Hand Drag Drill For High Edge Angle Carving

oh that's the best car we've ever done yes [Music] hey this is Tom gelly from Big Picture skiing and I have a question for you do you find you're at the level that you can carve a green slope even an easy blue absolutely fine but you get to something steeper like a steeper blue or a black run and you can't control your speed that carving actually ends up barreling you really fast down the hill out of control and it feels like too much power to deal with well you're in luck today I'm going to show you a drill called hand drags and a progression to help you build confidence feel far safer and convert that gravity pulling you down the hill into exciting speed across the slope I'm also going to use two real life skiers who have this issue they find that they get on steeper blues and they cannot manage the pressure and the forces built up so if this sounds like you tune in take notice of all the steps and let me help you take your skiing up to the next level let's do it [Music] you guys okay so I've got a drill for you coming up but first of all I just want you to take notice from the back that on some turns down here I am progressively edging my ski more and more throughout the whole turn so Progressive being it's tilting more and more over instead of tilting and stopping at a certain point the reason I need that to happen is because Progressive edging means to ski can bend more if the ski can Bend more it can it can turn sharper without me needing to Skid it so from behind I want you to be watching that I'm progressively edging more and more in my turn look [Applause] foreign [Music] so the first step in getting this Progressive edging so you can bend the ski so you can tighten the radius is to do something called a hand drag so you're going to get rid of your poles so you could leave them at the top of the lift give them to a friend leave them at the bottom and you're going to work on on the kind of terrain that you are trying to get better at carving on so here fairly steeper blue okay I'm gonna do a j turn so I'm going to go down the slope carry some speed so I want some speed start rolling my edges on like you're used to from the inside hand you're gradually going to let get closer closer closer to the snow until it drags it's really important you kind of put it down like this because your brain and body will feel comfortable dragging your hand on the snow even different to with a ski pole getting rid of it gives you far more confidence to do so we're going to take like a leaf out of our snowboarding friend's book we see a lot of them maybe they've got hands-free they'll put their hand down as a bit of a support feel good thing to uh yeah to get confidence gone right over [Music] one turn at a time you're going to watch from over there and then we're going to get our friend to have a go and see if see if you can feel the hand drag J turns yeah awesome could you guys feel the closer when you've got the hand on the snow the ski really started bending yeah as a bent you actually control your speed you went up the hill very smooth yeah yeah because part of what I've seen a lot of people seeing that is blocking them is they're too angulated you want angulation but you also want inclination okay so when you reach your hand in it it helps you guys from being there all the time to bringing your like your upper body weight in line with the forces okay to help with the confidence if you can get on the side of the run and there's some soft snow so he's really really soft it's a great place to just practice this feeling of not reaching the hand but the whole body moving in together I'm going to go here increase my edge angle increase my edge angle and let my hip touch the snow lovely and soft see if you can trust letting that happen guys yeah nice okay I'd say the next one see if you can be not a complete pencil go to your angulated position here here and then just let the angulated position yeah there you go that's what I feel like right there and see we're all in the position we want to be in can you tell this is foreign usually you're yeah yeah spots out here great so perfect little uh drill to practice stationary getting some soft snow practice practice a steeper slope is better because it's not as far to fall on your hip soft snow gives you some confidence we'll try it to the other side and then start linking it [Music] [Applause] [Music] really fun drill [Music] yeah awesome [Music] uh you guys you want to practice those J turns like quite a few times like really just get get comfortable that you can pick up speed and you can kind of slow it down by really inclining progressively edging more bending that ski really coming up the hill like you could see there's our tracks coming up here so we're going to do more both sides The Next Step will then be linking it [Music] I'm not sure if you felt this but when you got your hand closer and closer to the snow could you feel your inside leg was really bent could you feel that yeah so that's a great like cue that to know you're doing the right thing if you don't feel this leg bending and people are trying this they're probably going to fall over there's a long leg short leg sensation to link the turns you're just going to go long leg short leg make the short leg longer up and over gradually start rolling the edges this one's going to shorten as I touch the snow so you just want to link as the hand gets closer the inside leg is going to shorten even further let's try linking some of those turns