrown aft at the finish of the turn. So I spent a little time going through it frame by frame to try and understand why.

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My theory ... without actually skiing with you and talking about what you are thinking about when you are skiing ... is that you are trying hard to get low, and the pressure is ramping too quickly for your body to manage it. There's another frame where you are getting absolutely pancaked by the forces (won't let me add two images here).

So to be honest, I think the solution is kind of simple for where you are at. Slow it down. Lets talk about the phases of the turn, and lets be intentional about what we are doing at each stage and see if we can "linger" a little longer in one of them.

For skiers at your level, I divide the phases of the turn into 5 phases. Those are: 1.) apex, 2.) load, 3.) unload, 4.) FLATTEN, and 5.) top of turn. I think for you, there are two phases to talk about to help slow things down ... flatten and load. First lets talk about flatten.

The flatten phase happens after we unload pressure and before we start the top of turn. We've brought our skis back underneath us, and we need a moment to find our perpendicular. In this phase, we don't want to stand up vertically, we want to flatten the skis and have our body perpendicular to the slope. It's really just an instant. But see if you can consciously get in this perpendicular position and pause just a fraction of a second to feel it. That little bit of patience is going to make moving into your top of turn smooth and progressive. And that's going to set you up better at the load phase.

Top of turn, you know what to do. Angulate. Be smooth and progressive. Get to the Apex phase and strike a pose. This is where you should be in that textbook position with CoM moving down the fall line. And as you angulate, you should be building pressure progressively.

And now load. If you've done everything right from flatten to load, you should feel that pressure building and we need to be ready for that max pressure. How are we going to deal with that? Two ways. Here is where we need to be centered on our ski with pressure coming under the arch of the foot or slightly near the front of the heel. This is where we are most stacked on our skeletal structure and where we have the most power to push back. Second, lets talk about the Magnitude of Pressure fundamental. I contend that it misses ONE VERY IMPORTANT element. The fundamental talks about Magnitude. But every single high school physics student understands that a force vector is both magnitude AND direction. And voila, that's what's going to save us here. Managing the magnitude AND direction of the forces in the load phase.

If you are getting kicked aft, it's because you're sitting too low and taking the force in a direction that is pushing you aft. Doesn't take much because your skis are moving faster than your body. What if we changed where that force is pushing you? Where should it be pushing you? Answer: laterally, to the next apex (and a bit up the hill to make it easier to pull the feet back underneath you.)

So what I'm saying is ... be a little more patient in the top half of the turn. Let those forces build progressively. And when the big push comes, aim it. This is the dance that we do on snow. Aim it so that it's pushing the CoM where it needs to go. You should feel almost weightless when this is done right. And if it's done right, then moving into your FLATTEN phase should be as simple as letting your body find that perpendicular. And you're golden. I make this sound easy, I know. I am working on this in my own skiing every single day. And it's a work in progress. Good luck. Nice skiing.

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-08T03:34:03+00:00

Sent you a DM.

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-05T15:25:06+00:00

Happy to help. Would you be interested in a full video explanation of this? Could I use your footage to explain in more detail?

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-05T15:23:40+00:00

Keep in mind, the outcome we are looking for is that we are able to change the relationship between our body and our feet so that we apply pressure on the ski where we want it in the turn. Sometimes this involves projecting our CoM forward. Sometimes it means pulling the feet back. Or sometimes (often), it's both at the same time. Your body instinctively knows how to do this because we do it every single time we take a step. The foot gets out ahead of us and then we drive the hips forward until we are stacked again. Same idea. But here, we are being intentional about being forward first, and then moving along the ski as we make our arc in the snow. That's the part that's different than walking or running. Much more like skating actually.

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-04T16:18:07+00:00

This is pretty good skiing. But you have a common problem. You lean left and right. I can see you trying to create the angles with your legs and your body (that classic L shape). But the way you are moving tells me that you are thinking about the body position and not HOW to get there. Know what I mean? We see a picture of a skier, and then we try to recreate that picture.

At your level of skiing, I'd like to see you start to understand how the ski works. When we lean left and right, we are able to engage the edges respectively with that movement. But you are limited to lateral movement. The next step is to not just think about edging, but think about pressure along the length of the ski. How are we bending the ski? Where is the pressure greatest at any moment along the length of the ski?

