A few things to keep in mind
- Breathe! Don’t hold your breath or hold any tension in your neck and shoulders.
- Chose your terrain wisely – a very gentle downhill incline is perfect.
- Control speed and glide so you are able, as much as possible, to balance on your glide ski. It’s OK to challenge your balance, but don’t push too far beyond your ability to hold your balance on your glide ski.
- If you lose balance and control, simple stop, reset your posture and position, then take small steps to start again.
Transcript
So, we’ve done a couple of passes. There’s a few more things you want to keep in mind.
Number 1 is breathe. It’s really easy to forget breathing when you’re, first of of all, really staying focussed on your postural position. And then you’re trying to think about all the other things around it. And even I find myself having to remind myself to breathe. So, breathe.
Chose your terrain wisely. The terrain we chose here is a very, very gradual downhill. Because, again, you don’t want to have to worry about creating speed via movement. You want to allow the speed to be there naturally, so using terrain that kind of promotes that is really good.
Start with really small steps and movements. Then, as you start to develop more speed, then you can start to lengthen the movements out and focus a bit more on the glide length. But, again, like, only extend the glide length to the point where you’re still able to maintain balance and stability. If you are doing it at the expense of losing the position, then you’ve gone too far. You almost need to stop, and completely reset the core postural position, and then get going again.
Then, on the more extreme end of that, it’s OK to challenge your balance. It’s OK to have a bit of a speed check. The last thing you want – you don’t want to get stuck in the middle of your feet, of your skis. We want to progress you out, to being balanced on your skis. In order to do that, you need to be a little bit more daring in your glide length. You probably – you might fall. That’s OK. You might lose your balance. That’s OK. Every time you do that, just stop. If you do that, stop, reset, and then get going again. It’s a lot better than trying to catch yourself and then trying to keep going.
Stop. Re-set. Re-focus. Then go again. I think if you try those things, and you try it a bunch of times, in a bunch of different settings, you should be great!
