Ski Techniques and Tips for Carving - 4 Thigh Steering

Carving - Thigh Steering is Power Steering

When you are carving or trying to carve through a turn you should have a think about how you are actually physically turning your skis. It’s very important to have a good strong positive steering motion through your carved turns. Most of the time, especially in the early stages of your skiing a lot of the focus for turning the skis is foot steering. This is OK to certain degree, but as the speed and dynamics of your turns increase you should start to think about using your thighs as the main steering mechanism. This doesn’t mean ruling out foot steering. It just means that you could start to think of the main core steering coming from the thigh and the fine tuning steer coming from the feet. It might not always work like that and at some point in some type of turn your feet might need the feet to be doing a lot of the work.

However, if you can start to learn to steer from the thigh you’ll have a more powerful steering action throughout the turn. It will give you a more solid feel to the whole steering process and make the steering process more predicable with less mistakes.

Discuss Ski Technique with Warren Smith

If you would like to ask Warren any questions about the ski techniques or exercises described above, or otherwise discuss them, please write in to our Ski Technique Forum.