How To Increase Your Edge Angle
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Carving is a rollercoaster and our favorite style of skiing: it means high edge angles, and in this article we go through four tips to help you ramp up that angulation.
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1. Jump over your skis
Before we get into the skiing, our first tip is to jump from side to side, or from foot to foot, and try to carve with no skis on. You need to build up your platform underneath your outside ski before you start building that edge angle.
A great way to experience this is simply by jumping from one foot to the other over your skis. Here's what it looks like:
2. Skating drill
Our second tip is the skating drill. Have you ever ice skated or rollerbladed? It's pretty much the same.
Let's take the motion of jumping from foot to foot, and put it back into skiing. Try skating down the mountain, moving from outside ski to outside ski in order to increase your edge angle. Try to maintain contact with the snow at all times – just imagine yourself skating in an ice rink, and the sensation is very similar.
3. Outside ski drill
After you feel confident skating down the mountain, try to execute your turn on the outside ski.
The motion of jumping from foot to foot (as well as skating) requires us to move our legs freely underneath a stable upper body, in order to create the necessary angulation. The outside ski drill is a great exercise that allows you to test this stability.
Start from a lower body position and try to extend your outside leg, and you should feel a nice gradual edge increase and pressure increase. In between turns, put your uphill ski back into the snow, and as soon as it touches the ground, lift your old outside ski into the air and try to start executing the next turn purely on your outside ski.
4. Monitor your improvements
Carv gives you the instant feedback you need to be able to lean that little bit further and crank your edge angles up a notch.
- Start by developing your edging with Carving Training and Outside Ski Turns Training.
- Challenge yourself to turn with some serious angulation using the Carv Edge Angle Challenge.
- To really dial in your edge angle, use the Edge Angle Monitor (shown on left) to get a live numerical readout on every turn.
We hope these tips and drills will help you get some serious edge angles. Now go try them out!
