Carving - what % weight on your uphill ski?

A snowHead

I've been watching a couple of videos on carving* and they seem to advocate a much greater amount of weight being put on the uphill ski. My ski instructor today however seemed insistent that almost all weight should be on the downhill ski. In fairness, I think 90% was what he said.

What works best for you please?

*A Warren Smith one and "skiing skills - Piste Performance"

A snowHead

Wobbler, it's all down to speed and how tight you want to carve. So anything from 50 - 0%

I'm ona Mobile soI have to be brief. (there'sa first) Skiing is dynamic and unless on a billiard table you have to respond and react continuously with varying pressure.

Edit for not reading the OP correctly rolling eyes

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

Wobbler, As they say, it all depends........

In powder it should be 50 - 50, no question.

On piste - while some say 50-50, others say most of your weight on the downhill or outside ski. For many situations, particularly difficult terrain, lumpy moguls, ice or boilerplate, I'm firmly in the school of most if not all weight on the downhill or outside ski as it gives me greater control and confidence, and each feeds the other. On smooth motorway piste, it's easy to put weight on both skis and "sashay" down.

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Is this the downhill ski at the start, middle or end of your turn? wink

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

You are getting confused between uphill / downhill and inside / outside. The weight will be mostly on the outside ski that starts the turn as the uphill ski and finishes the turn as the downhill ski.

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What do you mean by uphill and downhill skis? On firm snow I'm very outside ski dominant. Inside ski has enough pressure and edge on it so it is under control and not wander off by itself, but I am mostly balanced on the outside ski.

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

Wobbler, as above, one of the only times uphill/downhill ski is relevant is when traversing across the slope while not actually turning, the minute you start to turn it becomes inside/outside ski.

So your instructor would have meant 90% outside ski, this could be the uphill one or downhill one, but easier to understand by saying it is the ski that is "outside" on the turn = outside ski.

After all it is free

interesting reading, i've wondered the same thing as i'm trying to learn to carve. Although its not going too well everytime i just end up in a regular skidded turn Laughing

Chummy was saying that the pros are always trying to be zero percent on both skis at the weekend

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What point in the turn what type of turn?

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The answer is 42.

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For carving. Feet well apart, start the turn on the outside edge of the inside ski in the falline, keep the ankles flexed and feel the toes pushing down to drive the tips of the ski to enable the start of the turn which changes edge in the fallline, vary arc shape by twirping the quads. Weight takes care of itself.

Listen to your instructor. He /she speaks the truth.

You know it makes sense.

Cynic,

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

A snowHead

Outrigger turns FTW. Bring back ski ballet! Cool

A snowHead

agw, Winner

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

Austrians say 60-40 for long turns (GS), 80-20 for short ones (SL), my advice is for terrain and powder closer 55-45... so Masque, probably has the best anser, it varies depending what you're doing and how well you are doing it

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Masque +1

There is no hard and fast rule and if you can judge by feel the difference between 70:30 and 80:20 you are a better man/woman than me. If your instructor is saying 90:10 what he means is that you need to get more weight on the outside ski

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Err the OP says weight for Carving

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Edited for clarity

Austrians say 60-40 for carving long turns (GS), 80-20 for carving short ones (SL), my advice is for carving terrain and powder closer 55-45... so Masque, probably has the best anser, it varies depending what you're doing and how well you are doing it

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

After all it is free

I had a eureka moment having instruction last week. I have skied for 20 weeks + over 20 years. On a trip a month ago I was really unhappy with my scrappy skiing so booked a lesson.

The eureka moment was forgetting about up or downhill skis, which I think originates from when I first learnt to learn on old long non-carving skis, and took on board inside and outside skis.

Next thing is to start the turn much earlier. My instructor said "Think of a clockface ... start the turn at 12 o'clock (at right angles to the slope) by applying pressure your outside ski (outside in this case is uphill or outside of the radius), between 12 and 6 o'clock you are transferring your weight from the outside ski to the new outside ski (which is now the uphill ski) when you start the next turn at 6 o'clock.

Weight forward has always been an issue with me, but with my shins on the front of the boot cuffs, I felt I was applying more pressure than usual into the front of the ski.

She also talked about headlights on my shoulders lighting the route down the hill. And also made me think much more about keeping my center of gravity above my skis, aided with pole plants.

After this session I felt that I was skiing faster and much more in control, and making lovely "S" shapes rather than scrappy zig zags. I hope that I can remember all this for next year!

When it comes to GS racing (which could be somehow correlated to carving on groomers), nowadays things are moving to much more weight on outside ski. Lately it was about 70:30 to outside ski, but with current ski change this year, things are moving to even more extreme 90:10. 50:50 might work for deep powder, but that's completely different way of skiing, then skiing on (hard) groomers, where you need to press ski hard to make turn.

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primoz, wouldn't the increased speed and larger radius of a GS turn to, say, a short SL turn put more weight over on the outside ski anyway?

