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WATERSKI MagazineTop tour competitor and ski-school guru Ben Favret shows you how to bust four bad slalom habits.
Even the best skiers in the world have bad habits. They're constantly struggling to overcome ingrained techniques in an effort to improve their skiing. The best way to improve your weaknesses and break bad habits is the same way the best in the world do: work on specific drills that focus on retraining your muscles to work in a new, better way.
Here are four of the most common slalom problems, their symptoms and a drill to bust each bad habit and replace it with a cure for your skiing.
Bad Habit: Looking Down in the Turn
Symptom: If you look down, you will fall down. If you start falling over in the turn, with no body position problems, odds are you are taking your eyes off the horizon and checking out how close you are to the water or buoy. If you're skiing the course, you'll know you're looking down because you'll get progressively farther down course – instead of initiating the edge change, you're staring down the buoy.
Habit Buster: This cure is guaranteed to work. Take a baseball cap and pull it down low over your forehead just above your eyes. This will force you to keep your head up, with your chin and eyes parallel to the water and horizon. By orienting your eyes with the horizon, you have better balance and are able to maintain a calm upper body.
Bad Habit: Pulling with Your Arms
Symptom: The telltale sign is the bounce you get across the wakes, often resulting in an out-the-front face smacker. Another sign of pulling with your arms instead of your body is having the handle into your chest when you make the edge change.
Habit Buster: The Lean Drill is the answer. Shorten the rope to 28 off (the yellow loop). This will take away the slack rope feeling and keep the rope tight during the drill. Have the driver run the boat around 24-28 mph (for adults, slower for children).
Position yourself at the base of the wake. Shift into correct body position. Get your head up, let your arms out straight (but kept low), bring your hips to the handle, and bend your knees and ankles. Spot a point on the shore on your side of the wake and start leaning to it – and hold that position. Continue to hold your position until you are as far up on the side of the boat as you can get. Practice this movement.
Now add the wake crossing. Start off at the base of the wake, as above. Get into the just-perfected body position, pull 25 to 35 feet outside the wake and go into a glide, with your ski flat on the water. As you begin to slow down and get pulled back toward the wakes, make a slow turn and lean through the wakes the same way you did on the side of the boat. Remember to keep your head up and look across to a point on the shore. Keep leaning through the wakes until you are all the way up on the side of the boat opposite of where you started. Repeat.
Bad Habit: Stiff Legs in the Edge Change
Symptom: After you cross the wakes and begin your edge change, you get a big bounce that causes you to make a long, slow turn. You're probably standing too high in your ski, and your knees are stiff, as opposed to soft and flexible.
Habit Buster: The trampoline is awesome for breaking this habit. Trickers and boarders have used the tramp to learn new tricks, but the benefits for slalom are incredible. Start off by bouncing side to side with your feet in slalom position. Odds are you will have trouble at first because your legs will be stiff, as they would be if you were bouncing straight up and down. To make the side-to-side movement, you must bring your knees into your chest and move them away from your body, just like you are moving the ski out away from you during the edge change. The key is to land with soft knees so you can control the bounce and push off in the other direction. This drill will also help you with head position and balance.
Bad Habit: Off-Center Lower Body
Symptom: Two things will alert you to this problem. If you have a great on-side lean and an extremely poor off-side turn and lean, or if you have long, slow turns on either side, check out your knee position. Your knees should be touching each other or very close to it. If you have more than an inch or two between your knees, see below.
Habit Buster: There are several causes, and several cures. The first cure is to tie a rubber band or bungee cord around your knees to keep them together. I have seen this work wonders for skiers. It keeps their knees in a consistent position, and they gain power and balance. The other cure is to cant the rear binding to the left if you are right-foot-forward and to the right if you are left-foot-forward (similar to a trick ski). I use this technique myself, and it will offer you more leverage against the boat and allow for more knee and ankle flex.
One of the world's most fluid skiers, Ben Favret is among the top 20 slalom skiers in the world – and one of the sport's most respected coaches. He is sponsored by O'Brien, Gekko, Revo and Bennett's Ski School.
