2 Training drills to master cutting on your skis

The key to becoming a confident jumper isn’t necessarily based solely around the amount of time on the ramp. When you first start jumping going over the ramp and getting used to the feel of the ramp is important, as you progress cutting or riding your skis becomes just as important as going over the ramp.

In this article we’ll look at drills designed to help you master where to stand on your skis, these are great when your just starting to jump and also when you’ve reached a high level. You can also use these as part of a winter training program

Crane Drill

This is a great drill and one I learnt at my time spent at Bennetts Ski School. The key to the Crane Drill is to keep your arms straight allowing your body to stay centered over your bindings. Their should be no movement from your hips, shoulder and head.

This Drill allows us to find the alignment we are looking for between our right foot, right hip, and right shoulder. The goal is to follow your skis with limited angle, use a shallower angle when you start and gradually build the angle up the more confident you get.

If your moving around and using your arms then your past your comfort zone.

Land on one ski Drill

At the start of our jumping career we’ll start by using two skis to move across course, this is fine when you have shallow angle and learning to balance on top of your skis. Once we start generating more angle across course we need to develop our skills to trust the right ski more, the ski that’s closest to the boat. Our goal is allow our right foot, right hip, and right shoulder to be aligned against the boat, the left ski should not be used to cut across course, the majority of the edging ski should be on the left edge of the right ski.

Our goal is to keep the right hip close to the handle and hold that position through the first wake and into the 2nd wake, we’ll use the 2nd wake to lift the left ski and only be on our right ski for the remainder of the cut. This is highly important to learn this skill of landing on one ski early as it will be an important skill to have once we start cutting at the ramp more aggressively.