European skiers were suckers for novelty, and they flocked to the ski areas that boasted the best “tail-wagging” instructors.
Horst Abraham wrote about student-centered teaching in the March-April 2023 issue.
Words: Wolfgang Heinzl | Photos: Andreas Putz & Snowsports Academy
Freeriding – An ever increasingly popular, and even addictive discipline, associated with freedom, fun, risk and action.
This technique required the skier to fold and turn the legs and feet to absorb the impact of bumps and/or the accumulating pressure of a well-edged turn finish. In fact, Wedeln is no longer found in today's Austrian ski curriculum, but has evolved in many ways to become "steered, dynamic short radius turns". The goal is to be in a ready, balanced position which adapts to the steepness of the slope and speed throughout the turn.
2) Stability
Even if it is demonstrated by the experts in a relaxed, light manner: Short turns require good core stability and strength, to enable rhythmic turns.
3) Speed control
The pace must always be adapted to your own skills and of course external aspects of safety.
Wedeln’s primary function, in contrast, was playful turning (as opposed to speed control), and it was mostly performed on gentler terrain or in deep powder.
Wedeln became the mark of good skiing as it allowed a skier to demonstrate high levels of mobility, speed control and skillful play. And the technique became the bread and butter of racers negotiating flushes and gate combinations with little off-set.
As with many innovations, it is difficult to pin the invention of Wedeln to a particular person.
With optimal execution, the skier gets the feeling of a suspended state, through which the descent can be mastered with a playful ease.
© Skizze by kunstpiste.com
Eine, mit modernen Skis, nicht mehr zeitgemäße Kurzschwung-Technik, die sich in den 1950er Jahren entwickelte. Done correctly, these turns were purely parallel, entirely eliminating the stem.
Around 1955, Stefan Kruckenhauser, head of the Austrian Ski Academy (and therefore the pope of all Austrian ski schools) chose the name Wedeln (tail-wagging) to describe these turns.
a more energy-saving way of getting down. In addition, just like the early days of ‘Wedel-ing’ using much less space allows other people to enjoy the untracked deep snow off piste. The more experienced a skier is, the longer the period of relaxation, which is also referred to as relief. Once you have mastered the technique and can "surf" deep powder snow, you will agree that this feeling can’t be compared to anything in the world.
What to look out for in your short turns:
1) Middle position & Alpine Basic Position
The technical elements of the Austrian (and any other) ski curriculum are the basis of ski technique.
The French, for example, built on their concept of virage aval (“turn to the valley”), emphasizing the need to face the torso downhill when skiing the fall-line. Unlike wedeln, where you descend by using a windscreen wiper-like movement of the skis and where you control the pace in the corresponding drift phase, one masters this task today by controlling and steering the edged ski along its length.
Variations of Wedeln also emerged, driven by terrain and snow conditions, and differing in the degree of ski displacement and commensurate edge engagement. Their toute neige, tous terrains (all snow, all terrain) approach always offered a broad selection of techniques and styles of turning. As new flex patterns and shorter lengths have complemented deeper sidecuts, carving remains the holy grail of excellence in Alpine skiing to this day.
Snowboarding may have led the way in this development.
In that last sense, it served more of an aesthetic purpose, reflecting a joyful personal expression of skiing. Dynamically skied, the "rule of thumb" for the track width of these dynamic short turns, is approximately the width of a snow groomer (approx. What do we have to watch out for? This can be attributed to the fact that there is a successive change of tension and relaxation of the muscles.
The effect was a graceful leg-pendulum movement, complemented by a stable torso and rhythmic pole plants. I believe carving is here to stay. As soon as the skis are re-edged and controlled, the increase in the forces is counteracted by the tension of the muscles.
From the point of view of a passionate ski instructor, mastering a good short turn technique is therefore essential for all variations of skiing, especially when not on the slopes.
People who don’t take lessons, and who are therefore uninfluenced by theory, will continue to ski all sorts of inconsistent techniques, including the occasional fall-line descent with rhythmic skidded turns.
The joy of skiing is experienced at all levels of skill acquisition. Wedeln differed from short swing by requiring softer edge engagement and lesser ski displacement across the fall line.
Die Rennläufer fuhren diesen Stil um den schmerzhaften und zumeist stark bremsenden Kontakt mit massiven Holztorstangen zu vermeiden und mit den Skis trotzdem eine möglichst nahe den Toren führende Linie zu fahren.
Um mit so einer Verwindung des Oberkörpers auch einigermaßen schnell und sicher zu fahren, musste der Schwung durch die nach unten schiebenden Skienden – Fersenschub – ausgelöst werden und gleichzeitig der Oberkörper talwärts seitlich nach außen geneigt werden – Hüftknick.
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If carving can be explained technically as the edged ski’s tail following the same path as the tip, its psychological definition is the thrill of lateral acceleration—the serotonin-producing risk-taking generated by leaning into the turn while feeling the dynamic support of edged skis beneath the body.In the realms of "freeriding" and wide powder skis, all this seems to be of little relevance. [my addition].
The ability to wedel elegantly became the price of entry into the Austrian teaching system.
Above: In Skiing Simplified (1966) Doug Pfeiffer accepted the formal Austrian technique of sweeping the tails.
For about 15 years at the height of skiing’s boom era, the mark of excellence for a ski instructor was Wedeln.
Wedeln was the ski technique, which became world-famous by Professor Stefan Kruckenhauser and was elaborated to perfection, which from the 1950s onwards become the ideal idea of elegant skiing in many minds.
The so-called "twisting technique", which was characterised by an upper body rotation opposite to the direction of the turn (counter-rotation), was just as characteristic as the narrow ski and the exaggerated up-unweighting movement of the time, which allowed the simultaneous "side-push“ of the heels.
The skier’s torso faced the direction of travel (downhill) while the legs and feet gently and rhythmically pivoted the skis left and right. If the conditions and the terrain are not ideal, the short radius turn is a very elegant and energy efficient way to get down, tackle most challenges and allow you to master sub-par freeride terrain.
Mit enger, paralleler Skistellung werden kurze Schwünge aneinander gereiht.
Wedeln ging aus der „Verwindungstechnik“ (Bild oben links) hervor, die Stefan Kruckenhauser von Slalomläufern in den Skilehrplan übernommen hat. The main technical difference now is that because of the shape and construction of modern skis, a different radius can be skied.
And what exactly does this have to do with ‘Wedel-ing’, and what does that even mean?
Even in the German language, the word "Wedeln" has come of age, but as a ski instructor you are still asked about it every now and then.