Tom Gellie shows how to warm up your feet and skis after time off by loosening your boots slightly, then practicing foot pressure and edge control. He emphasizes sandwiching your foot against the ski sole and using your toes to lock the front of the ski, then driving through your heel to grip the tail.
Chapters
So it's been, uh, 2 weeks since the last time I skied. This is the first run, haven't made a single turn on snow yet, and I'm gonna 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 I'm going to leave on. The stop ones, off. Just left on the catches, and then the booster strap is also going to loosen 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, 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 low edges and start building up. So that's the focus. Sandwich your feet. 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 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 2/3. The last 3rd 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. Cut the tail.
Whoa!
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 nearly 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. I'm going to still focus on this idea of feeling of being sandwiched and stuck to my baseboard and 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 and tilting is more for 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 snug together. Real sensation of like, like a pulling, retracting, sucking up, but pulling the base of the ski is like the idea up under you as well. It makes me feel, instead of just standing like this, I get more squatted, so it's really good for Continue 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.
