I don't like the phrase "finish your turns," because it encourages people to hang onto the end of the turn, often resulting in a static position, instead of the more ideal dynamic pattern, with ever-changing edge angles, distribution of pressure, and leg rotation.
I would rather suggest, "make round turns."
Finishing a turn does not make you "hang onto" the turn you are in but gives the skier more control, rythmn, continuity and fun to his/her skiing. You can finish a short radius turn, med. radius or super g big. By using the turn in correlation to the terrain/mountain you can regulate speed, smoothness and the ride to what you want to do. If you break off a lot on all your turns you are not in control the mountain, terrain, steepness and speed are controlling you. Agree 100% with your
static position comments. Round turns describe finished turns but not necessarily, you can finish a turn going downhill, not just across the hill. When you watch a WC racer they are finishing their turns down the hill for speed of course. This is something you don't see often in recreational skiers.
My understanding of finishing your turns would be to
Link your turns and then you will finish all turns and dynamically go into the next turns.
When we are getting tuned up by a instructor it meant to me, that all the turns flow from one into another without any skidding and they have a nice S shape
The S shape would describe partially linked turns. A finished turn doesn't have to be a carved turns, it would probably look better but isn't really necessary. You can finish a wedge turn and when you do one will feel the true training affect of skiing in a wedge.
In my humble opinion
Liquid feet and
Tsquare described finishing a turn the most accurately.
Some of you will probably note that I don't get in on the how to ski stuff here very often and that is mainly because I am not a real technical type of skier and usually just go do it. But, I felt compelled to say something because there are a lot of misconceptions out there on finishing a turn.I can best remember my powder partners wife who told me once she was thinking about givingup skiing and trying to keep up with hubby off piste as it as too much work.
She asked me if I had any suggestions and the result was about an hour together teaching her how to finish her turns. She was
Z turning down the hill and it pooped her out and didn't work very well. We've all seen skiers who do this on groomers and off piste and it is a lot of work. We got out on a groomer and I followed behind her and let her turn only when I said "turn" and this made her finish her turns and get the feel and timing/rythmn of linking her turns. She is a pretty good powder and off piste skier now and finishing her turns really helped her.