Athletic Stance in Skiing

Tomas Sbertoli: Hi! My name is Tomas Sbertoli, we are here at Wintergreen Resort in Virginia and I am going to show you the basics of skiing. One of the first things that we want to discuss is the basic athletic stance and how that will help us facilitate good skiing. The most important thing is to maintain a good athletic balance just like you would if you are playing any other aggressive athletic sport. If you are playing tennis or golf and you have got that stance, you are right on top of your feet with with your ankle slightly bent, knees and hips slightly bent and just a soft rolls at the lower back that brings everything in alignment.

A good balance stance allows the weight to be held in the skillful structure but those slight bends allow us adjust changing terrain and a balance adjustment as we move down the hill. It is very important we maintain good stance in the lower body and a quite upper body. The stability of the upper body comes from where the hands are positioned and using our eyes to look ahead and see where we are going, rather than looking down and looking at we are at. So now, while we are just standing in our ski boots, it is a good time to kind of look down and do a body check. Look up and feel where the body position is so that you can use to that positioning. This is a basic body stance for good athletic skiing and we will translate this on to our skies here in the next segment.