Fall Into The Turn - Page 1
By Todd Murchison, November 27, 2000

Avid skiers all strive to gain the power, grace and freedom of making expert turns. We tax our brains by dissecting and analyzing every little movement we ‘should’ and ‘should not’ make. We sweat through endless exercises designed to train our body. We search for and buy the latest equipment. Some of this agonizing work and money is necessary, but some of it could just be skipped with proper application of a little relaxation, and a little falling into the turn.

Falling is something people instinctively fear to do, for good reason, but that fear has to be calmed for good skiing. Every single turn you make on skis requires that you give in some to gravity, and the better the turn the more you will give in.

Coaches and instructors call this movement "crossover", it feels like a controlled fall. The skier must allow themselves to let their body freefall for a moment in the direction of the new turn. At the end of that turn you then allow your body to cross back over your skis and fall into the new turn. For the uninitiated this is a frightening feeling, for accomplished skiers this is one of the most pleasurable feelings the sport imparts.

This crossover movement is essential because as you make stronger turns you create more force in those turns, to resist this force you must lean into it. Is it possible to take a bike around a corner fast without banking into the turn? You won’t make it far around the corner if you try.

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