Roll Your Outside Leg

• In an athletic stance, with your shins pressed against the front of your boots, roll your outside leg inwards. Keep the leg stacked or aligned.

• Some skiers focus on rolling their outside ankle, while others think about rolling the thigh or femur. Any of these cues can work, as long as the leg stays stacked and the knee does not tip inward.

• Press firmly against the outside ski through the top of the turn so it bends through the middle, letting the tip and tail engage and carve an arc.

• Don’t press too hard. Excessive force pushes the ski out from under the body, reducing pressure and stopping it from carving.

Image by Arm

Keep the bones of the outside leg aligned or stacked on top of each other, as demonstrated by Henrik Kristoffersen of Norway.

Watch a few turns of Henrik Kristoffersen in this video. Observe how his new outside leg is stacked, while his outside knee remains stable and does not tip inward.

Video and above screenshots by Filip Chwistek.

With ‘shaped’ skis, tipping the outside knee inward to create edge angle is unnecessary. This action reduces pressure against the outside ski and increases the risk of knee injury as demonstrated in the Learning Module, Reduce Risk of Injury.

Image by ARM

Outside Leg Video

Tom Gellie’s video below compares the ski technique of two skiers; Warren and Casey.

• Warren in the upper frame starts his turns standing on the outside ski with a stacked outside leg.

• Casey in the lower frame tips his outside knee inwards to start the turn.

Tom Gellie explains how Warren is able to start the turn with more power stacking the outside leg. You may want to watch this video more than once as it focuses on subtle but very important differences between these two skiers.

Video by Big Picture Skiing

How to flex ankles along with some helpful drills is demonstrated by Warren Smith in his video.

Video by ‘In the Snow’