The Three Sins of Skiing

Learn what the three sins I see with most intermediate and advanced skiers. You may do one or all of them. Here they are, and how can they be fixed.
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Greg Mainis is a PSIA-certified ski instructor at the Palisades Tahoe Ski team.
#skiwithgreg #palisadestahoe
Visit - www.skiwithgre...
Book a private lesson/guide at 800 403-0206, 530 452-4349 or [e-mail] today. Ask for Greg Mainis.

[@hopNglo]

This is a great tutorial. Thank you so much!

[@kevindi]

Great content Greg!

[@buildersedge888]

Nice demonstration. Excellent video! Looking forward to the next video. Great content. Keep up the good work. See you KT my friend.

[@philplante6524]

At about 6:30 into your video, a bunch of skiers passed behind you. Most were on their tails, too upright, turning their shoulders, and skidding their turns. Great way to illustrate your point! ;-)

[@sandraredmond4812]

Super helpful. I have been skiing for years but am now intent on actually learning proper technique so I am not flailing all over the hill. I appreciate your tips. Thanks

[@anthonyalpha4118]

I do Stork Turns, hard but I love that drill!

[@tgrtgr9286]

i was listening to jazz when youtube suddenly decided to autoplay this. i dont even ski

[@thomasmiller7531]

lol

[@sandraredmond4812]

What’s the difference between a short turn and a z shaped turn? How do you control your speed on steeps?

[@skiwithgreg]

Round “C” shaped turns are what you are looking for when you ski. A “Z” shaped turn is started late, as you pick up speed, you slow down by pushing your tails out at the end of the turn. I demo that in the video. I’ll do a video on steeps, however you will use more edging force earlier in the turn and more or quicker rotation.

[@sandraredmond4812]

@@skiwithgreg I am a competent skier but always feel the need to control my speed and struggle for confidence on the super steep runs with crud snow. I am intrigued with the pivot turn. I think I have been carving my turns and then end up shooting across the hill out of balance and way too fast. I need to learn how to manage that on double blacks. I’m ok on less steep runs.

[@skiwithgreg]

A pivot turn is a turn where the skis have minimal edge to snow contact, that’s why it’s easy to slide and pivot. It’s like a slide slip with a turn or pivot built in. Yes that can get you down anything, however I don’t think that’s what you want. Send me a video at [e-mail] and I’ll send you back some analysis with drills to improve your skiing.

[@sandraredmond4812]

@@skiwithgreg thanks - I sent you an email. Not the best video and not my best skiing. But gives you an idea. I was skiing very slow - not sure why

[@anthonyalpha4118]

I can't really ski Uphill, but I think I can jive the Duck Walk, haven't seen/heard that before thanks!

[@anthonyalpha4118]

Lots of Full-Body turns at Sugar Bowl yesterday. Painful to watch! Sibera's looking good I'll be over there soon. Unless my friends lead me to the KT22 bar first!

[@anthonyalpha4118]

By Z-turn do you mean the same as A-Framing? I've learned I'm very guilty of that....yes I'm working on it!

[@skiwithgreg]

A “Z” turn is the shape of your turn. It starts late, as you pick up speed thru the middle of the turn you need/want to slow down so you push your tails out down the hill to brake. Snow shoots down the hill. I look for “C” shaped turns, the turns starts early and snow will fly to the side. A framing is when the outside knee moves into the inside knee while the skis are parallel and separated, making an “A” from the snow up to the knees.

[@anthonyalpha4118]

@@skiwithgreg Thank you so much, I'm making good progress!

[@billtanch8273]

A series of Z-shaped turns looks like doing alternating left, then right, hockey-stops down the slope.

[@SeriousCat5000]

If you are doing any of those three skiing sins in your turns and you don't make changes to correct them, you are going to hell

[@skiwithgreg]

Hahaha!!! You are going to ski purgatory.

[@sashakasprzyk5683]

Full of it.

[@skiwithgreg]

???

[@obi-john218]

Sin number one was well-explained so thank you for that. However, on Sins 2 and 3, you seemed to get your sins and virtues mixed up. While it is true that using excessive twisting of the upper body to turn the skis is a sin, in a medium or larger radius carved turn, it is an equally big sin to over-counter-rotate your body as you showed in your example of the "correction". Your attempts to demonstrate Sin #2 were actually the best turns in the video. In those nice turns, the lead of your inside knee, hip, shoulder, and hands matched the lead of your inside ski which is the perfect alignment of all body parts for medium to large turns, especially if carving is a goal rather than skidding caused by facing downhill too much as we so often see. Your demonstration of the sin actually showed good technique for those medium-sized round turns you were doing. In your later demonstration of how to correct Sin #2, the extremely excessive upper body counter-rotation you showed caused nothing but jammed sideways skidding with no roundness or carving at all. The over-countered turns you showed with the upper body facing straight downhill effectively demonstrates the biggest reason most skiers skid downhill sideways, as you showed, instead of learning to make round turns involving more carving than skidding. Facing downhill with a lot of separation is appropriate for very tight turns such as in mogul skiing, but it is the biggest sin there is for anyone wanting to carve round turns or eventually experience the holy grail of pure carving. In Sin #3, you did not demonstrate Z-turns which are defined as linking traverses by making abrupt direction changes at the pole plant which eliminates any roundess or carving in the turn, nor any time spent in the fall-line mid-turn. Your attempts to demonstrate Z-turns were actually nicely round through the first 2/3s of the turn including the fall-line, with a sudden breaking action at the end; really more of an overly jammed 'J turn' rather than a 'Z-turn". While it's true that those jammed J-turns did not have clean round finishes due to jamming the tails at the end, they were not Z-turns which is a totally different sin. The Z-turner uses an incorrect method to control their speed by jamming the start and middle of the turn to create Z-shaped turns (as shown in your turns showing the "correction" for Sin #2). The tail-jammer uses an excessive tail push at the end of the turn to control speed resulting in a cut-off J-shape. Very different sins from the perspective of someone who taught and coached high-level skiing for 53 years with both regional and national teaching awards as well as multiple podiums in both racing and mogul skiing.

[@skiwithgreg]

This wasn't how perfect I can do a move but rather how I can give an example to do something that a skier would not know how to move their body or feel it kinesthetically. Any new movement I've learned, golfing, skiing or whatever I needed to over-do or exaggerate it, to get to the right. Maybe you are only working with expert skiers, however I'm happy to work with all levels.