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Eastern Ski Annual, 1958
* Lowell Skoog has a copy of each article marked with an asterisk.p. 65: Wright, Spencer M., "Progress in Ski Technique since 1900" *
Although heavy on jargon, this is a good comparison of ski techniques from the Arlberg method to the "modern" technique of the late 1950s. The author discusses Arlberg, Swiss, French and modern styles, exploring similarities and differences between each. Arlberg technique began to take form around 1907 in the teaching of young Hannes Schneider:"The original Arlberg method was to stem the lower ski while sinking forward and down and winding up in the counterswing position. This was followed by the stemming and weighting of the uphill ski, which merged with a forward and upward lunge, to unweight the skis and start the long swing which continued throughout the turn. Most schools today have abandoned the abstem, or stem of the downhill ski."Beginning around 1932, the Swiss deemphasized the extreme forward lean, extreme rotation, and abstem of the Arlberg method, instead emphasizing weight shift to the outside ski. They also reduced the forward and upward lunge, keeping the body relatively high in the stem and then twisting the weight down onto the stemmed upper ski to displace the tails.
In 1937, Emile Allais defined the principles of the French method. The French discarded the stem position as the basis for learning the christianias, concentrating instead on the sideslip. The French employed hip blocking to convey body rotation to the skis instead of the free rotation of the Arlberg method. For difficult snow conditions, "ruade," an upward retraction of the tails, was added at the moment of blocking the hips, so that all but the tips of the skis are unweighted and actually clear of the snow.
The "modern" technique is exemplified by wedeln and the "comma" position. It is a way of skiing close to the fall line under almost any conditions. The pivoting of the skis is done by the legs, while the upper body is never completely committed to the turn, but remains facing down the hill, in the fall line. In longer radius turns, this is true to a lesser degree. Rather than the rotation being conveyed to the skis by shear twisting force, the skier uses his forward momentum to convert a lateral thrust of the heels into rotation which pivots the skis near the tips.
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