Improve Your Ski Carving With Two Simple Hand Position Cues

This video addresses how to significantly improve ski carving by focusing on upper body and hand position. The central argument is that two simple, powerful cues can create an immediate and noticeable improvement in balance, ski grip, and overall turn quality, as demonstrated by two skiers who experience a breakthrough in just one run.

The Two Powerful Cues for Carving

The core of the lesson revolves around two specific adjustments to your hand position while skiing:

• Keep Palms Facing Down: For enhanced balance, consciously keep your palms facing the snow, much like a tightrope walker. This instinctual balancing position creates a feeling of safety and stability. It also provides more physical space for your body to move, allowing for higher edge angles without your arms getting in the way.
• Control Your Outside Hand: Avoid the common mistake of letting your outside hand rise during a turn. Instead, focus on keeping it at a consistent height or, even better, letting it get progressively lower towards the snow as you move through the arc of the carve. This maintains crucial pressure on the outside ski, improving its grip and performance. A key refinement is to allow this hand to move inward (toward the center of the turn) as it lowers, preventing a “blocked” feeling and enabling a more fluid motion.

Conclusion and Training Philosophy

The video concludes that these simple hand position changes deliver immediate results, making skiers feel more stable, relaxed, and in control. This is part of a broader coaching philosophy: improve your overall skiing by isolating and mastering individual skills. By focusing on one component at a time, like hand awareness, a skier can turn a conscious thought into an automatic feeling. This process builds a foundation for fluid, reactive skiing where movements become subconscious, allowing the skier to focus on the terrain ahead rather than complex internal instructions.

Mentoring question

During your carving turns, where do you typically hold your hands? How could applying the ‘palms down, outside hand low’ technique change your sense of balance and edge control on your next day of skiing?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vlznXBbJvog&si=52u-NWyZf5FTS-jU