AUSTRIA The Austrian Way - Carving Short Turns

By James Crompton

As my first Interski, it was videos of previous events show runs that inspired me to attend Team Austria’ workshop on ‘Carving’. Their performances in the show runs in Levi were equally as impressive - fast, clean, accurate, disciplined, powerful skiing with complex choreography and almost perfect synchronisation.

Making my way over to the crowd of Austrian Trainers, one of their team members, Florian Perner, said “G’day mate, you coming with me?” Flo’s partner is our side of the world and he’d certainly inherited some of her Aussie accent and dialect! Flo was joined by Sandro Kleinhans and we spent the morning learning about their progressions and focuses when teaching carving to guests.

Snowsport Austria uses the colour grading of their ski slopes (green, blue, red, black) to zone the different levels of skier/lessons in their progressions, in quite a similar way as the APSI does with beginner (green), intermediate (blue) and advanced (black) in our Manual, App and other resources. Like much of the world, by ‘carving’ the Austrian’s are referring to what we in Australia refer to as ‘pure carving’.

 

    

 

Fan Method

The Austrians use the “Fan Method” to introduce the concept of allowing the skis to travel along their length with the tail of the ski precisely following the tip. Starting with several attempts with the skis pointed across the hill, and only slightly down the hill, much like a carved traverse.

As the guest becomes successful, we start to point the skis further down the hill. Then further down the hill. Then eventually down the fall line, carving across and back up the hill. Essentially, a pure-carved J turn.

During the turn (or what is really just the bottom half of the turn) we move:

• From a “high middle position" standing tall over the centre of the skis…
• To a “low middle position” flexing to stand smaller on the skis

And engage the edges of the skis using the ankles, then knees

 

    

 

Edge to Edge in the Fall-Line

After much practice of the fan method, the next task is to take the same edging movements to turns in the fall line and have the skis moving through both the bottom and top half of the turn but not deviating too far from the fall line. Essentially, edge rolls.

The method used here was moving very quickly from edge to edge, travelling quite fast down the fall line on a blue gradient slope, focusing on:

• Low position
• Hockey position (tuck position)
• Feet as wide as hips
• See the lines in the snow, always two clear lines
• Still with upper body
• Edge with the knees

  

 

End Form

The final stages of the progression moved us into some short carved turns. The key here is to use a flat slope, but carry enough speed so there are sufficient forces to balance against during the turn. Progress to steeper terrain once confidence is there.

We continued development by following the instructor (or trainer in this scenario) varying the turn size and shape, at slower and faster tempo’s, creating experience, feeling the difference between longer and shorter turns.

The Austrian workshop was great, great fun, with plenty of skiing, lots of chat and some of the most astonishing demonstrations to inspire our own performances. Flo and Sandro were as clear, specific and deliberate in their delivery as they were in their skiing. And super fun skiers to spend a morning with - thanks team!