Cross Country Academy, Efficiency, and Micro-Adjustments with Justin Arndt

How can a movement as small as a five-degree change in your knee or shoulder position dramatically improve your skiing efficiency? In this episode of First Chair, host George Thomas talks with PSIA-AASI National Team member Justin Arndt about his recent 32 Degrees article, “Micro Adjustments: A Practice for Developing Efficiency.” Justin explains how subtle changes in body position—like shifting your center of mass, adjusting knee angles, or refining pole placement—can significantly impact balance, power, and efficiency on snow. Justin also shares how these ideas translate across cross country, alpine, telemark, and snowboard instruction, and how instructors can help guests experiment with small adjustments that create big performance gains. Watch this episode to see Justin demonstrate these micro adjustments and tutorials visually. His examples make it easy to understand how small movements can lead to more powerful and efficient skiing. The conversation also covers: Why efficiency is the foundation of cross country skiing How micro adjustments can improve skiing across disciplines Teaching strategies for helping students feel subtle movement changes Details about the upcoming Cross Country Academy at Mt. Bachelor Whether you're an instructor, certification candidate, or simply looking to ski more efficiently, this episode offers practical insights you can apply on your next day on snow. 00:00 Introduction – Justin Arndt Returns to First Chair 00:45 Catching Up and Justin’s Thumb Injury Story 02:45 Cross Country Academy at Mt. Bachelor Overview 04:35 What “Crust Skiing” Is and Why Spring XC Is Special 05:30 Guest Coach Caitlin Gregg and Academy Details 07:50 Justin’s 32 Degrees Article: Micro Adjustments Explained 09:30 Demo: How Small Knee Angle Changes Affect Balance 12:45 Why Balance Over the Gliding Ski Matters 14:50 Demo: Pole Position and Power in Skate Skiing 17:00 Demo: Shoulder Position and Efficient Poling 19:00 Efficiency and Energy Conservation in Cross Country Skiing 20:40 Teaching Micro Adjustments to Different Types of Students 23:45 Where the Micro Adjustments Concept Came From 24:50 National Team Training and Interski Synchronization 26:15 Applying Micro Adjustments to Teaching and Student Development 27:15 Why Instructors Should Try Cross Country Skiing If you'd like, I can also help you create a stronger YouTube title and thumbnail hook — the current podcast titles are good, but YouTube tends to perform better with something a little more curiosity-driven. Can you remind me of the details you told me for Tony Drees's pod? Like the title, description and chapters. I don’t have the previous Tony Drees podcast details stored in this thread, so I can’t see the exact titles, description, and chapters I gave you earlier. If you paste the transcript or the section of the conversation we worked from, I can recreate them quickly in the same format you’ve been using for First Chair (titles, YouTube-focused description, and chapters). If it helps, I can also: Rebuild them to match the newer formatting we just used for the Justin Arndt episode. Optimize the YouTube description and chapters for search. Create stronger YouTube titles and thumbnail hooks if you're posting the video version. Just drop the Tony Drees transcript or remind me of the topic and I’ll regenerate everything.