Drills:
The best way to become comfortable with this stacked stance is to practice it on the groomers for hours. If you are a twenty or more days per season skier, devote three or more days to just practicing on intermediate and single-diamond groomed runs, always trying to keep yourself in this stacked posture. Try to make medium-radius turns using solely ankle/knee/hip angulation (do not drop your hips or shoulders toward the snow as you would in a typical alpine turn). Hint: it’s okay to slide a little bit when making these turns!
As you become more comfortable with those turns, begin progressing toward quicker, short-radius turns using the same technique as in the medium-radius turns (short-radius turns will be discussed in detail in section 4).
If you only have several days each season to ski, then learning to ski moguls could prove quite a challenging task. However, do not fret! You’ll do yourself a big favor if you make certain to master this stance on the flats before even setting skis in the bumps, even if it takes all of your ski days in one season. Once you have the posture down, you will be able to improve in the bumps much more quickly. Remember, if you don’t have many days each season to ski, don’t rush it and don’t get frustrated if it takes a while to get to your desired level. When you take your time and learn it properly, you’ll have much more fun (not to mention look much better) in the end. If you rush things, you’ll get hurt.
Mogul Skiing Technique Guide
Before You Hit the Bumps: Basic Stance and Techniques
The Web's #1 Source for All Things Mogul Skiing
Before you decide to go gung-ho in the zipper-line, there are some techniques and posture ideas with which
you should become comfortable.
First of all, you should at least be a solid intermediate skier on groomed
terrain before venturing too seriously into the bump fields. It’s for your own safety, I promise!
You should
immediately get to know the
appropriate mogul skiing native posture. This is
the basic stance you will use in all of your
skiing,
in or out of the bumps. Speaking of
which, it should be made known that if you are
serious about skiing moguls, until you’ve
mastered
the techniques involved, you should
take a brief hiatus from alpine carving and racing
style skiing. You will need to ski the flats
the
same way you ski the bumps when you're learning.
In the native stance, you should be what folks
in the mogul world call, “stacked.” This means that your feet, knees, and shoulders should make a line, and should all be stacked
on top of the other. If you do this correctly, you should feel your shins putting solid pressure on your boot tongues (be sure to
maintain this pressure while skiing). As you are actually turning, your shoulders and hips should be stacked over your downhill ski
(more on this later). You need to become comfortable with this position -- it is absolutely crucial to your success in the bumps.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that you need to be intimate with it. It needs to become second nature. Catch my drift? Skiing
in a stacked posture will help to keep your skis under your body, and keep them from shooting out in front of you.
Another key to correct mogul skiing is a relatively tight stance. In other words, as mogul skiers, we ski with our skis much closer
together than someone carving would. I personally ski with a stance so tight that my ankles are practically locked together. My ski
tip corners are well shaven from crossing at the very tip. You could adopt this type of stance, or you could go for a slightly wider
stance. A general rule of thumb would be to keep your stance no wider than about four or five inches (space between your boots). This
helps you to keep balanced in the bumps, and helps your skis work together in absorbing the bumps.
The images
below show mogul skier Aaron Peets in a stacked position with a nice tight stance: