Snowolf

Except for situations where you want to use counter rotation to your advantage, you should have no amount of angle. The shoulders and chest should stay in line with the board. Turn your head to look downhill, not your upper body.

A good excercise to aid in developing muscle memory for this is to ride with your hands extended a little bit and keep them over the tip and tail of the board. Watch that back hand too, a lot of riders will get their upper body positioned well, but they tend to wave that back hand way out in front. Even this will cause some toe side turning issues.

A good way to help teach yourself to keep that back hand where it should be is to quite deliberately, "throw" that back hand behind you as you begin to initiate the toeside turn. It is`nt the way you ultimately want to ride, but if you do it a few times, you will feel how much more power you have in these turns. On the same line, when going toeside deliberately rotate your upper body slightly toeside. You will add pivot to the turn.

Again, these two ideas are training aids to get you to feel the effect. Your goal in riding is to maintain a quiet upper body and control your board from the waist down.

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Snowolf

This is an ideal example of deliberately using counter rotation to your advantage! As you know, riding across the flats is where you encounter the most edge catches. This is due to riding with little to no edge angle and any slight pivot can get the board into a degree of side slip and any unevenness in the snow will hook the edge. The recommend tactic to use for the flats is riding always on one edge or the other. This prevents side slip and edge catch. The downside to this is when the board is tilted, the side cut causes the board to turn.

When you rotate your upper body, it applies force to the lower body and your board. This force is called pivot. When learning to snowboard, many people use pivot to turn their board by energetically swinging their shoulders in the direction they want to turn. This gets the job done but is very sloppy and also is why so many people edge catch learning to make turns.

In this case, you will quite deliberately counter rotate for an desired outcome. The easiest way to apply this technique in the flats is to ride on your toe edge, using a very shallow edge angle. As expected, the board will drift toward your toe side. Now, turn your upper body from the waist up so that your chest is facing forward. This places pivotal force upon the board toward your heel side. If you manage both forces correctly, this pivotal force will cancel out the turning forces of the side cut and you will travel in a straight line....

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F0rgiven

yay i may actually be doing something right. lol
Thanks Snowolf. You're awesome.

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Ride Havoc
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boarderaholic

I found another technique that helps is just to stick your hands in your pockets as well, and just elimiate the use of your hands altogether and let the lower body do the work.

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gravityhomer

Well, it's been six months since I first learned about the correct way of riding in this thread (of course there's been no snow). But I was able to get out there one last time before the season was over last April. I tried to deliberately avoid side slipping and skidding turns. And especially when going heal to toe, I really felt that I was doing something right. Started applying pressure to the front toe and the board started going downhill, kept pressure on the back heal until I was pointed directly downhill, then switched both feet to the toe and voila a turn with very little skidding.

The toe to heal turn was not so great. the only green that was open was a long winding trail with parts that were a lot steeper than I would had wanted and there was a 10'+ drop all along the right side. So I'd start heading in that direction and usually freakout, skid or fall or whatever.

I had fun, but it was pitiful. though, it was way less than ideal conditions. It was closing weekend of Mt Snow, and they were hit with nearly summer conditions the previous week. It was like riding on rock salt. I will be sticking with nice wide non-steep slopes starting this season. Went for the cheap season pass at butternut.

snowboardcoach

I like this one...One other I don't think has been covered is probably more of a set up issue, but leads to bad habits as well, is stance options being to narrow or too wide...If its been covered disregard, sorry! and I'll just read some more...

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gravityhomer

Actually I don't think that has been mentioned. Can you expound on the problems that arise from a too narrow or too wide stance?

Snowolf

When your stance is too narrow, you will have less stability and balance on the board. At speed, you will have less control over chatter. The board will become too responsive and turn too abruptly. Too wide a stance and turn initiation will become inhibited. You will find that you do not have enough freedom of movement and leverage in your legs to properly flex the board.

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oneplankawanka

Range of movement is inhibited with a stance that is too wide.. do you hear me Gangsta jib rats?? the snowolf covers this quite nicely... Also, stance angles will greatly influence whether you are able to maintain, and manipulate center of mass as you flex and extend...flex and extend...

F0rgiven

jeez. triple post?

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