Weaker side turning

A snowHead

I've been sking now on 4 occasions and off to Les Arcs for new year this year but i'm finding that my turns and strong and controlled when turning right but not quite so good when my weaker left foot is the higher. Is this something that others at this level suffer or from?

If anyone has any tips on improving this it would be much appreciated.

Thanks

A snowHead

LloydShort, the ski instructors will be along with some suggestions - but one useful one, told to me many years ago, was always, always, always, to make your first turn on the weaker side, and to stop that side too, when just waiting for friends etc (if you have to do an emergency stop, e.g. to avoid skiing over a cliff or a 3 year old, you'd naturally use your stronger side). When turning, it's the outside foot (the downhill foot once you've turned) that's doing the work, generally.

maybe book a couple of private lessons next trip, and tell the instructor you'd like to work on your "weaker" side (we've all got one).

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

I suffered from that and if I've had a long hard day it comes back. I take it as the signal to head home.
If your stronger on right turns, thats when your left leg is doing more work.

You need to Login to know who's really who.

If you have any pictures or video of you skiing it might help to see what's going wrong.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

A lot of people, at all levels of ability, have a weaker side and a stronger side. In terms of addressing your weaker side I don't think there's a magic solution, but if you're practicing anything make sure you do a little bit of extra work on your weaker side.

You'll need to Register first of course.

Might be worth checking your alignment on both sides. Having to "correct" (perhaps without realising that you're doing it) a ski that is over- or under- edged throughout the turn makes a "strong" turn more difficult than it needs to be.

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

Thanks for your help all, sounds like more practice is the key. Perfect excuse for more sking.

After all it is free

everyone has a strong side and a less strong side Toofy Grin

The thing you need to do is realise that this is not something unique to your skiing and the route to curing the problem does not just lie in your work on piste.

simple drillis at home like hopping forwards backwards and from side to side or simply standing on your strong leg with your eyes closed and lifting your 'less strong' leg off the floor see how long you can stand before you have to put your foot down for balance, how much movement can you do before you feel yourself topple over?

Repeat the excercise with your less strong side and if there is a big difference (which im guessing there might be) then repeat the excercise say 3 or 4 times on your l'ess strong' side for every time you use your 'strong side'. Slowly aim to have your eyes shut balance times equal for each side, This will balance not just your strength but balance out a thing called your proprioception on each side. This is simplistically your bodies ability to judge its position without visual clues and may be a the root of your problems rather than just a pure 'muscle strength' issue.

If you find that actually you are fairly well balanced in these exercises then the problem could well be comming from your skis not running properly flat on the snow. A simple exercise to do here is to find a very shallow slope and place both fists between your knees and run straight down the slope. The aim is to start to feel BOTH the skis 'wobble' from side to side. A truely flat ski will be fairly unstable and may feel strange on sucha straight run. If you cant feel the skis 'wobble' then make sure when you run to a halt at the bottom of the slope that you 'freeze your position and then look down and see the position of your skis it may well be that you have a slight edge on the side that you feel is not as good at turning. this may be because your stance is too wide or you genuinely have alignment problems (usually over-pronation) The first is easier to address. if you hung your ski ploes from your hips would your outside edge of your ski boots be touching the pole? If it is then maybe you need to make your stance narrower? The second issue is more difficult to adress without a good bootfitter to hand.

Finally it may just be because you are forming a slight 'a' frame when you turn on your less strong side, try and imagine you are riding a horse (just corrected and unfortunate typo there Toofy Grin

) as this will ensure that you keep both skis flat.

I haven't tried this for skiing but am going to now that I have thought about it.
One of my other activities is a martial art and this shows sidedness quite starkly. My instructor told me that to some degree focusing on the weakness was futile, particularly if you ended up frustrated with it. So here is the trick. you train your strong side both directions. In this particular case it was punching but it has worked for other more complex moves and I will try to translate to skiing.
What you do is while undertaking the action on your good side (good turn) concentrate on feeling the weak/poorly coordinated side- location of the leg for and aft, hand, tipping, direction, what it does moving through the turn, etc. Don't worry or even think about the other turn for now just hold onto the mental picture/feeling you are building up. It would be best if you could do it without the weak turn in between but that could be difficult. Having built up a strong mental image of the weak side of the good turn try the turn in the weak direction and concentrate on matching your good/dominant side (probably but not necessarily the inside) to the image that you have of the weak side of your strong turn. Don't think about your weak side just let it happen.

What you should find is that by correcting the dominant side of the weak turn the weak side seems to correct itself. Or at least a chunk of itself. At least 50% should be in the right place, and as the rest is connected to it possibly 75% actually gets there. that just leaves a small amount for conscious fettling.

As I said, haven't tried it for skiing but will be this weekend but it worked amazingly well for what I was doing MA wise. Worth a try. I can see it being harder to do skiing because of the balance issues.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

I've adopted a radical solution to this common problem: I have an injured and therefore somewhat weakened 'strong' ankle - it's evened things out no end!

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

I'll give the drills ago and let you know how I get on, thanks for all the tips all though i might have to call the injury idea planB but will keep it mind wink

thainks again

Help!!

Weaker side turning

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