I'm gonna teach you everything you need to know for your first day of skiing This video is for you who wants to just go out there and try it just like I did on my first day of skiing No one was there to teach me and I just had to try and I wish I had this video Before I went out to try because that would have helped a lot to make it safer.

Let's get started Equipment Let's look at the equipment now as a general rule of thumb borrow from a friend Rent it or go thrift shopping in the beginning because you so quickly will have to change your gear Maybe do some better stuff.

You just need to wear waterproof pants and jacket Ski socks goggles and helmet and gloves to protect your hands avoid wearing like Fox tails around your neck shiny objects and crocodile skin kind of makes you look a little bit silly on the slopes ski boots Your number one priority should be that they need to be comfortable in the beginning so that you can have a nice time Second priority the flex needs to be soft enough that you can bend them ski poles We use them to push ourselves forward and they aid with balance.

They're great Also have this wobbly bit up here They work like the following stick your hand in from the bottom up down grab it now to the best part of the ski So the ski is this amazing plank Basically, it has a wooden core some plastic on the top to protect it a cool base It's a super slidey material and if you put wax on it, it gets even slidey-er.

You got metal edges to help it grip The front of the ski is typically longer than the back and in the middle or slightly further back There's a binding.

The binding is this cool device that holds your boot in place And it has some numbers on it depending on the settings Don't mess around with a lot of professional set up your bindings or it could rip your leg off.

Next thing What's important for you as a beginner is the length of the ski.

Keep it short somewhere between the shin and the nose Then it'll be easier for you to handle in the beginning Where to ski is perhaps the most important thing to get right on your side after watching this video The spot you want to start practicing needs to be incredibly flat because if you start with too steep of a slope You're gonna end up incredibly backseat.

They get very frightened and probably have a bad time So let's aim for a good time at a flat slope instead.

So where do you find a good spot to start practicing?

The answer could be just next to the parking lot at the ski area You can walk up some little hill there, practice there, or you get a slope map at a ticket office.

In North America Look for a green run or designate the beginners area.

In Europe look for blue or green or a designated area Once you've started getting the hang of skiing Why not join one of our ski technique camps for beginners and build a strong foundation of skills to learn to carve Maybe ride a powder, do some snappy short turns.

Maybe see you then!

All right, let's look at how to carry the ski Take one ski in each hand Lift one higher than the other Push them together and then crush it down a little bit.

That makes these cool ski stoppers lock together Which works kind of like a ski strap Then I suggest you grab it around like such and keep the skis really steep and up Second way to carry the skis is a little bit more difficult You got to make sure that you have the ski that's locking into one of the skis that needs to be on top And this way of carrying is the advanced way.

On the shoulder like such, put the arms far out This way you can carry the skis long distances and outdoors.

Never ever ever Do this indoor or close to a lot of people because you in the beginning could smack someone in the face And that's super lame, obviously Common mistake is that you have the ski stoppers wrong and then this happens That's kind of annoying isn't it Flip it Good And then carefully take them down from the shoulder in one of the two ways.

Forwards or you look behind you that no one's there Slowly lower it down off your shoulder like that.

Alright, let's go skiing now.

To put on the skis You gotta separate them first, put them down on the snow Then you want to make sure that the heel pieces are both down What you want to do is stick the toe in and then push it down But as we see here the heel piece is up so I cannot put it on So then you can stomp on it or use your pole to push it down That has to be done first.

Toe in and put some pressure on the heel Toe in and pressure down.

To take your skis off You simply point your ski pole into the little hole at the back I put it in my armpit so I can put some more weight on it and lift the heel up while doing that Another way of getting it off is that you take the heel of your boot and press down Nice, we got the skis on.

First thing we're gonna have a look at is the posture It's often called the athletic stance.

You've probably been in this position many times before doing other sports So the sensation you should have is pressure along the entire length of the foot and then feel the shins of your legs Touching the front of the ski boots with a little bit of pressure The knees are gently bent and the hip too The hip is staying straight over the feet.

So the center of gravity is on your feet Arms are forward.

You can put a pole quickly On your chest like this.

This is more or less a good position for the arms and the eyes Look far forward.

It's gonna give you much better balance.

Sweet.

Let's start moving around a little bit Take your poles, push them down next to your feet and push yourself forward.

In between every push try to find that athletic stance Sick.

We're almost pro skiers now.

