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Mark Henry Mark Henry is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Port Hope (near Toronto) On, Canada
Posts: 4,566
The new skis are an adjustment from the old, you should take a few refresher lessons.
Old ski's were more like oversized Ice skates, hard turns on the edges, instead of gently S carving. It's hard to break that habit until you are shown what you are doing wrong.
Once you do see it, correction comes quickly.

With new skis look at the alpine snow boarders, how they turn you see a lot of the bottom of the board. The new skis are same, the more weight you put on the turning edge (and lift of the downhill side), the more bottom of the ski one would "see", the more the ski turns itself. Not a hard skating turn, but a gential rocking the lets the ski work (carve) themselves.
Look at how the ski's are in the above pic, you obviously don't want to go as extreme and you don't want to crouch like a racer, but you want to see the bottom of the ski along those lines.
BTW This is what the info on your ski's mean regarding "turn radius", when carving proper it's how much (radius) the ski will turn itself.

The next point and this has a lot to do with the speed issue you are having, is leaning properly over the skis. Many old school skiers tend to lean too far back on the ski's. For this your first 2-3 runs of the day hold both poles horizontally with both arms outstretched straight in front of you and bend your knee's.
This will force you to lean forward and you will start to see a difference in your carving almost immediately. Later in the day, if you start to notice you are leaning back too far again, just repeat above for a couple runs.
I consider myself quite an advanced skier and I still do this every outing.

Both these points go hand in hand, the more you begin to lean forward the faster you go, the faster you go the more precise your carving will become. In turn your carving is what will control your speed.

Last point is to make sure the skis are the correct type for your skill level and the type of skiing you are doing.
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Last edited by Mark Henry; 01-04-2016 at 10:36 AM..
Old 01-04-2016, 10:10 AM
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