Hitting Snow Skiing Jumps

Video Transcript

"In this segment I'm going to be teaching you how to hit a basic jump. When you're first starting out, you're going to make sure to pick a smaller jump. One that you're more comfortable with. You're not going to want to pick one that's going to boost you off the front of it, getting a lot of air, you just would really want to get comfortable with taking off and landing properly, so then you could eventually move up to hitting the bigger jumps and doing some of the bigger tricks. Now what you first would really want to focus on, like I mentioned before, is being in the proper stance. You want your feet, shoulder width apart, allowing for you to have the proper balance and you want your hands out in front. If your hands are back here or if you're leaning back, you're going to take off the jump and it's going to kick you, in the back seat and you're going to end up landing on your back or landing on the backs of your skis and your skis are going to fall off. You also don't want to be leaning to far forward because then you're going to end up doing the exact opposite and you're going to, eventually, come forward and you can smack the face and it's just no fun and then it helps prevent injuries, when you're just in the proper stance. So with the proper stance, with a little bit of pressure on the front of your boots, you're going to go and as you come up, to a lip, you're going to pop, slightly. You're not going to jump like really high and hard because the lip of the jump will actually do that for you but you want to pop with the jump. Then, when you're in air, you want to suck your knees up, a little bit and then when you're coming back down, you want to keep your knees down and bent a little bit but not super far, like this, because, if you do that then you're just going to compress and bounce off of it, so just leave them, a little bit up, so you can take the landing. Then when you land, come back up, to your normal stance, and ski away. So now I'm going to be giving you, a basic run through, on how to start off hitting jumps. What you want to do, what you don't want to do, pretty much the speed, the stance and everything like that. So starting off, you want to make sure you're still in your stance, having your feet should width apart, hands out in front, I can't stress that enough. You don't want to be back seat, you don't want to be too far forward and when you're first starting out, you're going to want to pick a smaller jump, just so you'll feel more comfortable doing it, you want to take baby steps, with learning how to do freestyle tricks. You don't want to jump up and just hit something that's way to far, past your ability. So, what I'm going to do now is just go off. I'm going to walk you through hitting the jump, when you're supposed to pop, when you're supposed to land and everything like that. So now I'm going to go and get a little bit of speed because this jump is not that big but you want to go and don't take off at an edge, pop a little bit and then land like that and ride it out. Also, another thing that you don't want to do is you don't want to stop too close, to the landing of the jump. You want to make sure that you clear out of the way, just so people, who are hitting the jump behind you, can hit the jump without having to worry about hitting you or landing on you and just to make it so it's just safer and more fun for everybody. And that's how you go off and start hitting a jump."