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SL is so specific, that it's hard to say it's anywhere near recreational skiing, even though most of people ski with SL skis, but they are far far from SL turns Wink

That's why I didn't even mention it. Normal skiing, even with short skis, looks much more like GS then SL (ok to be honest, 90% of people on courses are more or less slipping down rather then carving, but lets not go there).
But if we go to SL, even though it might not look like so, weight on SL (for whole turn) is much more evenly redistributed to both skis then with GS, SG or DH (for most of time). Since turns are so short and so explosive, most of time weight is on both skis, since you start to initate new turn before previous one is even finished. In that little moment in between, I agree that for most of turns weight is 100:0 for outside ski for very very short period of time, but that's so short time, that it's hard to consider it as something more.

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In my humble opinion, this is a fairly pointless debate as it is completely dependent on the level of the skier in question... i ski pretty much always hard on the outside ski partly for grip and mostly because i am small and puney and need to do this in order to bend the stiff skis my ego makes me buy, but i could understand for cuising the pistes for 7 hours a day one would share the weight between feet as you might not be cranked right over.

listen to your instructor, they probably hve some idea what they are doing .... maybe

primoz, everything you have written seems correct, I have only one complaint, I refuse to equate piste skiing with those horrible new GS which as far as i can tell just made GS far less pretty to watch !

To be honest it depends on the type of turn and the stage of the turn.
Much better to use inside/outside ski terminology rather than uphill/downhill ski.

You know it makes sense.

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

Shreddy skis on ones made for him, specifically for his weight his height balance preference etc not to decry his skill or commitment but he doesn't take a ski from the rack of factory skis and jump on it. So I believe the better adaptation to new skis is a myth

A snowHead

fatbob, they might be stupid, but then again, let's just stay with snowplow and we don't need to worry about anything. And stupid or not, there are some basic "rules", or better to say suggestions. Yes there are extremes, but there are some suggestions with what to start, and that's what I was talking about. But sure, you have moments when you are 100:0 on outside ski, or 100:0 on inside ski, but noone will say that all weight on inside ski is way to start your turn.
dulcamara, it's not really all that horrible Smile

It's a bit different, but not all that much, and to be honest, Ligety actually looks even better then before Wink

For free skiing, personally I don't see much difference between old >27m skis and new >35m skis, so when I switched to >35m skis in summer, I didn't really need anything to "adapt". Between gates, things are different, since things are mostly still set with <30m so it's harder, but for free skiing, there's really not much difference. And as I wrote, I would say that most of people, who are able to carve normally, be it on easy blue runs, or steep and icy black ones, do GS like turns. Sure without such extreme angles as racers do, but still those turns are more or less GS like, and definitely not SL like, no matter what skis people use. The other question actually is, how many people are actually able to carve properly, and based on this what I see around, this number is very very small. Confused

A snowHead

Wobbler, As the posts above show, there are many different views on the answer to your question. I would suggest that what you need to do is find out what works for you, and the way you ski.

For example, on a gentle wide blue slope, ski down putting almost all your weight on the outside ski at the start of each turn. You could go as far as lifting the tail of the inside ski as you transfer your weight on to the outside ski (a training technique used by Frith Finlayson back in the 1960s on the old skinny skis). Then do the same run actively putting weight equally on both skis. You could also try skiing the same run with the weight mainly on the inside ski. You will find that you feel more stable and confident with one of these - then try doing the same on steeper slopes. You can also try gradations in between where you put more weight on the outside ski than the inside ski.

That way you will begin to learn about balance and weight transfer in different conditions.

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

primoz, Sorry I articulated that badly - as a directional indicator numbers are fine but the difficulty is that a certain type of learner interprets a number as an unswerving rule and therefore misses the point that the real learning is to know how and why to vary it and what "good" and "bad" feel like.

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Ok I understand and I agree with this. Yes these numbers are definitely not hard rule, which you need to stick with it. It's more like suggestion with what to start, and then you modify this according to conditions etc. So as we both already wrote, you can have moments when you have 100% of weight on outside or on inside ski, or 50:50 or any other combination, and all that is fine for certain moment/condition.
But I guess this goes with pretty much everything in our lives... there's very few strict rules which can't be bend, and everything else is more or less suggestion, which you modify according to current situation. And I would hope, people understand this, and they understand that also these numbers were pure suggestion where to start and not something you have to stick with it without any modifications Smile

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Tend to agree with all you guys above, it varies with the slope the skis the snow and what you want to do, there are no hard and fast rules, the exception being is that when your learning then the instructors will emphasis a certain amount of weight so that you understand what the skis are doing.

In terms of real situations its all about what you want to do Toofy Grin

The vid below was on piste and believe me most of it was pretty much 50 50 other wise I would have eaten it as it was late afternoon and 25 c the snow was like soup

http://youtube.com/v/MYX7hmoj59g

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Anyone seen Wobbler,? Maybe he's off looking for sole mounted pressure sensors! Toofy Grin

perhaps he should ask a simpler question next time.... wink

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livetoski, do you always hold your poles like that? snowHead

After all it is free

Mosha Marc, Puzzled

it was so warm they were melting Laughing

I think Mosha March has more problems with the way straps are put on then the way how "poles are melting" Wink

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livetoski, the video would be more interesting (though not as useful for the OP perhaps) if the camera angle was a bit higher. It's most looking at the ground.

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Carving - what % weight on your uphill ski?

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