Ski Skills: Dynamic Carving

Giacomo Frosali of Freedom Snowsports shows you how to give your best powder slash a run for its money.
You know carving, right? The sure-fire way to elevate your lefts and rights. That epic sensation of complete control and precision as the ski slices through the snow like a butter knife. That fast, powerful turn that gives your best powder slash a run for its money. How do you take carving from relaxed, rolling terrain onto steeper slopes and channel your best Dave ‘The Rocket’ Ryding energy? The trick is progression.
If you’ve mastered finding, and balancing on, your edges and can leave clean tracks in the snow on gentle terrain, you’ll already know how great carving feels. But you’ll also know how much speed you pick up as the tips and tails of the ski follow the same arc through the curve.
The issue most people face in taking carving onto steeper terrain is dealing with speed. As you pick up speed, it’s tempting to rotate your feet across the fall line to shut down the pace. At this point your skis are skidding and you lose the performance of the carve. Here, we’ll look at some drills you can practise to help take your carving to the next level.
First up, find a slope you’re already comfortable carving on, because we’re going to think about how you can make these turns more dynamic. As you pick up more speed you need to create a bigger edge angle to control the shape of the carve.
To create a bigger angle, your legs need to move further away from your body, here’s how:
To get bigger angles you need what ski instructors call ‘lateral separation’. This is where the upper body and lower body are angled differently during a turn. To do that, your body needs to move further inside the turn. Think about trying to keep your shoulders and upper body level with the ground. Your legs extend away from you, allowing your hips to move away from your feet, lower to the ground.
Once you’ve moved your body inside the turn, it’s tempting just to lean on that inside ski, but don’t fall into this trap!
It’s important to keep most of the pressure on the outside foot. Think about allowing that inside leg to soften and bend (short leg) and keeping the outside ski long and strong (long leg). You will notice your stance gets wider in the turn and as you move between the turns – think about your centre of mass moving across the skis, rather than up and down.
Now let’s think about your feet. To start a carved turn, you need to roll onto your edges and build pressure on the outside foot as early as possible.
Think about rolling from 10 toes, flat on the ground, to two toes at the apex of the turn, and then back to 10 toes between each turn. The roll into the turn should progressively allow pressure to build on the outside foot, and the roll out should start to redistribute the pressure equally between both feet.
Now you can start to play with the size of the carves.
It’s important to remember that the more power you put through that outside ski, the tighter your turn radius will become. Practise playing with the pressure and varying the size of the arc, keeping your turn in a full ‘C’ shape.
Next, try taking these skills onto steeper terrain. You’ll notice that the forces through the ski become more powerful the steeper it gets.
If the terrain feels too steep, have a play and practise skidding around the first half of the turn, as though it’s a normal parallel turn – then find the edges after the fall line. As you get more confident, you can find the carve earlier and earlier in the turn.
Giacomo is the team manager of British-owned Freedom Snowsports, based in Saint Gervais. A specialist ski coaching company, Freedom Snowsports also has locations in Megève, Chamonix, Méribel and the Grand Massif. Freedom Snowsports runs courses for all levels, from beginners to pro training camps.
If you’ve ever wanted to develop your skiing skills, these guys are the go-to experts. Find out more at freedomsnowsports.com.