Unweighting

The third primary skill in skiing is Pressure, which refers to how much weight is placed on each ski and where on the ski it is focused. There are actually several components to this skill, and the most recent PSIA instruction manual actually separates this into several individual skills. We can allocate different amounts of pressure to our two skis, we can focus pressure along the skis from tip to tail, and we can decrease pressure on the skis.

For this Tip, let’s focus on decreasing pressure on the skis, also referred to as unweighting. As mentioned in the first discussion of rotation, it is very easy to rotate your skis when sitting on the chairlift, since they are in the air and there is nothing to resist them in turning. The other extreme is the difficulty of rotating your skis when they are edged into the snow. The idea of unweighting is to minimize resistance from the snow to make rotation easier.

There are several ways to do this, the most extreme being to jump up and lift your skis off the snow and rotate them while in the air. However, I defy anyone to do that all day and not collapse from exhaustion!

One way to reduce pressure on your skis is up-unweighting, accomplished by using your legs to push the upper body upwards, and at the top of the motion the weight on your skis is reduced. Down-unweighting, conversely, is done by pulling your legs quickly upward while the upper body stays stable. Of course, you can do both by pulling your legs upward as you reach the apex of an upward body motion. In all of these cases, the weight on the skis is momentarily reduced, making them easier to rotate at that moment.

In the Hockey Stop, Garland and Side Slip drills we explored the effect of decreasing the edge angle to the snow. When the body is angulated (knees and hips up the hill and upper body leaning downhill) the skis are on edge and bite into the snow. To release the edges, we can keep the knees bent and rotate them so the knees point forward and the skis flatten, or we can simply stand up, unbending the knees and flattening the skis. Using this second approach, standing up, upward momentum of the body also causes a brief decrease of your weight on the skis at the top of the motion. That is an example of up-unweighting in practical use.

Drill: Up unweighting:  Hockey Stop redux

The hockey stop combines both the rotation and unweighting skills, so let’s continue perfecting this drill, paying particular attention to the upward movement that initiates the hockey stop. The sequence of motions necessary for a hockey stop is to quickly stand up, thereby flattening and momentarily unweighting the skis, rotating the skis together across the direction of travel while the skis are flat and briefly un-weighted, and then angulating to engage the edges and complete the stop. As you practice your hockey stops, pay attention to this up-unweighting motion to initiate the stop.  Pay attention to up unweighting as you do the drills for the Tip ‘Rotation’.

Drill: Down-unweighting

Go back to the ‘Rotation’ drills and try them by unweighting your skis by quickly pulling up of your feet. That is, keeping the body stable, quickly pull up you lower legs by suddenly bending your knees and pulling your feet upward as you rotate. The weight is momentarily reduced on the skis before your upper body sinks down, giving you a moment to rotate your skis. This may seem tricky at first, but practice makes perfect!

It is a good idea to work on both these approaches to unweighting your skis, since unweighting is a key component of every parallel turn. You should have all of the various techniques at your disposal since you may need them in the wide variety of situations and snow conditions you will encounter.

Videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS7w9y5S7qo

Brief illustration of up unweighting. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekp_t8I789Y

Use of both up and down unweighting when skiing bumps