down here making sure we check up the hill first and really finish off the turns even if the start of the turn is kind of we we skid it a little bit that's okay I want you to just feel the progressive edging now this drill is seriously good fun and getting rid of the poles changes things quite a lot you wouldn't think it but your brain feels so much more comfortable you'll feel far safer to increase your edging to work on progressively increasing that angle further and further because you've got something to sort of save you put on the ground in case things go wrong so find a really nice open slope this is really important you want to feel safe like no one's going to hit you from behind as well good snow conditions also helps but now as you're working on linking you're just going to try and drag the hand on one side and then start moving over and try and drag the hand as soon as you can on the other side you'll see soon one of the students takes the J turn too seriously and is only trying to drag the hand sort of later in the turn but the earlier you can get that hand over the more you're going to be progressively edging and creating earlier Edge angles and making that ski Bend higher in the arc which will mean the speed control will be far better so with your first few goes at linking these uh hand drag turns what would you say would be helpful to the people trying it I would say start off with just a little bit and then work your way get the pendulum swing and go bigger and bigger and bigger they've really worked for me up there at least yeah yeah I think uh don't be scared to take up the whole slope for the first few goes just because if you're trying to do it tight then it's going to be you know yeah we've got a pretty nice wide open slope here I know some people might not have that like that's going to be a key part to success we've got great snow good light big wide open slope um that part that part gives you some confidence right the guys are going to practice down here and we'll check on how they're they're feeling because this is the slope this is where you guys would feel usually uh oh like I don't know if I can pure carve this whole thing I'm going to be going pretty fast so yeah let's see if they happen yeah let's let's see if the hand drags help so here goes AJ and it's really helpful because AJ does a couple of common problems one he's bending both legs to hand drag you only want to bend the inside one and keep the outside leg straighter the second thing is he's reaching down to try and touch the snow quite late compared to Eric coming up Eric grabs the snow reaches over really early in the turn so just watch out for these common problems it may happen to you now here goes Eric and you'll notice the difference between Eric and AJ is Eric is reaching the hand to the snow a little earlier he's also keeping that outside leg longer and only really bending the inside one and he's really pulling some pretty tight arcs right here and you'll hear from him in a moment he is thrilled he's feeling stuff he's never felt before he's getting past that over angulated position that you saw in the photos before and what he always gets trapped doing when the runs get steeper that was fun is that different oh yeah wow like massively oh I felt so much control yeah sick that's pretty cool hey very nice oh my God okay so Eric just had a Blinder of a run nailed it first go and AJ did really well doing doing the hand drags the difference between the two is Eric started to try and put his hand down as soon as he transitioned yep so it was hand drag and he went right how early can I start hand dragging on the other side okay yes so you you did a good job you were hand dragging you got your hand right over inclined a lot but it was always really late so the the greater inclination means the ski bends and turns more if you can start turning up higher you're going to control your speed earlier instead of like whoa picking up a lot of speed so all you're going to do different this time is try and touch the snow as early as you can yeah without falling over but you really got to commit commit and then just keep going with it okay so next step if you haven't got to where Eric jump to is just try and touch the hand to the snow as early as you can and Link the touching with your increase in edge angle [Music] here's a great chance to see Eric on exactly the same run but this time doing hand drags at the top so what I see is that Eric is able to deal with the forces that come from the turn much better he's also progressively edging the ski far better so he's doing it higher up in the turn because that early hand drag touch so like right there he's starting to work the ski bend the ski more above the four line and into the fall line and as it starts to get steeper here this is where he would usually get squatted and pressured out but now he's able to deal with the pressure because he's got more inclination and he's lining his whole entire Mass up against these forces so you had a better run there and the straighter leg worked yeah absolutely yeah and what did you say the straighter leg also helped you with I found that it helped me actually bring up my inside leg getting a bit further apart so I could kind of get a bit low for the ground yeah um would you say the feeling is you really get now this long leg short leg you've probably heard people talk about absolutely yeah yeah that's one thing I feel the hand drags for whatever reason I think because you're down here really kind of flexes your upper