In this instructional video, Tom Gellie demonstrates a series of progressive tips to teach his son Archie, and viewers, how to ski on a single ski—a drill that challenges balance, edging, turning, and inside‑ski control for upper‑intermediate to advanced skiers. The tutorial begins with pole planting: placing the pole firmly forward and across to initiate the pinky‑toe edge safely. It then moves to hip and inside‑leg mechanics, showing how to create angles at the hip without tilting the pelvis, using relaxed glutes and engaged inner‑thigh muscles—a technique modeled by Tom’s friend Demelzer. Next, Tom emphasizes ankle flexion and a forward upper‑body stance to prevent tail‑drag and enable smoother turns. He illustrates how combining these elements unlocks carved one‑ski turns. Throughout, Tom encourages practice, acknowledges inevitable falls as learning moments, and highlights the importance of mastering both feet, noting that the non‑dominant foot often poses the biggest challenge. The video concludes with a call to try the drill, showcasing a terrain‑park session and inspiring viewers to adopt the one‑ski challenge.
Chapters
This video shows you a couple of tips that I use to help my son learn how to ski on one ski.
Hey Archie, why don't you try skiing on one ski as a challenge?
One ski skiing is one of the best ways you can challenge an upper intermediate to advanced skier with all their skiing skills— balance, edging, turning, control of the inside ski. It's all packed neatly into this challenging drill. My first tip is to utilize your ski poles. Plant that pole firmly, more forward and more across, especially when you're trying to start that pinky toe edge, because that's the tricky one we don't want to commit to. Once you can start using your poles, you'll start to build some confidence and feel that you can actually turn both ways on one ski. Be prepared to fall over, it's a challenging drill. Notice we did this in really soft spring conditions, which can help your confidence. Falling over means you're learning, you're figuring out the balance point for this tricky one-ski drill. I was really proud of my son Archie giving it a real go every time. After getting some mileage under your belt trying to go left and right, it's time to add some more details with another tip.
Hey, so one tip is when you're trying to ski on that inner ski like there, I know, on the pinky toe edge, yeah, Try creating angles without leaning your whole body, so just try and move your hip across, yes, try and do that because what's happening sometimes is you're leaning your whole body and your shoulders, yes, so just try and create angles at your hip, leave your shoulders over your ski.
This is the most important tip to get right to master your one-ski skiing and also transfer across to your regular skiing. My friend Demelzer is excellent at demonstrating this inside leg mechanic when you're on the pinky toe edge. I want you to watch her blue jacket stay very level. Now watch how her legs can create angles without the pelvis tilting. She's using her hip joint. She's relaxing glute muscles on the side of her hip to allow this to happen and engaging inner thigh muscles to create that angle on the inside leg. With this tip, Archie is now finding control and confidence in both directions, even picking up a little bit more speed. The ability to separate the upper and lower body is the hallmark of a great skier. With practice, I've tried to make my one-ski skiing look like I've got 2 skis on, with the similar angles on both sides.
Hey, one other tip for your balance is really feel that you have your ankle flexed, yes, and your upper body forward, yes. Otherwise you get stuck on your tails and it's very hard to turn the other way, so just feel that your ankle Is flexed and you can feel pressure on the front of your boots when you do it.
My final tip of getting forward in the ankle, forward in the upper body, more aggressive in his stance unlocked some carved 1-ski turns, which is really an awesome achievement. This screengrab shows both that forward position and those inside leg angles.
There you go! Wow! Yeah! We're doing another one! Okay, alright, fair enough. That was pretty good, you're getting the hang of it!
The following day we spent the whole morning on one ski, hitting the terrain park, jumps, inspiring his little friend Sid to also do some one-ski skiing. My hope is this video inspires you or someone else to give one-ski skiing a try. It's a great challenge for your skiing, and as Archie found out, really fun too. So save this video. Oh, and one last thing, your left foot or your non-dominant foot is most likely going to give you a lot of trouble. Archie didn't really want to practice this side, so he only got good at his right foot. So he's got to get out there and master the other one for next time.
