Ultimate Skiing

by Ron LeMaster

Break through to the next level of ski performance! Renowned instructor, coach, and ski technique expert Ron LeMaster takes you beyond The Skier's Edge by improving, expanding, and enhancing that seminal work. The result, Ultimate Skiing , will help you master the mechanics of great skiing as never before—explaining how it's done, showing how it looks, and describing how it feels. LeMaster has made Ultimate Skiing a comprehensive manual on ski technique. Learn how skis interact with the snow and how best to manipulate your skis, boots, and poles on the steepest slopes, in monster mogul fields, and through the deepest powder. Technique tips and kinesthetic cues help translate the sensation of each movement. Throughout, LeMaster incorporates his one-of-a-kind, full-color photo montages and 3-D diagrams to take you onto the slopes and into the action. These phenomenal images capture some of the world's greatest skiers while illustrating the correct techniques for every condition and terrain. To get the most out of your skiing potential, you need the ultimate in ski instruction. You need Ultimate Skiing .

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published October 13, 2009

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This, along with Harald Harb's "Essentials of Skiing" forms the nucleus of modern ski instruction. Ron is criticized for being overly-technical, but this is just what the doctor ordered for a ski instructor. I am putting together an on-hill manual for my classes and Lemaster's insights form the "high end" of the discussion.

There are many ski instruction books to avoid. I won't bother to indict the numerous authors, but simply point to the few who get it right.

The orientation is toward racing. The stop action photos are excellent.

[Fred · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best instructional skiing books available.

[Brian]

i learned I dont care this much skiing

[Huzef · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fantastic book or I would call this a textbook, for people looking to learn in detail about how your center of gravity should be while skiing, when and how to twist and turn your ankle, knee, hip and shoulders, etc.. But the name of the book should be changed to "Kinetics of Skiing" and not "Ultimate Skiing"

"Ultimate Skiing" gives a wrong idea that it'll walk you through an easy to follow skiing guide which will start with basic education, move to medium level and then move to advance level of learning. But this book rather takes a nosedives into the most complex topics and does not talk about basic stuff. Example: ski types, boot types, brands, and reasons to why buy a certain equipment versus other, at what point you should buy your own equipment, etc, none of it is talked about in this book. It assumes that you know enough to begin with and are looking to gain that 1% competitive gain over your competitors by learning things like when to plant your poles.

For an advanced skier looking to gain a competitive edge this might be a 5-star book, but for beginners I'd say skip this and just google basic stuff directly to learn more about things you need to get started. It is still a good 3-star book for beginners as it does highlight a lot of things that might come in handy but if you skip this and just watch some quality YouTube videos you'll still live to see another day. Peace 🕊️

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting overview of ski techniques and methodology, with a strong focus on racing/carving. As somebody who has no formal training beyond the first introductory ski lesson, I found some of the exercises to be useful and a decent amount of the advice to be actionable (e.g., focus on weighting the outside ski in a turn, keep the upper body quiet, use blocking pole pants to minimize torque on upper body, use body compression/decompression to unweight/weight skis throughout the phases of a turn). On the other hand, there was a lot of prose that was either unnecessary or unclear. The photos/diagrams are pretty useful, but I could have used more, especially in the passages on edging and hip angulation.

The first chapter is a rudimentary lesson on the physics of skiing, complete with free-body diagrams. I would prefer if this part were shortened or eliminated in favor of clarified explanations/diagrams of specific ski techniques described later in the book. There are two reasons for this: 1) it's not new to anybody who has given thought to the dynamics of skiing, while 2) it's likely to alienate people not interested in the mechanics. This chapter could be replaced by a glossary of terms (e.g., planes of skiing and the balance axis) and a simple diagram or two illustrating the forces at work during a turn.

Overall, the book feels like it's more oriented toward coaches than skiers, but seems like a decent starting point for somebody seeking instruction.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

bought

[Zhenkai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Err. How should I say. I’d probably prefer just watching YouTube videos.

[Paula ϟ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely detailed and insightful.

[Emil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book about seeing technique. If not the best

Great book about seeing technique. If not the best.
If you like to know the physics of skiing this offers a great start. On that, it builds a great technique explanation. I recommend it to everyone that takes skiing seriously.

[Jaxon Morse · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book was about the sport of ski racing. and how to sport stared to what the sport is today. i felt like this book was very detailed. it seamed like the the writer knew what he was talking about. i really liked this book and i could relate to some of the things that he was talking about. but if your not into the sport of ski racing than i don't think it would be very interesting.