My turn!
Several of you have made comments to the effect that the approach must depend on the individual student. Acknowledged, we always need to be sensitive to the wants, needs, physical condition, and emotional state of each student, to constantly revise our assessments, and to alter the lesson plan on the fly accordingly. Nevertheless, there are constants.
If I pick one unifying theme that I'd consider superior for teaching newer skiers, it's "ski from the feet up." Sure, that's been said many times. But my recent New Zealand experience has given me a new understanding of the concept. I thought I knew what skiing from the feet meant; maybe I did, and maybe I didn't.
Specifically, here are some ideas:
(1) Nancy Hummel says, "1. teach a centered fore/aft stance with shin contact to front of boot. 2. teach ankle movement to adjust fore/aft balance." (Nancy's whole program is great.) The fore-aft balance and movement pattern needed for skiing is completely different from beginners' everyday experience. As bipeds, we are heel strikers. A stride begins with landing on one heel, and rocking forward onto the ball of the foot. That doesn't work for skiing. We need to learn to stay relatively centered fore-aft, with flexed joints, all the time. I rate this as the single greatest challenge, yet most important new skill, for new skiers. Hands down. This can be taught, initially, walking around in ski boots. Then it's crucial to instill in the first downhill runs, without turns. These should be straight runs to a flat or a return pipe. Take away any need for braking action. Get the student comfortable with accelerating while holding a good stance. Teach, right up front, the concept of using terrain rather than braking action for speed control.
As the student moves on to less gentle terrain, and starts making turns, it's essential to maintain that focus on keeping centered fore-aft. We often speak of moving the body mass forward in the first part of a turn downhill. But is it necessary to keep hammering on this? Maybe not. If the student simply focuses on achieving a centered stance, he'll soon figure out, consciously or otherwise, the body movements needed to maintain that stance. Teach to the result. Starting on extremely gentle terrain, it's not difficult. Maintain that focus as you move to steeper terrain.
Closely related to this is the idea of maintaining ankle tension. Or to use another term, dorsiflexion. This is a muscular engagement with which new skiers probably have little experience. As terrain steepens and speeds increase, ankle tension is essential to maintaining good fore-aft balance.
Henry says, "Teach them to always stand on the balls of their feet." Here I disagree. While new skiers typically need to get more forward than where they'll be without prompting, my recent coaching has emphasized a "home base" balance that's biased to the front of the heel. This is to be done at the same time as ankle flexion is maintained, so that the skier maintains tongue contact. Fore-aft balance is then fine tuned through upper body posture. "Standing on the balls of the feet" implies plantar flexion.
(2) Nancy Hummel says, "3. teach rotating the femurs toward each other (flat skis) followed by spreading the legs to create friction and stopping. Most beginners will not “go” until they know they can stop. Critical mental barrier to address. ...5. Teach turning the legs until the skis are pointed across the hill." This ability to rotate the femurs in the hip sockets is the next fundamental skill. It facilitates all other skiing movements. While we may originate lateral movements in the feet, that freedom in the hip sockets must be present to allow those movements to work their way up the chain and create ski performance. Additionally, complementary to this, the skier must allow free movement in the subtalar joints. Some people are locked in the subtalar joints, and this needs to be addressed immediately.
Command over femur rotation is needed alike for creating an effective wedge, or for making a parallel turn. It's just a distinction between the femurs rotating in opposite directions, or the same direction. Demonstrate this, get the student to feel it, and have the student practice both types of movement! Learn to keep that femur rotation going as long as necessary to accomplish the desired type, radius, and length of turn.
(3) The following was our unifying theme for a whole week in New Zealand. It had quite a positive impact on the skiers in our group. We speak, of course, of directing pressure (or balance) to the outside ski. However, in New Zealand we gave attention to the fact that there's a moment, however brief, where our balance is distributed 50-50 between the two skis. (Or feet, actually.) The lesson, then, is simply, don't skip over that moment. Focus on it, and move smoothly and progressively through it. The end point might be 70-30, or 80-20, or even a lifted inside ski--but whatever the end point, we don't want to go to it abruptly, we want to get there by way of a balance transfer that takes a bit of time. And the process is started more by a taking away of pressure on one foot than by an assertive addition of pressure on the other.
I think this approach to lateral movement could be very effective with beginners, as it was with more advanced skiers in New Zealand. It can be done whether you're keeping skis parallel or skiing in a little wedge. It's not necessary to have a lot of discussion of foot tipping, or upper body balancing. The student will largely figure out what's needed to achieve the result of a smooth, progressive balance transfer. We saw that this focus automatically led to improved performance--better rounded turns, and more effective edging. There's no need to try to turn.
With newer skiers, just start on extremely gentle terrain, and work your way up.
(4) Per Geri Tumbasz (and with a bow to JESinstr), "We don't balance on the outside ski. We don't balance on the outside foot. We balance on the inside edge of the sole of the outside foot." Teach students where they're going to feel the pressure on the foot if they're doing it right. It's on that specific part of the sole, and a bit on the ankle bone. Get the students to feel the specific muscular engagement that creates foot tipping and balance on that part of the foot. It starts, again, with ankle tension. Then add in tension in the small muscles that control eversion and inversion. Instilling this balance is important for both parallel and wedge turns. The most basic exercise for learning both big toe edge and little toe edge balance is sidestepping uphill. Even better to learning big toe edge balance is sidestepping downhill. Strong outside ski balance and edging can then be practiced on gentle terrain with power wedges. The goal is always more, more, more edge and outside ski engagement with the snow. Stem Christies are another good practice.
(5) And the final basic skill that new skiers should learn is adjusting between riding an edged ski and making skidded (or brushed) turns. As Henry says--side slips! Too many people ski for years without getting good at them or even understanding them. Sideslipping then leads, as Nancy Hummel says, to, "Teach flattening of the downhill ski in conjunction with leg rotation." An excellent exercise is to ski in a wedge on gentle terrain, and then learn to make direction changes back and forth by riding the edge of one ski, then the other. A "crab walk." Zero rotational input! Then change things up, adjust the fore-aft balance, adjust the edging, add a bit of rotational input, and make tight, linked wedge turns. Alternate the two. It's surprising how many experienced skiers, even, have a devil of a time removing the rotational input. On the other hand, some beginners might have a hard time putting it in.
(6) Agreed, having student follow your tracks, or follow a line that you trace in the snow, is excellent practice.
(7) Personally, I don't favor fat skis for learning. It's much easier to get ski performance out of narrow skis. The basic skis in the typical rental fleet are actually pretty good these days. The right width, the right shape, with a bit of tip and tail early rise to make them nice and mellow. The more expensive "demo" skis are usually fat, might have big rocker, and aren't going to teach good habits--totally unnecessary for the terrain novices will be skiing.
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