How to Use Ski Poles

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Summary: Ski poles can help with balance and turns. Learn how to use ski poles for balance and how to make pole plants for skiing turns in this free beginner skiing lesson on video, with safety tips.

Views: 5,636 | Tags: mountain, downhill, equipment, sports, snow, skiing, cold, bunnies

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About the Expert
Contact: hillcrestsports.com

Dave Smith Dave Smith has been skiing for 21 years. He lives in Wood Village, Oregon and has been working at Hillcrest Ski and Sports as a salesman and buyer for five ye... read more

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Video Transcript

How to Use Ski Poles

Hi! This is Dave Smith with Hillcrest Ski and Sports in Gresham, Oregon on behalf of Expert Village. In this tutorial we will cover beginning skiing. In this clip we'll cover how to properly use your ski poles. Now, many beginners learn to ski without using poles which is totally fine. Once you decide to start using them, they're primarily there to help you keep your balance. Most poles have a strap attached to them. Let me show you how to properly use that strap so that you don't injure yourself. With the strap opened up, you want to come up through the bottom of the strap and grab the handle of the pole down over the strap. Once again, come up through the bottom and grab the handle down over the strap. By using the pole this way, if you need to let go of it, it will fall immediately to your wrist and your thumb will not get caught. Let me show you how not to grab your pole. Do not go down through the top and then grab the grip without the strap in between. If you do this, when you let go of your pole it'll still rest between your thumb and your forefinger. And you can get thumb and forefinger injuries very easily. Once you're comfortable making turns on your skis, you can start to think about making pole plants. This is more of an intermediate level skill. However, I'll briefly cover it for those of you that get comfortable with turns. As you're traveling downhill getting ready to initiate your turn, you're going to want to plant your pole and turn around it. In other words, if I want to make a turn to the left, I'll first plant my pole in my left hand and make my turn around it. Once I'm ready to turn back to the right, I'll first plant my right pole and complete my turn around it.