Customer Reviews

Soft Skiing: The Secrets of Effortless, Low-Impact Skiing for Older Skiers

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Lito Tejada-Flores has always laid down the best tracks on the steep, tricky slopes of ski instruction writing. With the publication of "Soft Skiing: The secrets of effortless low-impact skiing for older skiers" Lito's tracks are alone and they are elegant. Every older skier who wants to keep skiing, keep improving, keep his or her body functioning while continuing to do what is, after all, a dangerous, demanding and unforgiving activity will do him or her self a favor by reading "Soft Skiing." Lito uses many tools to get across his message, including the process of his own learning to ski as a young man (alone worth the read), and becoming one of the best known ski instructors in America, and then becoming what we all have such a hard time coming to grips with---an older skier---and then, in Lito's case, one who has recovered from a broken back to continue to lay down elegant tracks the soft way. This book is ahead of its time and I highly recommend it.

I have gotten a great deal of benefit from Lito's previous books, namely Breakthrough on Skis and Breakthrough on the New Skis. I had hoped that this newest book would contain some new "nuggets" of wisdom to help me make another jump in performance on the slopes. Unfortunately I did not find that to be the case.

This book essentially expands on a concept that was discussed in Breakthrough on the New Skis, namely the soft weight shift. I think almost 3/4's of the book deals with explaining this concept and discussing how it is learned and applied on the slopes. If you've already employed this technique based on his previous book then I don't think you'll gain much here. There is no coverage of bump technique at all, but simply refers you to the previous book - excellent coverage on the subject already, I might add. There's a very small bit on powder but really not anything that Lito hasn't written before.

I always enjoy Lito's writing, but I certainly got more from earlier books.

Lito has written another great instructional book on skiing. One of his earlier books, Breakthrough on the New Skis, lifted my skiing to a whole new, higher, more enjoyable level. This book reiterates many of those same points but in an even more effective way for us "older" skiers. His instructions are so clear, you can feel them while reading them. I would HIGHLY recommend this to anyone who wants to ski more and work less.

This book is easy to follow and perform the suggested techniques which make skiing easier and smoother. It validates some information I had picked up by hear-say too which I found nice.

Nothing wrong with what Lito writes in the is book. The low rating is more for what he didn't write and could have. In my opinion, not many people take up skiing at an older age, but many older skiers are still trying to improve their abilities. Virtually everything in this book was covered in his other book "Breaking Through on the New Skis" (which I highly recommend). As an older skier, learning more on how to ski with lower-impact on the knees is of interest. Where the knees are most impacted is on bumps. There is absolutely no coverage of bump skiing in this book. It basically tells you how to cruise which is covered in his other and many other authors books.

If I didn't read the authors'other books, I would have been frustrated by this book. It is lacking in detail. I was disappointed