Carving with both skis

A snowHead

Almost certainly your skis are too far apart and your inside foot is to far forward of your outside. that is the cause, not the cure.

A snowHead

Almost certainly your skis are too far apart and your inside foot is to far forward of your outside. that is the cause, not the cure.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

22 dropout, I don't buy that... anyone struggling with learning to carve would be well advised to keep their skis (knees) well apart. Nu skool et al.

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Thats exactly what I have been teaching today on hard fast snow! My clients were carving like demons by the end with big smiles!

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

awf,I'm not sure skiing powder has any relevance for carving on-piste with 2 skis. I think your logic is flawed and practicing in powder would not help one bit. It might be more fun though Smile

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I'm going to post without reading the prior responses. Two footed carving is something of a quest for fools gold. Perfectly clean, simultaneous carving of both skis is not often performed, even by the best skiers. It requires the maintenance of a perfectly corresponding edge angle on the inside ski all the way through the turn. This is a difficult task, especially at higher edge angles, and in all honesty it's really not that important.

Because we are generally better off directing the majority of our weight to our outside ski, the inside ski often loses the pressure required to keep it cleanly carving anyway. Striving to maintain somewhat similar edge angles in the inside and outside ski is a useful goal, but it doesn't have to be present all the time, and it certainly doesn't represent an absolute criteria for expert level carving. There are frequent times when adding a bit of knee angulation in the outside leg, and thus a bit of A-Frame, is a great way to tweak ones line and balance.

So how to carve expertly? When the edge angle or pressure on the inside ski strays from that needed to carve in perfect harmony with the outside ski, great skiers use something called rotational tension in the inside leg. By introducing a slight amount of muscular resistance to any rotation of the inside leg, the inside foot and ski can easily be kept in very close directional harmony with the outside ski. If the inside ski is not on a high enough edge angle to carve the slightly smaller radius turn needed to remain parallel with the carving outside ski, rotational tension in the inside leg can self steer that inside leg, automatically keeping it turning the amount it needs to.

The skier doesn't really have to do a thing other than resist the undesired twisting of the inside leg. When the edge angles are close to the same, very little force will be needed to keep inside ski in its proper directional place, and the steering will be virtually non visible in the track. When the edge angle or pressure variations grow, rotational tension automatically applies the extra torque needed, and the steering component in the track may become visible. If the inside ski loses contact with the snow, rotational tension keeps the inside ski turning in harmony with the outside ski with seemingly no effort at all. It's a relatively easy concept to employ, one that makes maintaining turning harmony between the inside and outside ski while caving a piece of cake.

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FastMan, can't I just try to turn the inside foot toes towards the inside of the turn?

After all it is free

comprex, are you talking about during the transition, to create a bit of divergence in the skis at the start of the turn? Doing that allows the inside ski to carve a larger radius through the turn, requiring less edge angle. It's a legitimate supplemental tactic.

Sorry, only read this page
comprex, or are you talking about the flat turning of the inside ski into the turn as per moving from snowplough to parallel?

Perhaps it should also be noted that the inside ski can and does describe a clean track in the snow without the addition of much weight. If the ski is running on the snow you will still see tramlines.

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comprex, sorry, I'm not with you at all on this. Surely, if the ski is on it's edge it's actually impossible to turn the inside toes into the turn - you can try, but not succeed. If the ski is flatter then you're not carving the inside ski anyway, with or without weight. Puzzled

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Does it matter anyway? If you try and achieve 50-50 and make your balance precarious, which is a fault I often see, what is the point?
I have seen some good skiers topple over on baby slopes doing this.

I don't think I try for 50:50 or 100:0, but somewhere in between. I want enough weight on my inside ski so that (a) it's engaged on its edge so doesn't go wandering off with a mind of its own, (b) provides a bit of balance if necessary, and (c) is in position ready to take all of my weight if something goes pear-shaped with my outside ski and I need a recovery move.

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Can someone explain why I've been puzzled about the thread title here since it was posted. Surely if you're not doing the same thing with both skis then you can't be carving - in the true sense of the term in the first place? Also, if you don't have some sort of complimentary balance going on between the two skis surely they will just diverge the whole time and make it impossible to ski? I'm still learning to carve properly, but I'd think I'd crash every at moment if I didn't have some sort of balance between the actions (read degree of tilt) of both skis going on - whether that resulted in a skidded turn or a true carve. I'm happy to admit to being puzzled about the problem due to not understanding it and would appreciate a simple explanation of how you can turn at all whilst having the skis at odds with each other as the OP seems to describe. Puzzled

A snowHead

Megamum, you can carve on one ski (if by carving you mean managing your turns by using the skis edges and not rotation).

A snowHead

Indeed. I practise that on flat bits.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

rob@rar, I can see that - I did the exercise with you at HH, but I'd have thought that if both skis were on the snow at the same time that unless you did something similar with both skis at the same time you wouldn't get round the turn at all or am I seeing it too simplistically.

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Megamum, if you do a search on "inner tip lead" you'll find a thread with about 14,000 pages of pointless geometry which argues, ad nauseum, that very point. The reality is that you fudge things slightly so the skis run on their edge with no discernible rotational steering producing a pair of tracks that are mostly parallel to each other. There might be small differences in edge angle, tracks may diverge and converge slightly at various points in the turn, etc, but to all intents and purposes you make carved, arc-arc parallel turns.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

rob@rar, Ah....that thread...........its sheer length and complexity may be why I gave that one a miss and still remain ignorant in this area. Given the thread in question it could be that ignorance will remain bliss Laughing

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rob@rar, Well said

Megamum, I didn't read it after the first page either.

comprex, Could this be an anglo/american confusion? When you said 'turn' I assume a twisting motion to the inside which isn't possible with the ski on it's edge. Steering along the length of the ski is a different matter. Foot rotation and steering wouldn't be considered the same over here. I would see steering as an essentially forward movement/action whilst turning (as I've said) to be a rotation of the foot ie: twisting it.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

After all it is free

easiski, it may be exactly it.

If skimottaret were posting in this thread, I would say that I see this 'rotational tension' as a pressure shift along the slopeside edge of the inside ski, towards the front of the ski.

I find it fascinating that it's possible to rotate a leg at the hip to shift pressure (not weight!) forward.

comprex, skimottaret is currently in Italy teaching blind people to ski otherwise I'm sure he'd be chipping in, with his engineers perspective as well. I think you're talking about internal muscle tension, so keeping a powerful leg action but without actually making much in the way of changes to leg length or angle?

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comprex, OK, I understand.

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Carving with both skis

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