In this instructional video Tom Gellie walks through a pre‑ski warm‑up focused on feeling the connection between his feet and skis. He begins by loosening the top boot buckles and the booster strap to reduce boot support, allowing his feet to work directly. He emphasizes keeping the entire sole of the foot sandwiched against the ski base so the foot and ski move as one. He creates front‑to‑back tension by retracting his toes, locking the foot to the ski, and tests edge control without boot leverage. As the turn progresses, he shifts focus to the last third, using a solid heel pressure to cut the ski tail and generate grip. He then concentrates on the inside foot, visualizing pulling the ski base upward toward his foot, maintaining symmetrical contact, and keeping a low, athletic, squatted stance to stay flexed and avoid popping up. Throughout, he provides cues and sensations to help skiers develop a more active, connected feel under the feet.
Chapters
So it's been, uh, 2 weeks since the last time I skied, and it's the first run. Haven't made a single turn on snow yet, and I'm going to run you through my warm-up of what I aim to try and feel under my feet and feel my skis doing. The first thing I'm going to do is make sure my boots are actually undone a little, so these top buckles I'm going to actually pull off the catches. These ones are going to leave on. The top ones off, just left on the catches. And then there's a booster strap, also loosen that because I don't want to feel the boot supporting me yet, doing any kind of support. I want to feel my feet working. That's the goal. Then I'm going to focus on feeling the sole of my foot, the whole bottom, as much of the bottom of my foot as possible, holding against the ski. So whenever I move, I want the two to sandwich together and move together, as opposed to possibly the foot going a little bit more than the ski, which would be like my foot peeling off the, the base. So I'm trying to get the base of my ski and my foot to follow the same angle, and I'm going to start with slow edges and start building up. That's the focus. Sandwich your face. So what I felt that first time is I needed to be more active with my foot. I needed to be like more tense. I need to create tension, and the feeling I get is almost like retracting my toes, so not clawing them down but kind of pulling them back into my feet. So I kind of lock my foot front to back and stick it to the base of the ski and really feel, can I control? Like if I had no up cup on my boot, so no help from leverage there, could I get the skis to tip over? So I'm going to really work on that tension. I feel now it's time to work on more just the end of the turn. So I'd be probably saying a lot of the time I was focused on feeling stuff from up here, the top of the turn, to down two-thirds. The last third of the turn, I'm really going to make sure I feel a solid sensation in my heels. My heels controlling and cutting the tail of the ski into the snow. There's got to be a cutting of the tail through at least some part of the turn. That's where you get most of the grip. So now, last third of the turn, heel. So inside of the heel, really solid. Most of the time when people are trying this, they're going to be focused on mostly the outside foot, and the outside foot of course has all the pressure on it. But your inside ski, how it's balanced and moving, can really either make or break how effective the outside ski is. Still focus on this idea of feeling of being sandwiched and stuck to my baseboard at the base of my ski with my foot. So every movement is translated directly. I'm going to switch my focus to the inside foot. Okay, it's going to be a feeling of very light. It's almost— I'm almost going to be imagining I'm pulling the base up into the foot. There's kind of a little bit of pressure down, trying to like bring it up towards me as opposed to pressing down. The pressing down tilting off the outside foot. The inside foot is sucking up and moving it together. And again, I'm just looking for them to be symmetrical and stuck together. Real sensation of like, like a pulling, retracting, sucking up, but pulling the base of the ski is like the idea up under view as well. It makes me feel, instead of just standing like this, I get more squatted. So it's a really good cue to keep you flexed and low.
Thinking of pulling the base of your ski into your body and off the snow is a very, very different sensation from just lifting the inside ski So I highly encourage you to just try this sensation. The cue I find really, really important, it's almost like I don't want that ski to drop off or there to be space between the sole of my foot and the base of my boot, and then therefore the base of the ski.
Feels really good, really good. It's a great kind of double cue of getting the edge angle to move with your inside foot, but also to keep your stance flexed and athletic, squatted, so you don't pop up too much. Oh, whoa.
