Mogul Skiing Technique Guide
Shin Pressure, Stand Tall, Hips Forward!

     Each of these things should happen naturally when skiing moguls with the correct stacked posture. That said, however, they are important enough to warrant their own section. Standing tall with your hips forward, ensuring constant pressure on the tongue of your boot are the things that will allow you to ski the fall line in control and smoothly, looking like a pro.

     Let’s take them in the above order, just for the sake of my obsessive-compulsive organizational needs. Shin Pressure. What mogul skiers mean when they talk about shin pressure is a constant pressure between your shin and the tongue of your boots. This doesn’t mean to push as hard as you can. Just maintain contact/pressure 100% of the time, in or out of the bumps. This helps to keep you stacked, helps drive your tips over the bumps, and keeps your knees in the correct position to comfortably absorb and extend. The minute you feel that you’ve lost pressure on the tongues, do whatever you need to in order to reestablish that pressure.

                              By “stand tall,” I mean that you should make sure that,
                         while maintaining shin pressure, you keep your back straight
                         while you ski. If you ski with your back hunched over or
                         arched backwards or you begin to crouch, you’re putting
                         yourself at risk to hurt your back or neck, and you are also
                         losing your balance and moving your CG, thus abandoning
                         your stacked posture. You are no longer able to properly
                         control your speed, and it’s difficult to absorb and extend.
                         This is relatively straightforward, but try to be conscious of
                         whether your back is straight or hunched over.

                              Think of it this way: letting yourself get in the backseat
                         while skiing moguls is like trying to drive a backhoe up a
                         steep grade. When you're going straight up a steep grade
                         in a backhoe, it puts the CG so far back that the front end
                         will pick up off the ground and you will likely tip backward onto the boom/dipper assembly. Similarly, when you're in the bumps, your CG gets too far behind you and your skis shoot out in front of you. When this happens, you tip over backwards just like the backhoe would (and you might fall on your boom and injure your dipper!).

     One problem that many mogul skiers must overcome is getting their hips too far back and ending up in the back seat. This, again, causes your skis to shoot out in front of you, and you lose control. It also gives you the urge to crouch. The best way to get your hips forward is to think of them leading you down the hill. Now, you don’t want to end up with your hips way out in front of you, but it’s the train of thought that you need to get into. Thrust your hips forward and try to keep them there so that your butt doesn’t end up over your tails. There are several analogies I could use related to keeping hips forward, but because this website is for all ages of mogul skiers, I think we’ll keep it clean!

Drills:

     As with most of the topics already discussed, the place to get used to this is on the groomers. Pick a short section of a medium-pitch intermediate trail, and ski with short-radius turns while being conscious the whole time of ensuring constant shin pressure, standing tall, and driving your hips forward. You need to do this as long as it takes until it’s second nature and simply part of the way you ski. You should do it enough so that it becomes second nature, to the point that if you ever lose shin pressure, or start to crouch, or feel your hips moving backward, you can immediately compensate and fix the problem without any conscious thought or effort.

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