WATCH: How to Erase 30 Years of Bad Ski Habits in Three Hours
I firmly believe the only way to get better at anything is to practice it with someone who is better than you.
When I was training for my first half marathon I ran across the Brooklyn Bridge with a couple of Maasai warrior marathoners. Now that I’ve been wanting to become a better skier I went out and found myself some Olympians — Kris “Fuzz” Feddersen and Trace Worthington.
Editor Jo Piazza with Kris “Fuzz” Feddersen and Trace Worthington. (Photo and Videos by Bradford DePeyster)
Park City, Utah probably has more former winter Olympians per square foot than anywhere on earth. Naturally they all know one another, always running into each other at one of the three resorts here or along Main Street, where they chat about snow conditions, parkas, and fresh new Olympian recruits. For a few hours, I felt honored to be allowed into this elite clique.
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A legend in freestyle skiing, Feddersen is widely recognized as a pioneer in the sport. He competed in three Olympics and numerous World Championships, in addition to being the coach of the 1998 U.S. Winter Olympic Aerial Ski Team, where Nikki Stone and Eric Bergoust won Gold Medals. To add to his already impressive resume, Feddersen was recently elected to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame.
He also happens to be one of the Ski Ambassadors at the St. Regis Deer Valley in Park City, Utah. The Ski Ambassador program allows guests to customize a ski experience with these top-tier skiers. It is pretty incredible.
Worthington’s freestyle skiing career includes 37 World Cup victories and 11 national titles. He was the first male in US history to perform a quadruple twisting triple back flip on snow in official competition. He was a member of both the 1994 U.S. Olympic team in Lillehammer and the 1992 U.S. Olympic team in Albertville.
They’re both also gnarly dudes and a blast to ski with.
In three hours on the slopes with Trace and Fuzz — as they both requested I call them — I corrected 30 years of bad ski habits.
We started with my pants. I needed to pull them down. It was the bottom of the pants that had Fuzz concerned. I’d rented some pristine white ski pants from GetOutfitted.com, the outdoor clothing rental start-up, and in my excitement to get onto the mountain, I hadn’t properly pulled them over my boots. When Fuzz went down on one knee in the snow to help pull the cuffs over the boots I blushed with embarrassment. It was one thing not to know how to ski. It was something entirely different to be unable to dress oneself.
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Our first run at the Deer Valley Resort was Stein’s Way, a steep but well-groomed black diamond. Now, as I have written before, I can get down most slopes on skis, barring bowls and insane bumps. I just don’t look amazing doing it. I certainly don’t look like an Olympian. That’s why I created this nutty project called “My Year of Magical Skiing,” where I train with coaches once a month in the hopes of going from a blah skier to a total bad-ass.
As I finished winding through the towering pines of Stein’s Way, the two Olympians were on hand to give me their critiques and advice.
Who would have thought that my hard-partying twenties would benefit me in any sport?
Trace grabbed my arms.
“How do you take your martinis?” he asked me.
“What? It’s 9 a.m.!” I said in shock.
“Come on, how do you take your martinis?”
“Extra dirty with a twist.”
“Great,” he said and pulled my arms away from my hips where they hung like limp arugula. “The whole time you’re skiing down the mountain pretend you’re carrying two martinis and trying not to spill them. That way you won’t drop your arms.”
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Now, full disclosure, I can barely walk through a cocktail party in heels without spilling a martini on myself, much less ski down one of the Wasatch Mountains. But I was willing to give it a shot. You know what? It worked!
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For the rest of the day I kept my arms and my poles parallel to one another, and I managed to spill only half of the martinis.
For the next two hours, I skied in Fuzz’s tracks — no small feat, I promise you.
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“You’re too far back in your seat,” he said to me, as we boarded the chairlift.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You need to think about getting forward and pushing your shins against the fronts of your boots instead of feeling your calves in the backs of your boots. So you aren’t on your heels. You are on the backs of your feet,” Fuzz said.
“One more. Feel the inside edge of your ski when you turn. It will make all the difference,” Trace added.
WATCH: Jo’s Skiing Isn’t Half Bad Now
And so I made myself a mantra: “Martini, butt, edge. Martini, butt, edge. Martini, butt, edge.” As I repeated it, I corrected myself.
Here’s the thing about skiing — it’s at least 60 percent a confidence game. If you believe you’re a good skier, then you’re already a better skier. That’s why getting a fist bump from two Olympians at the end of the day improved my skiing as much as any of their advice.
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