Dragging your poles
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Dragging your poles helps keep your upper body upright while turning, working on lateral counter and some rotational counter plus, of course, pole awareness.
If you lean/bank on either side, you will lift one pole from the snow - instant feedback. Likewise, if you extend "up" you will lift both poles from the snow, so the major external cue here will be spraying snow from the pole tips.
Take off the pole straps and hold the poles from the handles. Press their tips into the snow, beside your boots, not in front or behind the boots.
Do a run where you focus on pressing the tips into the snow and focus on spraying snow all the way down. This will ensure the pole tips don't come off the snow and this will keep your upper body from leaning into the turn.
Note how in transition you have to stay lower (so more flexing than hopping up) and when you turn, you are more upright as opposed to leaning into the turn. Turning angles are limited because of the poles.
Progress to holding the poles from even lower, to get even more flexed. Exaggerate and hold the poles from the middle!
See video
Variation - more performance
Dragging your poles from below the handles helps keep you stay low in transition and upright while turning, working on Flexing, rotational counter and lateral counter.
Here's how the pole drag will look like at a more performance level - note that the skier is holding them very low, not from the handles:
Start by doing the pole drags from just below the handles. As you progress to the exper level, you'll have to hold them from even lower down. Do this often! Some mention the idea of "skiing in a tunnel" where your head cannot hit a low ceiling, but in general, it's better to focus attention on the hips staying level and work more from the lower body.
Benefits of flexing include greater edge angles and more solid carving.
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To read
Concepts:
Related drills:
Tech talks / on snow:
- Poles:
- Upper body:
Posts:
Start improving your counterbalancing
By: Razie | 2015-08-18 .. 2022-01-02 | Tags: drill , flexing , counterbalancing , improve-skiing , blue
