Tip
Three Basic Freestyle Grabs for Skiing
Once you start skiing around the park and hitting jumps, it is time for you to start adding style to your skiing. The difference between professional skiers and amateurs is the amount of control they have in the air, and how they can contort their bodies while twisting and spinning to grab their skis. Today, we will teach you the basics of where to grab your skis, what each grab is called, and some tips for executing in the air.
Before we try grabs in the air, make sure you are very comfortable hitting park jumps with enough speed, and you feel safe traveling in the air. While grabbing your skis may seem as easy as reaching down, there are many small movements you can do while approaching the jump that will give you enough control to safely grab your skis. The most important part of grabbing your skis is the pop you have while leaving the lip of the jump. Pop is very similar to a normal jump without your skis, but straight up and down. The harder you jump, the more control you have over where your body goes. People that struggle with pop lose control in the air, most of the time going off-axis and crashing. Before trying your first grab, make sure you are popping hard off the lip, and fully extending your knees to create maximum lift.
Another tip for practicing grabs is to try them laying on your back before you try them off jumps. A grab may seem easier than it looks, but laying on your back will allow your body to understand how much you need to reach, and how much you can bring your knees closer to you. Being stable in the air is essential for any ski trick, so make sure you feel confident before trying any of these maneuvers.
Once you have mastered pop, it is time to think about grabbing your skis in mid-air! There are many different types of grabs, but some are easier than others. Assuming this is your first time trying grabs, we are going to learn 3 basic grabs that will add style to your bag of tricks. A safety grab is the easiest to learn and just requires you to grab the outside edge of your ski near the boot. At first, only try to grab your ski with one hand. Common mistakes for trying safety grabs include reaching down too far instead of bringing your legs up to your arms. Try to think about being a ball in the air, bringing your knees as close as you can towards your body. This will feel extremely awkward at first, but as you practice over and over it will become more natural.
After you feel confident stomping jumps with a safety grab, it is time to move onto my personal favorite, the mute grab. A mute grab is when a freeskier takes their opposite hand and grabs the other ski. To add style, once you grab the opposite ski, make sure to tweak it and cross those skis. This grab also requires the skier to bring their knees up, instead of reaching down. When learning this grab, don’t worry about bringing both legs up, rather just focus on nailing the grab and crossing it. Once this becomes natural, you can start to bring both legs up, which looks really cool.
Finally, the last grab we will learn today is called tail. This grab is the most difficult out of the three we have discussed today, and requires an advanced freeskiing ability to learn. To grab tail, you must keep your feet close together, and reach back to grab the tip of the tail of the ski. This grab has the least amount of ski area to grab, so you must be precise when reaching back. Bending your knees will help for this grab, as it brings the skis up parallel to your body, and keeps your arms up high while in the air. Other grabs focus on having your hands very close to your body, so this will feel entirely different.
Once you have mastered these grabs, you have just begun your journey as a freestyle skier. You can start to play with variations of each grab, add them while you are spinning and flipping, and overall you can develop your own personal style of skiing. Each skier will have some grabs come easier than others, but if you are having trouble just know these are difficult to learn and take a ton of practice.