Tom Gellie teaches how to control pressure through your feet and ankles to manage forces in a turn. He shows a squat exercise to practice shifting pressure without losing balance, and explains why pressure changes matter more on hard snow, where small shifts can drift the ski into a carve.
Chapters
Welcome to the lecture on pressure, a look at pressure and edging in skiing. So my goals today are for you to learn exactly what pressure is, how you can change pressure— this is really important in skiing— what does it have to do with edging, how can we manage pressure in a ski turn, because there's going to be different points when we'd want greater pressure or less pressure. The final thing we can do to control the variable of area is movements with our ankle and foot. Think of pressure as how a skier gets feedback on the forces they're creating or managing from a turn. So the more pressure you sense, then you can basically equate that to there being more force created in a turn. So really, really learn to get in touch with subtle foot pressure changes because this is your direct feedback loop on forces.
Squat. So I would call this a squat motion, and pressure doesn't really change, and you'll feel it under your feet very much. There might be a slight shift forward, uh, in some people there might even be a slight shift back if you have stiff ankles, but mostly your center of mass is just moving up and down. Then you're going to try and shift it to the inside of your foot, in terms of you being able to change the pressure without really throwing your balance off. So that's the lateral plane exercise right here.
If you're on hard snow, now this resultant line or force going this way to even it out would have a moment arm that would make the ski want to be doing this, constantly occurring here, and the foot actually slides sideways there, there, has been drifting, and the line's left in the snow, and then it converts and narrows and goes into a pure carve.
Or you could tell that I would be gaining sensation of pressure through my feet on these two skis, whereas I don't think there'd be anything really coming through feedback from this guy over here.
And watch how quickly he comes off There. So hits and then is off through softening, allowing that force to soften your muscles and let your body start crossing over your ski.
