The most important aspect of classical cross-country skiing is the choise of the ski. It should show enough tension in order to prevent the wax joint from being pressed upon the snow during gliding periods. On the other hand, the ski may only be that hard, that it still allows the grip wax to be pressed on the ground during kick phases. Due to a thicker wax layer, klister skis are somewhat stiffer to choose than those for kick wax.
General rule: hard trails – hard ski, soft trails – soft ski.

On new and fine-grained snow kick-(dry- or hard-) waxes are used, while coarse granular and wet snow requires klister.

Grip waxes need to satisfy three basic demands:
1.Adherence on the base: roughen the kick zone with sand paper before waxing! (coarse 120-100 for kick waxes, coarse 100-80 for klister) Using kick waxes, it is recommended to either iron the first layer or to warm it up with the PowerJet.
Only rough snow with intense friction effects demands ironing a thin layer of Base. Using Klister, it is generally recommended to underlay a filmy layer of klister blue.
2.Wax must enable snow crystals to press in: cold, new snow is fine crystalline with a typical hexagonal, sharp-edged structure. It is easily pressed into even relatively hard wax. On the contrary, powder snow – influenced by sun, wind and changing temperatures – mainly does not possessthose sharpe edges any more and therefor needs some kind of wax. Coarse snow can not be pressed into the thin kick wax layers, thus, klister is being used. As a rule, it is put on much thicker and offers grip to even those big and little-edged crystals.
3.Wax must release snow crystals again: therefore you should not use soft wax at pleasure. The snow crystals could remain fixed in the wax and freeze. This may result in the formation of calks on the bottom of the ski, but at least it would lead to reduced gliding properties. When occasion arises, a soft layer should be covered by a harder one, in order to satisfy demands of glide and grip at the same time.

Some basics Kick waxes - several thin layers on top of each other are more durable and faster than one or two thick layers - spread each layer evenly, using synthetic cork for hard waxes and natural cork for softer waxes - the use of hard wax for the first layer improves durability - dealing with moist snow, fluoranated kick wax should be used for upper layers to ensure better gliding properties - HOLMENKOL indicates the corresponding snow temperatures as the application temperatures for its kick waxes - the softer the trails the softer the wax - the older the snow (and therfore less sharp-edged) the softer the wax Klister - apply the klister in fish scale form. Thus, several different klisters can be combined in one layer. The layer becomes more even and homogenous - heating with iron or PowerJet increases durability - remove wax from the groove and side walls with a klister scraper, after having the wax alowed to cool - put on skis in the trails as soon as wax has adapted to snow temperatures - HOLMENKOL indicates the corresponding air temperatures as the application temperatures for its klisters.