gmilo

Wait a minute... so the best way to initiate a turn is to start with pressure on the front foot heelside, and at the same time be putting toeside pressure on the back foot? Then after the turn is initiated make the back foot match the front?

Man I don't know anything... I used my back foot as a rudder and skid turned all over on my first week of snowboarding.

Still loved it haha

Snowolf

Yes, using "torsional steering" is the correct and most efficient method to steer your board. Most self taught people do get in the habit of pushing the rear of the board around with the back foot. It is a common thing and it kinda sorta gets the job done, just rather inefficiently and a bit clumsily.

The idea here is like this, Say for example you are going down a run, making linked S turns. You are just coming out of a heel side turn and are about ready to go back to toe side. As you are making your traverse, you will be riding on the heel edge of the board. To begin the turn, you will first, relax the heel pressure on the front foot basically allowing the nose of the board to go flat and disengage that uphill heel edge. What will happen is the nose of the board will begin to slide down the hill. It is like when you are side slipping; if you flatten the board out, it slides down the hill. The difference here is your rear foot is keeping the tail end of the board "locked in" to the hill with the heel edge. So, the nose slips down the hill while the tail stays right where it is. As the board enters the fall line and is almost pointing straight down the hill, you will then start pressing down on the toe edge of the board with the front foot as you now let the rear foot go totally flat. This begins to engage the toe edge of the board beginning at the nose and working down the length of the side cut. As the board leaves the fall line and is climbing back up the hill, you will start pressuring the toe edge with the back foot so that as you complete the turn and traverse across the hill, you will solidly be on the toe edge with both feet.

Once you get proficient with this technique, you will find it is almost effortless and takes almost zero work to go down the runs making lots of short and medium radius turns to maintain a constant speed.

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faceless.13

oddly enough, I was taught by one of my friends to use my tail as a rudder, but never found riding like that effective. I 86'd that technique my first day on the mountain. Still having a little troubly switching from edge to edge, but I've got my own set up this season, so I should get it down.

WhistlerBound

Did this come from some instructor's course notes?

This is almost word for word the way an instructor described the process to me. I went from not being able to turn at all to linking turns with this one description (in minutes). I'm not sure where the "rudder" analogy originated, but it's never really made sense to me since that lesson, so I block my ears and make "nah-nah" noises whenever I hear it so I don't confuse myself.

Armonster20

Interesting stuff. When I want to make some more aggressive carved turns, I have a habit of shifting my center of gravity into the turn by leaning into the turn. For example, take the turn you described above where you are traversing on the heel side. If I'm going fast, sometimes I'll keep my entire body quiet and just shift my weight forward onto the toes (both feet), almost like I'm about to drop down and do some push ups (except my legs are flexed). But of course the edge catches and begins carving before I get too far over.

What are your thoughts on that technique?

Snowolf

If I understand your description correctly, you are describing an aspect of Dynamic carving. In Dynamic Carving, one of the things the rider does to accelerate through the turn is to make the edge change prior to the fall line. In English, this simply means that you transition onto the "downhill" edge. This idea at first sounds like the recipe for the Emergency Room, but in reality it is a perfectly safe as long as your board is traveling in a straight line tip to tail and there is no amount of sideslip. If you think about it, your board does not care whether it is pointed down the hill or across the hill. It only cares about how it is moving across the snow.

So, if you are traversing across the hill, again carving on your heel edge, and want to initiate the toeside turn without delay and without bleeding off speed in a long skidded turn, you will use this technique. The mechanics of it are pretty straight forward actually. When you are ready to make an accelerated toeside turn, you will first ensure that your board is tracking true and not sideslipping down the hill. You will then, shift your weight from the heel edge with both feet simultaneously onto your toe edge. This will be spooky as hell the first time you try it, so pick gentle terrain and reasonably soft conditions to practice this. What will happen if you have done this correctly is you will go from heel to toe almost instantly and the board will go into a really fast, tight toeside turn through the fall line. You will really accelerate as the board turns through the fall line so be ready for it. Commitment is the key here since once you commit to that toe edge here, you can`t change your mind suddenly without risking a loss of control. The good news is the quicker you complete the turn, the quicker you will be in a toeside traverse and able to slow down.

With regard to "leaning into the turn" try to reduce this as much as you can and instead shift your hips into the turn. Ideally, you want to keep your upper body over the board and not inside the turn. For a toeside turn, you shift your pelvis toward the toe edge and arch your back pushing your shoulders back a bit to remain over the board. For a heelside turn, bend the knees more and squat rather than leaning your entire body back. The memory aid we sometime use is the old "hump and dump" When going toeside, you push your pelvis forward as though you are "humping" something and for heelside, you squat a little as though you were taking a "dump".

A great way to practice this technique is to pick a very gentle run that you can straightline comfortably. As you are doing this, shift your weight back and forth "humping and dumping" and notice how fluid your edge changes will become without skidding the board. This is the secret to maintaining desired speeds within a narrow lane like on a cat track. When you get comfortable with this, you can add a deliberate skid at the apex of each turn to bleed off speed.

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Armonster20

Yep that's exactly what I'm talking about. I love the "hump and dump" reference. I've got the dump part down for heelside turns, but I don't think I'm doing the proper toeside turns. Do you have any pictures or videos of the proper form for an aggressive carved toeside turn?

Snowolf

Not specifically a hard toeside, but in this video, I was demonstrating using the lower body to make the subtle weight shifts to edge the board to make turns. If you watch closely, I am shifting my hips back and forth while maintaining a quiet upper body that stays over the top of the board. The key to doing this is really flexing and extending the ankle joints.

A simple demonstration of the effectiveness of this that you can do yourself is to strap on your board. While standing there, push your hips and pelvis forward while arching your back to stay centered over the top of the board. You will notice that your heels will lift off of the floor on their own. Now shift your hips back and squat and the board will want to edge onto the heel edge.

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YouTube - Dynamic Turns



One of the reasons that so many people struggle with good toeside turns is from the habit of leaning forward into the turn. When you do this, it causes you to push your hips (read ass) back over the heel edge of the board. If you think about this for a second, you will see how this is working against you. You are trying to shift weight onto the toe edge, but in reality you are transferring a good deal of weight onto your heel edge. The more you lean, the more weight you push in the wrong direction. Simply avoiding leaning into the turn with your upper body will make your toeside turns much more responsive.

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Armonster20

Okay that's making more sense now. I was a little confused at first because when you originally said to keep your upper body centered over the board, I got the mental image of having your upper body straight up and down relative to the ground. But I think what you're saying is that the upper body needs to be aligned with the board, so that if you are doing a hard toeside carve and the board is on edge at 45 degrees, then your upper body should also be at 45 degrees. So you aren't leaning "forward" but you're leaning towards the rotational center of the arc of your turn, sort of a like a motorcycle rider does. Is that correct?

Snowolf

Yep, exactly! In most cases, you will try position yourself like an upside down T being perpendicular to the board and the slope. If the slope is at 30 degrees, you would need to "lean downhill" 30 degrees to maintain correct position. This is what causes beginners so much trouble with the leaning back problem. Our vestibular sense (inner ear fluids) give us our sense of balance and cause us to stand straight up agains gravity. This kind of works against us in skiing and snowboarding since to maintain even and proper weight distribution , we need to stand perpendicular to the slope and that feels like we are leaning too far down hill. It is especialy problematic when people are learning to go from a toeside travers, back to heelside since it feels like you are leaning backwards down the hill. People tend to lean back up the hill and the board will not turn.

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