How to Ski

Series Summary

There’s nothing quite like taking a black diamond downhill run to invigorate the blood, to ignite the lust for more superhuman bursts of speed and acceleration. Only a select few human activities provide this kind of rush: skydiving, base jumping, and luge come to mind. But alpine skiing is one of those special sports that allows you to use the principles of Newtonian physics and aerodynamics—mixed in with a little G-force—to glide over a low friction surface at incredible rates of velocity (dodging large obstacles like trees, rocks, and newbs) and still have time to assume a cool pose as you slide to a stop, covering bystanders in a foot of your crystalline wake.

In this free winter sports instructional video series, learn how to get busy on the slopes, swishing and swooshing your way to excellence as an alpine skier. Getting good isn’t easy, but getting ski lessons from our instructor is a great way to start. He’ll show you a little bit of everything you need to know out there on the snow, including how to choose and carry ski equipment, how to dress, how to take care of your skis, and how to use the ski lift. Once you’ve captured the essence of looking like you know what you’re doing, learn how to practice basic ski moves, how to control your speed on the powder, how to stop, how to turn, how to recover from a fall, and where to go to get more ski instruction. Watch these vids and put this free advice to use on your next ski trip!

Video Transcript

"I'm Ivan Madar. I'm a professional ski instructor and I'm here on behalf of Expert Village. Hi! I'm Ivan Madar. I'm a professional ski instructor and welcome to the Arizona Snowbowl. It's beautiful today and we are going to try to show you how to learn how to ski. I've been a professional instructor for over thirty years in the Rocky Mountain division. I'm a certified instructor, level three, with the United States Professional Ski Instructors of America. First of all, let's see what do we need for skiing, obviously? The obvious things you need some skis, you need some boots and you need to be dressed properly. So, we don't have to get into that in detail. We can get into it as we talk about the instruction. Secondly, you have to make sure you stay safe on the slopes. So we will talk a little bit about the Code of Responsibilities for skiers. But first, let's decide how we are going to show you how you can ski at your level. And, obviously not everybody is physically fit all the time. Not everybody is at the same athletic ability and not everyone has the same level of coordination. But, there's a way to ski for everyone. So, I'd like to show you two ways; how to progress into a nice advanced staged of skiing which we call parallel turn skiing; where you can control yourself, whether you are a conditioned athlete or you are someone who is just starting and have never done anything athletic in your life."