Why can't I turn left?!

Hi SkiNHO9,
I am not a qualified ski instructor in any way, and I've only had three weeks of ski lessons as an adult, so what I say may be totally wrong, but these are my thoughts on your problem (and all the qualified ski instructors please don't be too hard on me if I've said something wrong, but just correct me).

To begin with, you are talking about lifting your leg, and yet you are also talking about 'carving' your turns. Now, in my very limited experience, the sort of parallel turns you do which involve skidding your skis around are very different to the type of turns you do when carving, which don't involve skidding. I'm not sure which type you are trying to do. If your friends are very good it's most likely that they are doing carving turns, whilst you are probably trying to do the skidding sort.

Most people (I think) begin with snowplough turns, and then progress to stem turns - where they make a small snowplough to begin the turn and then bring their skis parallel, and then move on to the true parallel turn, and finally they learn the carving turn.

I think it's very likely, especially if you haven't had any lessons, that you are still making a small wedge to begin your turn, putting your weight on that outside ski, and then bringing the inner one across and parallel with it. Apparently lots of people still do this (including me sometimes). And most people have one leg stronger than the other, so the weakness in your technique would become more obvious when turning one way. And you can probably turn perfectly well on blue slopes, but have problems on red and black ones.

I used to have the same problem you have, and ended up lifting my leg, on my left turn I think, on steep red runs. The reason was very simply that I was 'tripping' over my ski (I think it was the old uphill one but I get very confused writing about it, but it was obvious when ski-ing), because I hadn't managed to unweight it and change the edge and slide it around.

I have a ski book here,Fred Foxon's 'skiing', (the only ski book I could find in the book shop), and it does have a couple of pages about this very problem.

He says, yes you do pressurize the outer ski to turn in snowplough, basic swing (stem turn) and parallel turn. The main difference between them is what you do with the inner ski (the one I see as my uphill ski). He has a series of exercises to help learn what to do with it.

1. Imagine you're on a bicycle, and alternately pedalling first with the left foot and then with the right foot. You are really moving both feet - because as you increase pressure on one foot on one pedal you are reducing pressure on the other foot on the other pedal. Try this making nice smooth linked turns on an easy blue run. You can alter the shape of the turns and the speed you turn by increasing the pressure and/or the tempo of the 'pedalling'. The object of the exercise is to teach you how to 'unweight' your inner ski, so that you can move it across without having to pick up your ski.

2. He says try pretending you are skimming your inner ski across egg shells, and then try to ski it through the entire turn. The ski should stay on the snow, it shouldn't lift, and it should be a gentle relaxed action, more a reduction in pressure rather than a lift, therefore involving very little muscular effort, and keep it hanging from the hip joint with only its own weight keeping it on the snow. You are still 'pedalling' but you are concentrating more on what the unpressured ski is doing.

3. Start this exercise using easy plough turns, and as you progress with the exercise and get better at it, the plough gradually disappears. Take the pressure off the inside ski earlier and earlier, but do it all very gradually.

4. On steeper or narrower trails your turns must be more dynamic and positive. Your skis must turn further from the fall-line to control your speed (what the instructors seem to call 'finishing your turn')i.e. you slow down by turning your skis so that they're not pointing down the slope but across it.

I have found, myself, that these techniques work fine on blue slopes, or even easy reds, but once I get onto steep reds or blacks, unless I improve my technique the old problem comes back and I have to lift my ski again.

So far (in my 3 weeks of lessons) I have been taught another 2 techniques to overcome this problem. The first one is pole planting (which also helps with timing), and the second is moving up and down. As I understand it they both have the same object - to help in transferring weight from one ski to the other so that you can make parallel turns without lifting your ski (or tripping over your ski and falling over!).

Pole planting can actually be dangerous, so if you're not doing it already be rather cautious. I broke my shoulder on the dry ski slope trying it out for the first time in a private lesson (because I planted the stick too close to my ski and tripped over it and went over with one end still stuck in the mat). And I noticed on my last ski holiday that the instructor told one of the people in my class not to try doing it because he didn't have proper control of his arm movements.

I think you have to have learned the correct ski position before learning to pole plant - shins against the front of your boots, hands in front of you where you can see them (pretending you are holding a steering wheel works quite well), arms not flying about, shoulders not twisting about on the turns etc.

