Making the next turn...

In the past few days, I have come to realize that free skiing makes it hard on us, as we're left with the decision of always making a new turn and that the more options we have to initiate it, the more likely we're to hesitate, drag our feet and “break” our rhythm. The slalom and GS specialist has to turn; there's no option, but for us recreational skiers, unless we ski on a narrow run, want to avoid obstacles or moving skiers and snowboarders, we can turn whenever we please and we somehow need to keep an inner “big brother” telling our minds that it's indeed time to turn. In pretty open terrain, I love to scribe long, endless curves on snow, but sometime I get so drugged by the never-ending turn that I'm not always as good as I should be with the timing of the next one. Call it laziness, finickiness or plain apprehension, but it does happen. This probably is the downside of never ending arcs.

On the opposite end of that spectrum, just yesterday, I was instructing Juliette, my daughter-in-law, who is a gifted beginner skier; I was telling her to “modulate” her turns, that is go long radius on gentle slope and tighten up her turns on steeper sections. To help her, I skied just above her and was calling her turns on these more challenging slopes, and it worked wonderfully. She no longer had to decide when to turn, she simply got the cue. So if you aren't fortunate enough to afford your own coach, install a “little voice” inside your head that will order you to turn exactly at the moment you should. That's this simple!