HOW TO PRACTISE
Broadly speaking, your object in practising should be to learn to run first safely, then easily, and then quickly. This is more or less equivalent to saying that you should first learn braking, then turning, and only then free straight-running, and that you should practise on slopes of gradually increasing steepness as well as in all sorts of snow.
You should, moreover, by very easy stages, learn jumping from the very outset.
You will hardly be able to follow the first part of this advice quite literally, for to learn to brake without learning something about turning, or to do either without learning to run straight at all is nearly impossible and quite unnecessary.
The following scheme for five days’ practice is one way of setting to work. If it does not suit you, by all means vary it, but stick to the principle of learning every manœuvre in its easiest form pretty thoroughly before passing to more difficult ones, for this is the best way to gain confidence if you are nervous, and to steady yourself and avoid bad habits if you are inclined to be reckless.
Never think of learning to “do a Telemark” or anything else for its own sake alone, and never look on jumping as an extra.
1st Morning.—Hard snow on a gentle slope (10° to 15°) with level outrun.
About 15 minutes.—(1) Level going. Hill-climbing (kick-turns, side-stepping and half side-stepping, herring-boning, &c.). This will, of course, be distributed throughout the morning practice.
About 30 minutes.—(2) Braking by single-stemming (half snow-plough); at first from a standstill in stemming position, then from a traverse in normal running position.
About 30 minutes.—(3) Braking by snow-ploughing; at first nearly from a standstill on the hillside, then on the level after a direct descent in normal running position.
About 10 minutes.—(4) Uphill step round to standstill from slow traverse in normal running position.
About 15 minutes.—(5) Uphill stemming turns from traverse in normal running position.
About 20 minutes—(6) Uphill stemming turns (snow-plough and lift round inner ski) on level from direct descent in normal running position.
Total, 2 hours.