Picking Ski Poles

Video Transcript

"So in this section I'm going to be giving you a run-through on how to pick proper ski poles depending on your height and your skill level. When starting out it's really important to pick poles that are definitely the right height for your body height. A good trick of how you can tell because you're definitely going to be a little bit taller once you're in all of your equipment, on your skis and stuff like that, so you'll flip the pole upside down. There's a little bit of leeway right here, it's about the same distance that's between the ground and the bottom of your boot. If you flip it upside down and put your hand right below it, what you want is your hand to be at a perfect 90 degree angle with your hand underneath it. This is going to represent the excess room just because of all the equipment that you have on your foot because if you pick one that's a perfect 90 right here, once you get up on your stuff, they're going to be a little bit too short. Recently for freestyle skiing a lot of people have been going with really short poles, or not using poles at all. When you're first starting out it's a really good idea to use poles that are your proper size, just because it's going to be giving you the proper equipment to learn and the proper steps. When you get up to a certain skill level you can choose to shorten the poles or just ditch the poles altogether, but for right now and for starting out, it's definitely a good idea to pick out the poles that are not only visually pleasing to you, but the proper size for your body type."