Instructional Session: Basic Athletic Stance

Today I led the instructional session on skates on Basic Athletic Stance.  This position is common in almost all sports, and is really important in skiing.  The position is "strong", "balanced", "stable", and "allows you to move in any direction"... all answers given by our campers!  In skiing, ideally athletes return to this position in the transition between turns, really only lasting a fraction of a second, before moving into the next turn.  The majority of the individual turn, or even entire run, is completed in some degree of a parallel position.  However, this basic athletic stance allows the skier to be in a good position entering turns.


We've all seen videos of an off-balanced Bode Miller or Ted Ligety make amazing turns.  For the most part, these people are super humans who escape mistakes because of their amazing natural athletic ability and fitness.  For the majority of skiers world wide, especially junior skiers, eliminating mistakes by being forward and balanced leads to cleaner and more powerful turns and race runs.




After getting comfortable with the position on our sneakers, we moved to skates.  The SDSC campers worked their way through a progression of Basic Athletic Stance, flexing, hopping, all the way up to JUMPING on the skates, clearing different heights.  The campers did great.

Team Switzerland!!!