In every sport, you will see athletes practicing drills as a considerable portion of their active time. A sports team can’t just play games every day without stopping to reinforce the basic moves and skills through the use of drills. Somewhere along the lines, water skiers fell away from doing drills at all.
Many skiers will spend time off the water training, in the gym, stretching and the likes, but not often on water drills. At most, some will drop speeds or line lengths to practice specific things on easier line lengths, but it doesn’t come close to what most athletes in other sports will do.
I think the time and cost for most skiers are so prohibitive as to make them focus on course time, rather than paying soo much to run a few drills. Not many skiers have their own boats, so they are paying $40-50ish for 15 minutes at a ski site. In that situation, I wouldn’t spend much time considering drills either, to be honest.
If you can find an affordable way to get some drills in, then here are a few you can try.
1. – Directional Zero Slack
Get out the side of the boat in your full lean position with your hips up and hold your direction out away from the boat. It helps stabilize and strengthen your basic position as you cross the wakes with speed and under pressure.
Test The Limits Of Your Movement
While in the position shown above, try moving your body around as much as you can, see how out of shape you can get. It is nice to know where our limits of balance and position are, it will help us recognize when you have fallen out of position and how to get back into shape on the move.
2. – Pull And Release
Great drill for getting your Slalom gate setup dialled. Also, for building body awareness and demonstrating progressive pull and smooth release with direction holding.
If you are using this to practice your gate setup, then don’t worry about having a course or buoys around, they will actually get in the way here. The idea is to find a pull out that you can do every single time.
Whether you count your lean or find other indicators to go from, find the move and thought that gets you wide enough with the right amount of speed to turn in smoothly with a tight line and lots of angle. It will take a combination of lean intensity and duration that is unique to everyone’s own skiing style.
Once you have the move practiced, take it to the slalom course; now remember, you want to do the same movement, DON’T THINK OF GOING THROUGH THE GATES YET!! You want to find the correct timing of the pull you have practiced, to the gates, and this will take a little trial and error. The main thing is not to compromise your movement, but shift the timing as needed so the gate turn-in is in line with the gate buoys
Off-Side Pull And Release
Off-side will usually be weaker, so make sure to spend a good chunk of the drill working on your off-side.
Make sure to move the core over the edge of the ski, exaggerate it a little to really feel everything come around to face the direction you want to go.
3. – Ankle And Knee Only Movement
Working on deliberately activating your lower suspension system for smoother wake crossings. Your hips will always have some give, we just don’t want it to take the majority of the absorption.
This works great with the rhythm drill.
As you move to swing across the wakes, solidify your upper body in your strong stacked position, and think about only letting your knees and ankles flex. You will notice that it only works when your hips are nice and close to the handle, if your upper body isn’t in the right spot, it won’t be easy.
4. – Rhythm Drills
A great way to practice fundamental moves while feeling the swing from the boat, feeling the body through a similar move.
Start rather narrow from the wakes and progressively get more width as you progress through the drill. The point of the drill is to feel your body and make adjustments as needed, so keep the rope tight and don’t go too hard. Feel the swing and rhythm before trying big changes to position, make sure to continue moving through the second wake as you near the end of the swing.
You want to finish your pull through the wakes so you can start your turn early. And make sure to finish your turn before pulling, because you can’t turn and pull at the same time. In the course you need to finish the turn, so you can take the hookup with strength and get early to the next buoy
Seths keys are:
- Patient Carving Turn
- Move-in the desired direction of travel, with the aforementioned patience
- Advance through the bottom of the swing – Wakes.
- Take it easy, feel the movements and the swing
5. – Two-Handed Turns
Role back to a slalom speed and line length, you can run two-handed and head through the course, this will teach you to control the rope if nothing else will.
Make sure to keep your arms nice and straight, moving your hands and the handle in front of you as you move off the second wake. This will help you to maintain line tension when you can’t release a hand from the handle.
You will need to make sure that you stop leaning right off the second wake to drop your speed enough to make the turn on time. Rushing a turn in this situation is exceedingly difficult, keep the rhythm and swing going.
It will help your balance by removing the counterbalance of your second hand swinging off the handle. You will need to keep a more centred position on the ski to maintain balance through the turn.
6. – How Long Can Your Ski Face Wide Of The Boat Off The Wake
Testing to see just how long you can hold your body’s direction off the wake. If you can push it to the limit, then in the course, you can dial it back and forward according to the line length and situation.
You will often hear people mention not pulling off the second wake, this is, so you have enough time to slow down for a nice turn, instead of rushing and messing the turn up entirely.
For this to work, maintain your direction as long as possible, after coming off the second wake. By keeping your body and ski facing out, you will still get loads of width, which will give you even more time and space to turn off the back of the buoy with angle and speed.
7. – Free Ski
Too many people lose this ability in the pursuit of getting more buoys. There is much to be said about getting out and freeskiing, it works so many of your innate movements. When you get out there, you will quickly realize how many of them are lacking when you don’t have the buoys of the course in front of you.
Here is a great article by Marcus Brown on free skiing once in a while.
Disclaimer
The tips here are a collection of the tools I use while coaching. Not all these tips will work together, and some may even be contradictory to some degree. A lot may be missing as coaches tailor advice to the individual and their previous experiences.
Without being there to see you ski, I don’t know which of these tools to give you to maximize your learning curve. Every person is different and reacts differently to the same advice. I put so much in here to accommodate as many different learning styles as possible.
Not all the tips here will work for you. The idea here is to get you thinking along the right lines about the fundamentals. Use whatever tips make sense to you, and use the rest as inspiration to experiment on the water. Find out exactly what makes you feel the most comfortable, and use it, because comfort is the main goal. If you’re comfortable, fun and progression come easily.