If you’ve been skiing then at some point, you’ve probably seen someone whizz past you, hip just centimetres from the floor, skis cutting cleanly through the snow as they seem to flow effortlessly from turn to turn.
You may at have also wondered ‘how come they don’t fall over when they get so close to the ground?’.
The key to that is something ski instructors call ‘lateral separation’.
Put simply, you tilt your legs towards the ground to move your ski onto its edge while keeping your upper body parallel to the snow – creating an angle with your body.
By doing this you are able to keep balancing on the outside ski allowing you to manage the forces on you from the snow and the turn and stay on your feet rather than sliding out onto your side.
Now I’m not proposing that you can learn to do this just by doing a few exercises at home or in the gym, however, you can put yourself in a much better position to learn how to laterally separate by building strength.
In a high-speed carving turn our bodies have a lot of force to deal with so by building strength and power before the season starts you can focus purely on the technique when you get to the snow rather than achy legs.
Include these 3 exercises in your leg day workout to be one step closer to those flowing, carved turns:
1. Single Leg Squat – to develop unilateral strength in the quads and glutes.
2. Deadlift Negatives – lowering the weight slowly targets eccentric strength, key for skiers.
3. Skaters with Hold – the explosive hop builds power, while holding the landing position trains landing mechanics to make sure your body is in a strong position.
Happy carving!
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