Want to ski more smoothly?

While riding the chairlift with my wife and observing the skiers below, I pointed to her a seemingly good skier looking down on his skis. 

I critiqued that visual fixation to the immediate perimeter along the ski tips as a way to blind skiers to their immediate surroundings and chart their itinerary in a smooth, continued and much more efficient way. 

This leads to skiers stopping to often instead of benefiting from the continuum of linked turns and steady momentum. 

Sure when the skier’s ability, the run, the terrain or the snow bring challenges, the natural reaction is to fall back to one’s immediate surroundings and obliterate the big, more essential picture.

As a way to train for looking ahead I suggest that skiers, on easy terrain, train themselves how not to see their ski tips at all and trust that they’re in fact an extension of their feet. 

They’ll soon realize they don’t have to see them and will get used to glancing away and continuously plan their evolution down the slope for a smoother, much effortless skiing...