Pole planting helps you to turn by making you lean down the slope (which is probably the last thing you want to do on a very steep slope), and gives you temporary support, and makes you turn your feet and legs around the pole, and commits you to the turn thus helping with your timing.

Someone else can tell you how to pole plant, if you don't know.

And the up and down movements involve going down to plant your pole, then up to unweight your skis and turn (skid round) and then down again to 'dig in' on your lower ski. When you get it right it's amazing the difference it makes. I found the problem with having to lift my ski disappeared altogether, and I could skid both of them round no problem in a 'proper' parallel turn even on a red run. It's a great sensation - a bit like flying as you 'fall' into the turn.

And finally, I found carving much easier because you don't feel you have to lift one ski to get it out of the way. Both skis stay together (like rails on a railway track) and you turn by leaning one way or the other, but it only seems to work when I'm going fast enough, and changing the edge of your skis.

Ally

Your problem could be far less complicated than mentioned.

I reckon we all have a dominant side, some more than others. However your problem could be simply the wrong boots, or wrongly adjusted boots. This could well be amplifying your less dominant side problems.
If you have one foot smaller than the other, and your boots don't have in soles to compensate, or are not tight enough this can cause turning problems.

On a more technical note ( and I am by no means qualified in this), I'm not sure that you should be 'forcing' your left ski into the slope when trying to turn left, when a left hand turn should be initiated by the downhill ( right) ski. I stand to be corrected.

Hymac580,
As I said before, I've only had 3 weeks of lessons, as an adult, so I'm not a very good skier.

But, this book says that only in the basic swing (stem turn) is the turn initiated by the outside ski - as I understand it that's what we're trying to move away from, because it's not a true parallel turn. With practise, we're supposed to get moving the 2 skis closer together (in time I mean) so that eventually you can move both together. The book actually says:

'The inside leg must move away from its partner, rolling the (inside) ski onto its outer edge (don't get this bit) so it can turn parallel. Rather than bringing the tails of the skis together, pivot under the ball of the foot so that the tips move apart.
At this stage, the inside ski should only be steered parallel in the second half of the turn. To start with, the outer ski is pushed out into a plough and pressured to turn it towards the fall-line. Then the inside ski is steered to bring it parallel, so that both skis finish the turn in unison. This new turn is called 'basic swing'. It's a half-way stage to parallel skiing. With snowplough, only the outer ski is steered. In basic swing, the outer ski turns alone for the first half, then the inside ski is steered parallel in the second. In true parallels, both skis are steered in unison from the outset.'

And there's more (!) about triggering the turn by unweighting the inside ski (as an exercise) to get rid of the time delay between moving the outside and inside skis and graduate from the stem turn to the true parallel.

I also forgot to mention that you're supposed to face the true direction you're moving in, so that if, for example, you're doing a long traverse to a cafe, you face the cafe. But if you're doing the opposite and you're doing tight turns down a steep slope, you keep your upper body facing down the slope and just move your legs from side to side.

Quite frankly, it's so complicated that I'm surprised any of us learnt to ski at all! Personally, I find it easier to do it like the kids do, and just follow the teacher closely and do what they do. Too much theory makes my head hurt and I can't ski at all then.

In fact, I find it easier to do the very short, sharp turns, when you actually jump the turns, because at least both skis are doing the same thing, even though it is rather exhausting!

Perhaps one of the qualified instructors could help us out here?

Ally

I'm going to take up snowboarding :D :D :D

Maybe I'll join you!
)

Ally

I think this has been extremely over complicated and there is certainly a lot of guess work going on as to what it may be, it could be a number of things :lol:

Either video of the skiing so we can assess instead of making assumptions or get some decent lessons, simple 8)

I have no desire to get on a snowboard again.

Thanks Pablo for your input. I was getting rather out of my depth.

I am very curious myself now to see what is causing his problem. I will be in the Manchester snow dome for the afternoon of Sunday 28th June, and probably Monday 29th, and if he brings a video camera, or whatever they're called, and shows me how to push the right button, I will try and film him, and post it up here (with technical help from my 15 year old).

Of course, as you said, he could just pay for some private lessons to fix this problem.


Ally

have you tried snowboarding?