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WATERSKI MagazineRounding the bouys with one hand frozen in the air may look impressive but it's actually a bad habit to form, and one you need to break. The one-handed pose is as precarious a position as you can have on a ski. It's flat-out dangerous. Simply put, two hands give you more control than one, whether you're holding a handle or handling a Whopper.
I know you want to pose, but by releasing a hand you're telling the ski, “OK, I'm ready to turn. Let's decelerate.” And the ski will respond by sinking. That is, if you don't slip first. Or if the boat doesn't inadvertently move an inch and throw you down.
My rule is, you aren't ready to take a hand off the handle until you're ready to bring it back to the handle. It should be like the piston of an engine: It goes up and right back down. Your hand comes off and comes right back on.
Another advantage of two hands is width. If you watched someone slalom from overhead, you'd see how narrow he's forced each time he takes a hand off the handle. Believe it or not, this is one of the elements that separates the thousands of great skiers out there from the dozens of world-class skiers: the number of hands on the handle right up to the buoy.
MasterCraft and HO team member Chet Raley is the coach for world-class slalom skiers.
