Kick Wax

First the general principle behind kick wax. When you classical ski, you want your skis to be stuck when you put your weight on them, and when you weight the opposite ski, you want your ski to glide freely. This is achieved by applying kick wax. The wax will allow the snow to grip the bottom of the ski in certain parts to allow one ski to stick.

It is helpful to remove any old kick wax you may have applied to your skis with a wax remover before you start kick waxing your skis. Although it is not necessary, it will result in a better wax job. It is also important to notice that if you are applying the same color wax as was last applied, it is not necessary to remove the wax first.

You want to spread the correct color wax (depending on the temperature) on the ski from approximately where your heel hits the ski to about one to two feet in front of the binding. There is no real formula to find out exactly where to wax from and to, but by just trying different ways, by experience you can determine what works best for you.

More theory now. If you place the ski flat on the ground and look under it, you can see that the ski is actually arched. You will be applying the wax to where the arch is. This will allow an unweighted ski to naturally lift the waxed part above the snow and glide. When you put your weight on the ski though, the ski will flatten out a little bit and then the waxed part will be in contact with the snow and stick.

How much wax do you want to put on? You want to put a thin layer of wax along the whole area you are waxing for. Try to get this layer as evenly put down as possible. It's not that important, but it makes the next step ten times easier.

The next step is to take what is called a cork (actually it used to only be made out of cork, but now a lot of them are made with synthetic materials) and rub the wax in. It helps if the ski is approximately 60-70 degrees farenheit when you start. It softens up the wax a little bit. You want to rub the wax so you get a very even layer of wax along the whole area you are waxing. You want to rub until you don't see very many wax globs. It should pretty much be the color of the base coat.

That's it! Kick waxing is extremely easy to do, and just takes 5-10 minutes of extra time.

Webmaster: Michael Chu