VTpaul

Just signed onto the boards a little bit ago and I've been reading a lot of the posts. One thing I've noticed is everyone recommends lessons to avoid learning "bad habits". I'm mainly self taught (it came pretty easy to me since I spent most of my teenage years with a skateboard on my feet) but I'm curious if I've developed some of these bad habits.

So I guess the question is, what are the bad habits everyone talks about?

Mysticfalcon

Don't ride with your chest pointed down the hill all the time. Use twist in the board to make your turns not swinging your weight around. Basicaly dont ride like me. However in my defence I can still ride the blacks just fine and I always have a good time. I find my riding is slowly straightening itself out as I get better and better.

sedition

Wow, there are a lot. A few major ones that I often see...

(1) Locked front leg that that is used as a (or, should I sae THE) piviot point for turning.

(2) Leaning UP the hill. (Snowolf just made a great post on this in last day or two)

(3) Skidding turns, as opposed to cariving them.

(4) Stiff legs and upper body.

(5) Hitting the terrain park, before you can hit a Blue.

(6) Leaning too much on the front/back leg. (most often it's the back)

(7) Not keeping board, hips, shoulders, and head on the same plain (i.e. center of gravity issues)

anyone else care to add...

__________________
"Up front there ought to be a man in black." -Johnny Cash
Drink sin. Ride with the devil.

GEAR
Rome | Graft | 151
Johnnie Walker | Low-ball | Lodge

gu1llerm0

+1 for pointing your chest down the hill. It's a bad habit of mine and it's leading to a meniscus injury in my knee (imagine the torsion to your back knee when you're ducked out and rotating your body to point downhill).

Snowolf

One of the ones that drives me crazy is the notion that you "steer with the back foot like a rudder" absolutely horrible form!

To add to Sedetion`s list; using the upper body to initiate turns...seeing people riding with their upper body whirling like a dirvish. Need to ride with a quiet upper body by controling the board from the waist down with flexed ankles, knees and hips.

The dreaded "gorilla stance" those people who bomb the hill and because they have`nt learned good control, are hunched way over dragging their hands in the snow almost.

Riding counter rotated all the time (facing forward with their upper body twisted as opposed to turning just their head)

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sedition

The other thing that is crazy...is how well some people have learned to ride despite having some of these habits. Iv'e seen people bomb blacks while leaning up hill, having their upper body facing down the hill the whole time, etc. What is scary is how much better they could ride if they just cleaned-up their form a bit.

__________________
"Up front there ought to be a man in black." -Johnny Cash
Drink sin. Ride with the devil.

GEAR
Rome | Graft | 151
Johnnie Walker | Low-ball | Lodge

VTpaul

oh ok, I understand now. How does anyone actually ride while doing those things? Guess my friend who first introduced me to snowboarding was a pretty good teacher.

sedition

Go to any mountain and just watch when on the lift. If you know what to look for, you'll see it EVERYWHERE.

__________________
"Up front there ought to be a man in black." -Johnny Cash
Drink sin. Ride with the devil.

GEAR
Rome | Graft | 151
Johnnie Walker | Low-ball | Lodge

Snowolf

One of the most helpfull things that a good AASI examiner or clinician can teach instructors is Movement Analisys. Learning the art of being able to watch someone ride and see exactly what all the different body movements are doing and being able to tell what that is doing to the board is a huge benefit in becoming a more effective instructor. I need a lot more work on this and from what I have learned already it is helping me identify precisely what someone is doing to sabotage themselves. The more you watch people ride and practive M.A. the more you start seeing this stuff and the easier and quicker it is to help people out with improving their riding.

As Sedition mentioned, it is amazing to see how well some rider with horrible habbits can actually ride. This is one reason that learning from a friend can often be a horrible thing for a newbie to do. These riders "teach" their friends to ride like they do and these bad habits that they have learned to work with make learning very difficult for the new rider.

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apoc4lypse

Hey, just joined this forum, found it when I was searching for tips on doing spins.

Anyway, just how bad is it if you tend to ride a lot twisting your upper body down hill. I notice that when I'm doing heel side turns its not really an issue, nor too much when I'm just riding strait but once I'm doing a toe side turn since I'm facing up hill I tend to twist around in order to see down hill.

Another thing I've become more aware of is skidding, what exactly qualifies as skidding. Is it any carve that you make where your edge begins to slide toward the outside of the turn, like instead of holding your edge into the snow it sort of slides?

Another thing is just how much do you steer with the front. When I carve (lets justr say toe side) I find the entire process starts with putting weight onto the nose toe side edge which makes that edge catch the snow thus making me start to turn toe side. The only way I can describe the rest of it is sort of a twisting motion is what occurs in the entire board which begun with the front toe edge.

The problem I find is that no matter what I always feel like I'm skidding when I'm on hard pack or groomers. The only time I ever felt like I was truly carving was when I went up to Vermont and they had like a foot of powder.

I guess I just want to know what it is that separates skidding from true carving.