Home Base

Your lesson, "Home Base", helps you learn how to use your hands, arms, and poles to stabilize your upper body. In the Primary Movements Teaching System™, the upper body performs few deliberate movements. This is intentional. Because of the kinetic chain, actions at the feet will cause the rest of the body to move as needed to maintain balance. The upper body plays a passive, reactive role, because this is how the body balances. However, there are a few actions that a skier can perform with the upper body that will complement the primary movements of the feet. Effective pole use stabilizes the upper body, minimizing the need for upper body movements to maintain balance, allowing the primary movements of the feet to work the skis.
In moguls or ungroomed conditions, the variable terrain makes it more difficult to maintain balance, so effective pole use is much more important than on groomed runs. If you can make linked short turns on groomed runs, but your poles aren’t keeping up, learning the Home Base will improve your ability to negotiate ungroomed terrain.

Preliminary
If you’re not sure of how to make linked, parallel turns using the Phantom Move, refer to exercises GB-10 and GB-11 in the Primary Movements Teaching System™ Instructor Manual.

			Home Base - hands Hold the poles at chest level, away from your body, with your hands wide apart. Link short turns on gentle, then moderate terrain, while holding the poles level and steady. Steadying the hands in Home Base often requires more effort with the feet to link turns. Focus on using a strong Phantom Move to link your turns. Repeat this until you can link at least ten turns without difficulty.
Home Base - poles Hold your poles in the normal manner, by the handles. Hold your hands wide, in the same position as the previous exercise, with your knuckles aimed slightly up. The poles should be flared apart, with the baskets held forward. Do not let the pole baskets drag, or drop back behind your feet. Link turns using strong Phantom Moves while keeping the hands and poles steady.
		Home Base - pole plant Stand still on a flat area with your hands and poles held as in the previous exercise. Use your wrist to flick the pole basket forward and down until it touches the ground. Then, aim your knuckles up again to recover the pole to its starting position. Alternate this action with each pole to practice the pole plant. Then, while linking turns on gentle terrain, hold the hands in Home Base and alternate pole plants to signal the release in each turn. If you’re just learning how to plant the poles, emphasize keeping your hands in Home Base rather than the action of the pole plant. It’s better at first to keep the hands stable and wide apart rather than destabilizing the entire body with a mis-timed pole plant.

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