A quicker way to move forwards on the flats is to skate like a cross-country skier.

Here What's important is that you lift one leg and then you push away with the arms and the leg at the same time Like such.

It's a little tricky with the balance and then you repeat So let's learn how to twist the ski or steer them or rotate them Whatever you want to call it.

Because that's what we're gonna need later on when we start doing some nice turns So lift one ski up.

First you can try twisting just the ankle down here And you can twist a little bit Then if you also use the knee and the hip socket you can twist it quite a lot and you get much stronger This is one of the key skills we're gonna work on today Also do it with the other leg and the whole leg To move uphill you gotta learn how to sidestep It's quite simple.

Those hips, move them a little bit up the hill and then you end up more on the uphill edges Take a step still on the uphill edge and move the other one up.

You can use the poles for balance This is how you do a first straight line.

Put your poles below you, take a big step out And another one.

So you still twist those legs just like before.

Look ahead, then you just go Feeling that nice posture Let's learn how to jump on skis already, shall we?

It's rather easy Good skis position and then you sink down a little bit and explode up Just like that.

And do it to challenge your posture So if you sink down, jump a little bit, find a good skis position, then try again What?

That was exciting.

You're now an official freestyle skier All right, let's learn how to stand up again if you fall over.

So we gotta sort out this mess First thing you want to do, pull the skis closer to you, get them up in the air like such It can be pretty heavy in the beginning.

Get it on the side and then do little wiggles Kind of wiggle yourself until The skis are downhill and what you do then is that you put your bottom close to the bindings, push yourself forward Roll up on them.

You can also use the poles to push yourself up again Imagine you just fell over casually where it's a little bit steep Putting your skis on can be a little bit difficult So either you walk down to where it's flat or you do this little trick Put one ski that way and the other one in the opposite direction and this way you can put on two uphill skis So uphill, boom, spin around Kick off some snow And off we go We're moving towards doing some sweet snow plows and we're gonna work on twisting that leg again You just stand like this and try to twist One foot.

Try to have the center of the pivot point in the middle of the boot.

We get a little butterfly or bowtie Let's make it more difficult now so you can make a bowtie shape also with the skis on Try with one ski at a time Lift it and look at the shape That's a bowtie.

Then you can make it harder by doing it with both skis at the same time All right, let's try a straight line to snow plow to straight line again Same thing.

Get in that position And push yourself off.

I think that you're doing those bowtie shapes with your skis again Straight line going into snow plow And this is how to ride any lift basically It's hardly no difference between a button lift, an anchor lift or a sit lift The steps are all the same basically So step one is to look ahead and see how other people are doing it See that you can get some help if you ask for it.

Now make sure to not wear the pole straps Push myself forward to this marked area put the poles away from the lift and look towards the wire and the device.

Just stand there, hold on to it and enjoy the ride All right, you gotta slide through this passage Step one.

So look forwards to see what other people are doing and you can kind of prepare yourself mentally So I'm seeing what they're doing here, okay, they're pushing themselves forward Step two Don't use the pole straps Just hold on to them and use them to push yourself forward Waiting for the gate to open Push yourself towards the marked area.

Here we're at the marked area Put both poles in one hand Look towards the lift or towards the wire, grab it, sit down While you're on the chairlift Take the opportunity to have a nice conversation I can suggest topics like the weather, the snow conditions or uncontroversial political topics So just before you come to the top, lift the bar Get ready, push off and Ski away towards the side Where you're not in anybody's way All right.

Let's try to do a snowplow wiggle.

It's like this wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle And the technique is really simple.

If these are your snowplows, you want to rotate the tips in the same direction to do small turns Really shallow just like this Ready for some gnarly wind here.

I'm just Twisting the feet where I want to go As you're doing this You're gonna feel that you get a bit more pressure on the outside leg.

A bit more pressure there I'm just focusing on Pointing them in a direction I want to go Note that the run here is still very very flat And it's very very exciting Congratulations, that was your first full run If we look at the tracks in the snow here next to me The snowplow wiggles turns were really shaped like that.

So I didn't go very far in one direction or the next Now we're gonna do proper snowplow turns.

So we're gonna do the turns a little bit rounder so that the shape of the turn Helps us Control the speed.

I'm still trying to have My feet rather close together Even if I'm turning much more across the slope and turning across the slope is what's helping us control the speed Also when you're turning more across the slope you'll feel more pressure on the outside leg So at the end of the turn you might need to flex that outside leg a little bit like a shock absorber on a car That's gonna help you stay in a good balance and not end up backseated.

