Leg Turning, Balance & Flexing for Control

In this full-day lesson I was skiing in Zermatt with Ivana, who'd come over from the States. We spent the day on three things that take your skiing up a level: turning your legs from the hip socket, stabilising the upper body so you stop leaning into turns, and flexing for control at the end of each turn.

Standing on the outside ski — at the right time

We started by working on leg turning for control and balancing on the outside ski. The key here is timing. A really common mistake is to only put pressure on the ski once it's already pointing downhill — at that point the ski shoots up and speeds away from you, and you've lost the turn.

What you want instead is to stand on the ski before it turns down the hill, so it grips, and then turn it. Stand on it so it grips, then turn — not turn first and then try to stand on it. It feels different at first; Ivana even said she felt like she was losing her balance, because suddenly all the weight is on one ski. But that's exactly the feeling you're after, and within a few turns she was standing on the ski at the right time.

Turn from the top of the leg, not your whole body

Once the timing was there, we looked at how the turn was being made. Ivana had a good side and a weaker side. On one side she was turning with her whole body; on the better side she was turning more with her leg.

The easiest way to see this is to watch the knee. On the good turn, the knee really points where you want to go — you're twisting from the actual hip. On the weaker turn, the knee doesn't point, because you're swinging the body instead.

A simple drill to feel it: stand on the ski and practise the internal rotation of the leg — turn your knee in one direction, then back the other way, then back again — all from the top of the leg, without moving the hip and body to do it. Once Ivana started firing the turn from the hip socket, both turns matched up. Stand on it before you turn, then turn from the hip socket. Twist the top of the leg. That's it.

The stalk-turn drill: stop leaning into the turn

With both legs now turning properly, we moved on to stabilising the upper body so Ivana would stop leaning into her turns. For this we used a stalk turn.

Here's what a stalk turn is: you make a turn and lift up the tail of the inside ski, so the tip stays in the snow. You're using your hamstring to pull that tail up towards your backside. To do it, you first have to find your balanced position over the outside ski — and that's the point. Lifting the tail of the inside ski forces you to balance on the other ski.

We did this through big "C" shaped turns, repeating the same turn over and over so the balancing became second nature. The phrase I kept coming back to was simple: find your balance first. Don't rush it — find your balance, and the rest follows.

Flexing for control at the end of the turn

The last piece was the feet, for a bit more control. By now we knew we had to stand on the ski at the start of the turn — standing and balancing on it. That's called extending: making the leg go long.

But the turn isn't over once you've extended. As you come towards the end of the turn — the part where you really have to turn the leg and balance the most — you want to do the opposite: flex down with your ankle and knee.

There are three good reasons to flex down at the end of the turn:

• Better balance. Standing on a bent leg gives you more balance than standing on a straight one.
• More strength. With your muscles contracted, you've got more power to turn the ski through the last part of the turn.
• More range of motion. Flexing down gives you somewhere to go, which means more control.

So the rhythm of the whole turn becomes: stand up and extend at the start, then flex down on the balancing leg at the end. Go up, then down — and it feels lovely and smooth when you get it.

Great work Ivana — both legs turning, balanced over the outside ski, and finishing with a lovely smooth flex.