body in the right spot instead of like here sometimes you're upright you reach down you want your hand in line with uh with your boot like not behind it not too far in front but sort of just in line with the toe piece and uh yeah you really get that folded leg and and as you said the long outside leg helped really feel the short inside like yeah cool all right guys we're at the point of putting the hand drags into your free skiing so you've got your poles now and we talked about how it doesn't feel quite as safe to do that hand drag thing when you got the poles back okay that's okay because in reality I don't really want to be dragging my Knuckles too much like if I do it it's very very very light and it is with it is the Knuckles part okay so we're doing hands down this one it is Dragon Knox okay so like that so as you go down to the snow maybe even try this maybe lie down and just get familiar with okay if my hand is going to touch the ground I'm not going to lean on it but I'm just going to to sort of Center you'd be surprised how even just sensing your knuckles will actually make you feel way more comfortable with these higher Edge angles okay it's like a putting a finger on the wall when you're balancing on one leg you don't need to like put your whole hand just a little bit of proprioception even the inside pole basket I sort of lightly drag that in my turns to simulate it's like an extension like a tentacle extension of my hand I can feel it feel it feel it feel it feel it feel it feel it feel it feel it all the way down but remember that you had the best success Eric showed it had the airplane arms he like went in early with the hand don't worry if you get on your inside ski which is all part of like just really pushing like the inclination comfort zone get that ski bending early on the other side we've got a great wide open pitch no one's skiing now they're all in at lunch that's another hot tip yeah ski at lunchtime while everyone else is eating let's just see what happens when you put it in with with poles again and we'll wrap it up after that [Music] yes yes oh my God that was nice oh my God oh my inside something on the snow we're inside that yeah yeah okay yeah oh my God so the brand new experience yeah yeah brand new experience oh my God it felt so easy as well it's a trolls I'm like yeah I don't really know what to say yeah that was amazing oh I'm so happy [Music] guys what a cool change in your skiing amazing you're going to be buzzing you're probably going to remember this for the rest of your life the day you learned to really carve when you were both there was Knuckles on the ground hips so close to the ground but you know like people sometimes see that and say it just looks cool there's a functional purpose like you feel it's less effort yeah way easier way more control yeah like we said before this kind of terrain I've never skied that clean before it's been a bit scary I yeah I don't really know how else to explain it I just yeah yeah yeah yeah I just feels so happy right now yeah that's really bad yeah awesome so in summary First Step static hand drag inclination find some soft Snow Yeah and just get used to really falling over okay drag the the palm of the hand we found out thanks to AJ once you start doing J turns which you'll be comfortable with to link them you had to get the hand touching as early as possible yep okay then when we brought back the poles again go back to static practicing where's that pole going to be what am I going to be dragging so I don't break a thumb or whatever and it's really light and as you get better and better you'll almost be lighter and lighter and barely even touch the hand at all it'll feel like it's the the hip sort of dragging if you need to but it's actually cleaner to just get like the hip a little bit off the snow so follow that progression remember to be safe looking up the hill when you're practicing your J turns try and look for like a good day like we have Sunny wide open slope you want a bit of pitch okay too easier run you won't get enough speed and forces and when you drag the hand you'll be doing this not properly leaning over you want it you want to get some forces and remember this is for people who are already pretty good at carving you can you can definitely rail the turn from top to bottom you're ready for that next step I want to say thanks guys thank you yo thanks so much man my pleasure look forward to seeing some Instagram shots of you guys just laying it right over if you're interested in more stuff from Big Picture skiing this is seriously a small piece of the big picture of skiing I've got hundreds of videos I teach you about Moguls your equipment body Mobility preparation carving shortens everything there's tons more on there go there and check it out and you will be finding the potential to be the best gear you can be just like these guys let's go rip it boys [Music] [Music]

Channel: Tom Gellie - Big Picture Skiing

Views: 367,988

Keywords: Tom Gellie, big picture skiing, carving, how to ski, ski drills, skiing, Hand Drag Drill For Dynamic Carving, hand drag drill for dynamic carving, how to carve, tom gellie, ski carving, coaching, carve, carve skiing, how to carve on skis, skiing learning curve, Dynamic Carving, dynamic carving, head up carving, outface carving, expert skiing, ski technique videos, how to turn on skis, ski instruction, get better at skiing, carv, ski, ski training

Id: 6B6icv_HX84

Length: 21min 49sec (1309 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 23 2023