Active steering revelation, courtesy of B.Barnes

I've been lurking here for a while now, and wanted to share a revelatory experience that I had this morning. First, a little background.

I first started skiing last season in Colorado, just before Thanksgiving 2003. I took three 2-1/2-hour group lessons at Loveland, and fell in love with it. Then I skied almost every weekend I had available (totalled about 35-40 days for the season). I cut out the wedges and quickly moved from green to blue runs. Did blues all over Summit County -- Copper, A-Basin, Breckenridge, Keystone, Mary Jane -- no problem on any of the groomed blues. But then I realized (after spending much time on EpicSki) that while I was able to do the blues, I was not carving at all, but skidding 100% of my turns. After reading up more on EpicSki, I started concentrating on carving, completing the turns, etc., to the extent that by the end of the season, I was able to carve most of my turns, most of the time.

However, in addition to still some skidding on my left turns, one thing I could not do is make tight, short-radius turns. Another way to say it is that I could not really control my turns. While I was getting high edge angles and carving, I felt that my skis were dictating the turns. While I could vary the amount of edging and somewhat control my turn, I still didn't feel completely in control.

So when I turned up at Loveland this past Friday and met Bob Barnes, I was able to ask him about my turns, about how I could make tighter turns. After watching me ski, Bob saw two things: (1) I was getting in the backseat after my right turns, resulting in a skidded left turn and (2) that I lacked inside leg steering. After doing some runs keeping a focus on keeping the body over my feet, both he and Rusty Guy suggested that I do the "1000 steps" drill. Bob spent several runs doing "1000 steps", and eventually moving to "2000 steps" and "4000 steps" drills at the bottom of Home Run. Just making turns using the inside leg to steer, creating a "V" shape with my skis (tails close, tips apart). While I could do the drills, I couldn't translate it into my "real" skiing.

Well, I went to Loveland this morning, and after the first run, something just clicked. At the apex of the turn, I simply moved my inside leg up/into the mountain -- and suddenly I whipped around the turn. It finally felt like I was able to command my skis to go where I wanted them to. The more I moved my inside ski up/into the mountain, the tighter the turn. I was able to make tight, controlled turns the way I had never done by simple edging. Since I was trying to translate the "1000 steps" drill into my turns, I was creating a slight "V" shape at each turn as I moved my inside ski up (which BB assures me should go away as I get better!).

It felt like my outside leg was basically the "standing"/carving leg, while the inside leg was the steering one. It was a feeling of breakthrough -- I finally had something in my "arsenal" that I could use to conquer harder trails. I subsequently sought out the steeper parts of the only two open blue runs (Spillway and Richard's Run), and where previously my carving had given way to skidding, I was able to control my turns and carve across the slope using my inside leg steering.

One thing I did notice is that whenever I got lazy and did not keep my body over my feet (i.e. moved into the backseat), I was completely unable to do the inside leg steering -- I ended up with a skidded turn and attempting to do the inside-leg steering produced a wedge.

Just wanted to share my experience, and give kudos to B.Barnes for the breakthrough I feel I've achieved. I may not have gotten all the semantics and wording right in my description, but I can tell you, my skiing feels great, I feel like I am in 100% control of my turns, and cannot wait to tackle the harder terrain!

Btw, did anyone see the skier at Loveland today who was skiing on only one ski because he'd forgotten his other boot? Just like in "Better Off Dead"!

In 2000 steps, you're taking twice as many steps to make the same movements; in 4000 steps, four times as many. The idea is to start with the large, discrete steps (1000 steps) and work up to smoothing the movement (4000, 8000 steps). "Proper" inside-leg steering is essentially an "infinite" step movement.

I can't take the credit, Bob, since those were pretty much your words to me on Friday.

I should perhaps mention that your explanation of how we could go from 1000 to 2000 to 4000 to infinite steps = active steering, really made me link the drills to what I was trying to do on my runs. Just doing the 1000 steps had me thinking, "How can I translate this into real turns? These are big movements, and I cannot really do these on actual turns." But when you broke it down further, I was able to see and physically feel the difference, and a light went on, about how the 2000, 4000, infinite steps would lead me to active steering in my real turns.

So for me, just the 1000 steps wasn't enough -- it was the progression of 1000 -> 2000 -> 4000 -> infinite that made the breakthrough.