Four ski skills to master before your first day

Here’s four ski skills to learn before your first day on the slops with your child. These will help make sure your child spends their first day on the hill actually skiing.

Goals – Learn about gear, balance and body movements

Ski Gear:

Before you start, this is a great time to make sure your gear is ready:

• Have your boots, gloves, helmet, and goggle.  Check out this simple ski gear guide.

• Have a pair of skis that have been fit to the boots.  

Ski Familiarity Activities:

Find a backyard or on a snowy field and get outside with your gear. Much of this can be done on grass or carpet if need be, but snow will be better.

The goal of these activities is to develop familiarity with gear and terms, and comfort moving on skis, which will serve your child really well when they get on their first slope.

• Check your child’s gear:  waterproof gloves, helmet, goggles, boots that are snugly buckled (with snow pants outside the boot), and skis.  No poles for kids under 7.
• Start with only boots on, and walk forward, backward, side to side, and jump up and down
  • Teach the ‘Athletic stance’ your child lands in when jumping – shoulders over knees and hands out in front.  This is the stance we want to ski in.
• Help your child learn to put on one ski (toe in, and then heel, and you’ll likely need to help push the child’s heel down)
• Skate on 1 ski in a figure eight design along the snow, then switch skis showing how to remove and put on skis again.
• Put on both skis and practice these 4 key ski skills
  • Practice side steps, in both directions
  • Draw pictures or follow patterns by walking in skis
  • Practice making a star by turning in a circle, opening the tips of the skis (Duck Skis)
  • Practice making a star by turning in a circle, opening the tails of the skis (Pizza Skis)
• Introduce your child to 4 positions, Work on shifting between these
  • Athletic Stance
  • French Fries – straight and parallel skis
  • Pizza – Skis with tips close and backs splayed widely
  • Duck – Skis with tips splayed widely and tails close – Quack Quack!

Ski Teaching Tips:

• Parents should wear snow boots for this level as you’ll be walking around
• Make sure you are on relatively flat ground for this
• Keep it fun – kids will need a lot of praise, enthusiasm, and silliness to get through this
• Kids need to learn to activate their core muscles to support their balance, and you will hurt your back if you are trying to support a child’s weight through this entire lesson. 

If your child is reluctant, marching around in the snow helps build leg strength, making a snow angel encourages gross motor skills, “Simon Says” teaches them to follow directions and safety.  Or, have them go through an obstacle course in boots and then try it on skis.

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