HOW TO GLIDE IN A WEDGE ON SKIS
A Skill Every Skier Should Learn
Start With Your Balance
The most important thing about gliding on skis is where your weight is. You need to be centered: balanced with your weight and center of mass in the middle of your skis, along the full length of them. Not tipped forward onto your toes. Not sitting back on your heels. Right in the middle.
This might sound simple, but it’s the detail most beginner skiers get wrong. Everything that comes after: turning, stopping, controlling speed, depends on this centered position. If your balance is off here, it shows up everywhere else in your skiing.
How to Get Into Your Wedge
Once you’re centered and balanced, slide your feet into a parallel position. From there, shuffle them out gradually, letting your skis slide down into a small wedge shape: tips closer together, tails wider apart.
Let the skis do the work. Your job is to stay centered and let them carry you down.
How to Stop
When you’re ready to stop, make your wedge bigger. The wider your wedge, the more resistance your skis create against the slope, and the slower you go until you come to a complete stop.
That’s the whole skill. Small wedge to glide. Bigger wedge to stop.
Why This Matters
Gliding in a wedge isn’t just a beginner exercise, it’s one of the first times you feel what your skis are actually doing beneath you. Learning to trust that feeling, and learning to stay centered while it’s happening, is what separates skiers who progress quickly from ones who struggle later on.
