Turning Right and Turning Left

[Harvey]

This weekend I discovered something that seems so obvious that I can't believe I didn't notice it before. It makes sense that you'd have a strong side and a weaker side, but it's really dramatic, especially when I get tired.

I turn much more energetically to the left. At the end of the day today I found myself jump turning to the left (strong side) and doing these poll plant pivot turns to the right. Both are fun, but I realize how odd I must look skiing through the trees.

Are you a "rightie"? Do you make stronger turns to the left? Do you care? Should I?

 

[wonderpony]

This weekend I discovered something that seems so obvious that I can't believe I didn't notice it before. It makes sense that you'd have a strong side and a weaker side, but it's really dramatic, especially when I get tired.

I turn much more energetically to the left. At the end of the day today I found myself jump turning to the left (strong side) and doing these poll plant pivot turns to the right. Both are fun, but I realize how odd I must look skiing through the trees.

Are you a "rightie"? Do you make stronger turns to the left? Do you care? Should I?

I actually find this fascinating. While the vas majority of skiers ski much faster than I do, I really enjoy the meditative aspect of skiing. I really like focusing on my turns and my balance. Same thing when I ride my horse. Where is my balance? The thing about your balance on a horse is that it shifts your saddle sideways and messes up both of you. It varies from day to day. If I'm out walking, I will play with weighting one leg. It is definitely easier for me to weight my left leg when walking. But, I think it's easier for me to weight my right leg and turn to the left when skiing. Weird.

 

[MarzNC]

Are you a "rightie"? Do you make stronger turns to the left? Do you care? Should I?

I'm very right-handed. Also tend to stand in a completely unbalanced way by locking my left knee. The key difference for ski turns for me was the difference I have in hip flexibility. In general, my left foot/leg is lazy and prefers to follow instead of lead. End result was that turning right on skis had always been more natural than turning left. Became much more of an issue when I started skiing steeper terrain, bumps, and trees more regularly.

It took a few seasons and working with a really experienced instructor (PSIA Examiner) at my home hill (Massanutten) to get the left turn working correctly 95% of the time. The 1-hour lesson that led to an AHA! moment was on a short green, followed by runs on the short easy blue (2 min to finish). I knew for sure something was different because I could feel a different set of muscles working . . . and those muscles were a little sore afterwards. The last couple runs, the instructor just followed me. He said my turns were far more evenly round than ever before. He'd seen me ski for 4-5 years when I was mostly working with a different instructor. The instructor I work with at Alta has also been trying to come up with suggestions for how to get the left turn to work better. The key is that by integrating the various approaches, now I can tell what I'm not doing and can fix it as I'm skiing down a slope.

 

[sig]

I have zero left side coordination. Can’t drive left to the hoop. When things are going south on skis I bail right. Harv curious if. Your right or left handed

 

[MarzNC]

I have zero left side coordination. Can’t drive left to the hoop.

That sounds familiar. Learning to pass a soccer ball properly with my left foot took work back in middle school. I don't really remember bothering to practice a layup with my left hand when I was learning to play basketball in high school.

 

[Brownski]

I think it’s reasonable to be better on one side or the other but it is worth practicing going the other way.

 

[tirolski]

This weekend I discovered something that seems so obvious that I can't believe I didn't notice it before.

Are you a "rightie"?

Yup

Do you make stronger turns to the left?

Depends on the slope.

Do you care?

Got to.

Should I?

The world is chiral. Get used it.
Skiing’s fun.

 

[Country Gun]

I am left handed but have left side troubles. Left knee and left wrist total replacements have caused that side to want to lag back. I can't create upper and lower body separation from that side very well. I can't break the habit of letting the left hand fall back. This is my second season skiing with these two replacements and I feel like I am making some progress.
Getting a chance to ski 3 or 4 days in a row can really tune up your technical skills . Its unfortunate with my job that has lack of flexibility, I can only ski mostly on weekends.

 

[Cornhead]

I'm ambidextrous...equally uncoordinated on both sides of my body. In junior highschool I had a gym teacher who hated my guts. When wrestling came up as the activity in class he intentionally had me wrestle a football player who outweighed me by 20lbs, 20lbs of muscle. The match lasted about 10 seconds. The kid picked me up and slammed me on my right shoulder. As I laid there in agony, the teacher hovered over me and asked if I wanted to continue with a maniacal grin on his face. I should've kicked him in the balls. Anyway, immediately after that I couldn't raise my right arm over my head for awhile. I was a basketball player. It forced me to develop my left hand, dribbling, and shooting. That asshole gym teacher had inadvertently improved my game immensely. I passed this on to my son when he was young, I slammed him on the ground on his right shoulder ? Not really, but I would always overplay his right side when guarding him saying where's that left? If they know you don't have one, this is what you'll get.

So, as it relates to skiing, it feels very similar. Being right handed it feels "better" turning left since you're controlling the engaging edge with the dominant side, but like basketball, the more you train your weaker side, the better you can control it.

 

[riverc0il]

Depends on the turn type and terrain. I definitely favor kicking off my right leg when making a jump turn or launching for some air. For large "GS" style turns, I have better technique turning towards the left and need to give turns to the right a bit more attention to make them look and feel as good. Small turns, in the bumps, powder turns, and on variable terrain... I don't really notice any difference. Probably has something to do with where I spend the majority of my time skiing.