Once you get better Start feeling something we call a pedaling motion How the pressure shifts from one leg to the next There are three common mistakes that often arise when people are learning snowplow turns It's a that they ride terrain that is too steep for them because when it's too steep You're gonna make a very wide snowplow turn to engage the edges more so that you control the speed and then that wide Snowplow is making you backseated and being backseated is one of the most Frustrating bad habits to change.

So it's very important that you stay on a flat slope Really flat so that you can keep a really narrow snowplow so that you can maintain that nice centered skiers position Here are three strategies on going from plow to parallel easier Number one as I see it is increase the speed a wee bit.

It's gonna make it easier To do this which leads to the next part One of the reasons why it feels easier with more speed is that it's easier to put more weight on the outside ski To the extreme, you know, you can do whatever you want with the inside ski if you have 100% of the weight on it So once you got more weight on the outside The third strategy is the following is to flatten the inside ski that you do by kind of pushing out the knee So that you roll out on the little toe and then you can just steer the ski to straight So in the best of all worlds You don't change your stance at all.

You just have the snowplow here Steer it to straight And off you go.

I right now have carved digital ski coach motion sensors in my boots So I can show you how I mean more in detail with those similar edges and rotation of the skis Now on the carve data as we can see here that one of the skis edge angle is even on minus Because it has a different angle than the other ski Here where I'm matching the ski more or less at the fore line or the lines are following each other meaning that they have the same Edge angle and then they diverge quite a lot when we are in the snowplow So here on this third run I'm doing a skidded parallel all the way and you see the edge angle of the skis are following each other Rather nicely, but not perfect.

So that's what we want to do.

Great work You did a parallel turn now we can go to a better slope high five The two major ways you can think about the transition in between the turns So if we imagine I've just finished this turn One way is that you stand up and bring the hip forward and down the hill And that's gonna help you change the edges together The second way you can think about it instead of standing tall You kind of just roll over by softening the downhill ski You're kind of falling over the skis and steer them around I suggest you play around with both just like this the first one I think you try is Standing up and move forwards as you go in between the turns Because here is pretty flat and it gets steeper and you got to move forward to follow The steepness of the slope is getting steeper.

Wow, let's try the other way now just Now I'm gonna soften this inside leg The pole plants timing is just when I finish a turn as I plant And I'm projecting the body down the hill to make the next turn.

So arms forwards, plant Finish a turn, plant Boom Can really help with flow To mark the end of each turn Notice the tracks they're cleanly cutting through the snow That means that they're carving and we're gonna teach you much more about that in the next video So now we're gonna learn three cool mountain skills.

First one is side-slipping This is very important if you ever come across a steep section with too afraid to ski down this could save your day Imagine your hip creates a shadow of your feet.

If it's straight down as now we get gentle edge angle.

We move it higher up More edge angle.

We move down the hill.

We got to start doing what I want to teach you, side-slipping So then while sliding sideways if I want to go forwards I lean down and then back a little bit then the tails are gonna grip more So go that way and now if I move the hip forward a little bit The noses are gonna grip more pushing me that way.

Well, that's a bit much so now stop it Play around with that until you can just slide straight down Balancing the edge grip.

The second important mountain skill is traversing.

It's quite simple Just have a nice skiers position.

Look up the hill and you push yourself off Try to just stand On your skis and enjoy the ride Glance up every now and then and then finish off the traverse With a nice parallel turn.

All right, let's learn how to jump on skis of an actual jump Why not?

It's the first day.

Let's get it.

You know, we practice it standing still just pop Here on the side of the slope.

We got a tiny tiny jump So I'm gonna ski towards it sink down and fully extend the legs Three ways to know if you've done your jump correct One is that you sink down a minimal amount in the in run Number two that you have fully extended the legs Just when the toes have left the jump or at the end of the takeoff Number three if you land with shin pressure in a good skiers position immediately It's likely that you've done everything right But have a friend film yourself so, you know if you've done it the same way as I have I wish you best of luck tomorrow to learn how to ski or now when you get off the chairlift In case you develop any bad habits or so see a ski instructor or maybe join one of our stomp it ski technique camps And we'll fix your common mistakes See in the next video where we're gonna teach you how to carve on skis You