This is ski addiction dot com, riding with Dave Weale and Card Forin. Straight air is one of the most important skills you have to have for park skiing. Once you master the straight air, the all the tricks will be much easier. In this Vid, we’ll cover Popping, Ollieing, and hitting your first jump

Popping

The first and most import skill you are going to learn is popping. Popping is actively jumping as you go up and jump onto a rip. Popping keep in balance and in control of your air. Try some popping on the ground without your skis on, see what it feels like in ski boots. It’s easy to jump in shoes. With ski boots on, it will be a little different. Body position is key when popping. You have to make sure you flex your ankles, your knees, and hips all together so you can pop straight up evenly. To make sure that your ankles are flexing, really push on the front of your boots, and try to pop up on your toes. Try the same thing with skis on, if you lean too far back or forward, your tips or tails will stay on the ground. Keep trying this till you get your skis coming up in parallel to the ground.

Make sure your skis come off the ground evenly. Try this while moving slowly. Challenge yourself by adding something to pop over. Start by drawing a line in the snow with your foot or ski pole, and practice popping over it.

Try this again with ski pole or bamboo pole, branch or whatever else you can find, A skip pole works right because you’ve always got one close by. Do the same thing as you did with a line in the snow, but now pop over the ski pole

This will help  you time down when you need to pop up and jump, it’s easy to tell your time off coz if you are too early, you land on the pole, if you are too late, you will hit the way out

Ollies

Another way to jump is by ollies.  Ollies is similar to popping except you start by leaning back to bend your skis, and pop from your tails using the flex of your skis to pop you up instead of just your legs.

It’s little tricky to figure it out first, once you get used to it, it’s a great way to get extra height from jumping over random stuff on the hill. Sometimes for getting onto rip

With Ollies, you use the same steps you did with popping. Start by standing still with your skis on, lean back and put all your weight on the tails of your skis, until you feel your skis flex underneath you, and our feet come up after that. Pop up on your tails using the flex of your skis to get extra height.

It's a weird feeling at first, but as you practice it will become really fun.

Side hits

You find it anywhere two trails merge around the side of most runs. Basically, it’s a little jump as you go across the hill. Make sure the jump isn’t kicky in a quiet place where there are not too many hot Doggers flying all around and get in your way.

Approach the side hit just like you are coming into the ski pole, make sure to pop just when you come off the rip which ensures you to get the most air possible.

Jump

Popping off and jump is pretty much the same as popping up on the side hit. The main difference is with the jump you have to get the speed right so that you can make to the landing. If you go too slow, you land on the flat part of the jumping deck. Too fast and you go too far and miss the whole landing. Either way, not very much fun! Other than that it's the same as popping up on the side hits.

Find a small jump to try first, something between 5 and 15 feet, look for a jump with mellow take-off. Hanging out and watch out a few other people hit it first to see how much speed they need to clear. Try to find out the spot where you can drop in, from there you go straight to clear jump.

When you are approaching, be in an athletic stance, with your ankle, knees, and hips all bent. Make sure you pop right at the rip of the jump, just like one popping up on the side hit. When you land, try to bend your ankles, knees, and hips equally again to absorb the landing.

Summary:

Popping is probably one of the most important skills you learn in park skiing. It will make learning everything else way easier. Start with small and side hit, and then step up to park jump, if you feel comfortable. Once you are comfortable in hitting a jump. It’s time to try shifty and grab and add some style series

This is Dave weale and Card Forin skiadditction.com