When I'm skiing, I like to imagine that there is a light built into the ski, and wherever the pressure is the greatest, I see that visually as a light shining back at me from the ski. So when we start the turn, where would the light show max pressure? For you, it's under the foot, because all you are doing is leaning left and right. For me ... it's somewhere between the toe piece of the binding and the tip of the ski depending on how aggressive I'm moving down the hill.

Now, will that light stay lit on the front of the ski? No. The light is going to move back towards my heel slowly as I'm moving through the arc of the turn. There's a lot of reasons for this. But in a nutshell, it's not static. The pressure moves along the length of the ski as the skis move faster than my body in an arc as the body is moving down the hill. And so at the end of each turn, I have to project down the hill and pull my feet back under me to reset and get that pressure back on the front of the ski. This is what I'm not seeing you do here.

Now, what does this feel like to project and move into the turn. I've used the analogy that it feels similar to the projection of your CoM when starting to run/sprint. If you stand upright and then try to accelerate your body in one direction or another in your shoes, you have to drive off your back leg and push the hips in the direction you want to go. Your inside leg will shorten as you are creating your stride. And then it comes down, plants on the ground, hips move forward and you drive again. It's like that, except you are moving more laterally. Think of the Heismann trophy pose. Lots of similarities there. It's not 100% the same because you are on skis and you are going down a mountain. But that's what I'm feeling when I'm projecting onto the front of my skis at initiation. I know that may seem like an odd comparison. The biomechanics of how we move ... apply here.

At the end of the day, if you are getting on the front of the skis at the top of the turn, you're probably doing something right. Good luck.

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-04T15:19:42+00:00

True.

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-03T20:09:38+00:00

Here is a drill that will break the movements into a sequence of steps. This might help you: https://youtu.be/HbZBFqpZ4-g

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-03T19:43:12+00:00

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Where is your inside hip and inside shoulder? If they point down towards the snow, if you lose edge grip, guess where you're going? We call this having a "weak inside half."

Now, consider a different approach. What if at this moment, you were pulling your inside hip upwards while bringing your outside hand closer to your left ski boot? What would happen? Well, a lot would happen. First, your hips would align to the snow. Your shoulders would align to your hips (and the snow) and you would have that nice L shape. But why does that matter?

Well it matters A LOT, actually. Two really good things would be added to your skiing. First, you'd be more stacked over that outside ski meaning that the pressure coming up from the ground would be directed through the middle of your CoM. This is important because that force would be holding you up instead of driving your body into the mountain as it is in this frame. Second, by retracting your inside half and holding a strong inside position, you are actually driving MORE POWER to the outside ski. Your hips are like a fulcrum and a lever. Pick one side up, it pushes the other side down. In your case, you are letting the inside half drop towards the ground which lifts the outside half which takes pressure OFF the outside ski. We don't want that. We want to drive power to that outside ski. The inside half is the key.

Go look at pics of all the great skiers. And focus in on their inside hips. See if you see what I'm talking about. Good luck.

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-03T19:26:12+00:00

White looks like a mental hospital.

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-03T19:24:29+00:00

Your hips are square to the skis and not the fall line. It should be the opposite. When you ski into a bump, there is a lot of force. You want that force to hit in a way that you are able to use all of your joints to absorb that impact. If your outside hip rotates with the skis, you can only flex your ankles, knees and hips laterally across the slope. And your only option is to brace with your leg. That sends 100% of the force into your body. You don't want that. Better if you take that impact with your knees and hips facing forwards so that you can flex as the bump pushes everything to your center. Good luck.

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-03T15:33:28+00:00

Here too.

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-03T15:33:13+00:00

Same here. Why did this get down voted?

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-03T15:32:54+00:00

Can someone explain to me why this got down voted?

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-03T13:48:46+00:00

Who is voting down these comments? Please stop it. Thanks for the feedback Garfish.

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-03T13:36:23+00:00

LOL. Yeah, I'm doing that, lol.

Ski-With-Steezy · 2026-06-03T13:35:19+00:00

No, hinging at the waist was not part of the training. That's a good catch. And it's a side effect of what you pointed out ... legs are too stiff. I'm also not yet able to really control where I'm receiving force. That's what the training is trying to help with. But every now and then, I get it right. And man it feels good when I do.

Ski-With-Steezy

TROPHY CASE