Wangta

Hey guys,

So I've been snowboarding a whole 7 times - started in Park City last year. My friends got me started by leaving heal-side first, and I learned how to connect to toeside turns just by trial and error. I haven't ever had a lesson - my friends have been helpful but have never really closely critiqued my technique etc.

I just got back from Breck and while I had a good time there, I realized I have a long way to go to get "comfortable" on a board. My major problem is that I don't feel comfortable on toeside turns unless its REALLY flat and terrain is predictable. If a bump comes up that I didn't see, it shakes me and I almost lose my balance and then want to slow WAY down. I don't know why but I don't feel the same on heel-side turns.

I also realized on this trip that I have been turning completely wrong. I had read somewhere on here (Snowolf?) that the turns should be initiated by the front foot by angling the board. I got to have one day out on the mountain after reading this and realized that I typically turn the board using my backfoot like a rudder. So I worked on that a bit - but to be honest, I don't really get how to do it with the front and not use the back to really control everything through a turn.

Also, I realized on toe-side turns I was using ONLY my toes and feet to change the pressure on the board. This resulted in my feet and low legs getting extremely tired quickly. I had read here that I should really use my shins to push down on my boots and let the boot stiffness and equipment push down toeside for turns. I started trying to do this, but I feel even more unstable on toeside turns when I do this.

So I could really use some critique and guidance from you guys. Due to my lack of confidence when in toeside turns I typically don't go very fast, afraid something will bounce me off balance and I'll catch an edge and die (just kidding, but not really). Here's a video of me last weekend - let er rip.

Oh, and I'm 6'0", 185 lbs and have a Ride Machete 158 board

gjsnowboarder

Two reasons for the lack of confidence.

One: The feeling catching an edge. When you are using your back foot to pivot the board you need to keep the board fairly flat to the ground when changing edges. The flatter the board the easier it is to catch the edge, but the faster and easier to pivot the baord around.

Two: Feeling like every bump is going to knock you over. This is feeling is from two specific thinks. One. On your toeside your shoulders are open a little wider than they need be to the nose of the board. This cause your spine to twist up and your front leg to straighten out, leaving most of your weight on the back foot. because you need the board to be fairly flat to pivot you are creating tilt in the board by leaning your whole body. A straight leg can't absorb bumps, It is hard to maintain balance on one leg, and when your weight is out past the edge of the snowboard you have to work harder at maintaining your balance.

There would be two exercises I would work with you first on.

One- Rotation. We would start by getting our body to rotate and be aligned in the direction that we are turning. Two steps to this. First would be to practice rotating our hips by envisioning our knee out over our Big toe and moving out and around to the little toe for toe to heel. For heel to toe the knee would go from out over the pinky toe to out over the big toe. Second, with our hands on the toe side have our lead hand rest on the inside of our front leg and the back hand on the hamstring/outsidebutt area of our back leg. Then when turning to the heels the hand should move to front hand on front leg hamstring and back hand on inside of back leg(as if you were goin to scratch your nut closest to the back leg). This should help keep your body front should/hip/knee/outside of front foot always pointing in the direction you are trying to make your board go. It will also help you to be aligned to be able to keep bend your knees evenly and not have one that is forced to be staighter and the other to support more weight.

Two- we would work on progressively learning how to tilt our board edge. First with both feet and then by seperating the feet a little bit to get a one, two feeling. To do this we first would start with a j-turn on steeper green. Startout with the board flat and nose pointed down the fall line. Next, with your ankles followed up by levering against your highback, think of increasing the angle of your board with the snow5-10 degrees at a time. one way to envision this is to think like you are ratching your bindings, at each click you flex your ankles up an or lever your hi-back a quarter of an inch. Start with ankles first and then the levering. Try to not make a full body lean. To assist with not leaning up the hill as you ratch your ankles up, you will release your knees down(i.e. bend your knees MORE; this should feel like you are lowering your hips down toward your heels. Half way through your j you the Big toe to little toe movement from above to help round out and finish your j-turn. Next try this on toes by starting out on a flat board. Bend your knees out over your pinky toes like a cowboy straddling a horse. Feel your butt scope underneath your hips and your hips push forward while slightly arching your back to keep it upright. This will help position you out over the toes. Next try to bend your boots a little at time by lowering your knees and hips down. After starting to make this movement start to extend out your ankles by pushing down on your toes and raising your heels(i.e. standing on your toes like a ballerina)... Make these move similiar to the ratcheting you did on your heelside. About half way through make the front knee rotate from over the pinky toe to over the big toe. Don't forget your hands to help make sure the rest of your body is following suit.

After getting this down try starting the movements with the front first and then use the back foot.

Next step is to smooth out the ratcheting and incorporate these movements into your riding. This is jsut the start. Be sure to look through finishing your turns and not getting caught starring straight down the run. This will cause you to block your spine and prevent your lower movement(primarliy the rotary movements from being able to finish out.)

P.S. By the way for only 7 times with out lessons you are looking good.

Wangta

Thanks GJS - wow, alot more detail than I expected!

Completely agree - I think I naturally do this due to the fear of not being able to get the board around quick enough. But yeah, so easy to catch an edge. I sat on the hill just watching other guys go buy and the "good ones" seemed so calm and unstressed while boarding - that is NOT me!

When you say open, do you mean my shoulders are facing the nose of the board too much? As in if I'm traveling north, my shoulders (and face presumably) would be facing north? So that would mean that if I'm traveling north, my shoulders should be facing east as much as possible? I have realized that my weight is typically on my back foot with the exception of when I try to turn quickly - I briefly put my weight on the front foot so I can get the back around quick enough. I think I naturally done this as I'm naturally nervous about going too fast - weight on front foot has typically sent me to higher speeds. From reading things on this forum, it seems that my weight should be on the front foot most of the time and to use the front foot to initiate turns - I have tried to do this but I'm obviously not there yet!

Little confused by this - when you say "knee out over our Big toe and moving out and around to the little toe for toe to heel", do you mean both knees? So that would mean my left knee would move to the left (toward little toe on left foot) and my right knee would move to the right (toward little toe on right foot)? I just searched youtube hoping for a video.

Will definitely try this - will practice without the board first to try and visualize the pattern and implications of on board/balance, etc.

When you say levering against highback, you mean pushing my calves/back of leg onto the highback of the binding, right? So as I envision this, it seems like I should be half squatting (defensive position in basketball or wall-sit), and using ankles and highback to force right side of my board to lift up and engage left edge of my board at the start of the turn, then utilize the rotation (exercise 1 above) while doing hand/leg exercises to ensure alignment of my body.

Question on this - you didn't mention how much you use your ankles vs. pushing down on toes. And I'm guessing that when you mean pushing down on toes, you mean pushing my shins into the front of the boot - or the opposite of levering via highback? As I mentioned in my first post, I have historically been relying 100% on my ankles for toeside, which has fatigued the crap out of my calves/feet/leg muscles. So it sounds like it should be a combination of the two (ankles and pushing down on boot)? I tried this a bit but couldn't get a sense of how much of either I should be relying on to sustain the toe-side turn.


Got it - i can see how these exercises can be linked. When you say look through, that is to maintain my body alignment and avoid having my shoulders too open to the front of the board (as you alluded to in point 2 above)?

Thanks man! I think I have decent good balance and was a big skier when I was younger so I'm comfortable being on an edge (which I think is a big part of skiing or boarding). I was able to connect connect heel and toe turns on my first day and since this point my focus has not been on technique but just getting down the damn hill. I typically pick things up pretty quickly and reach a level of ability that allows me to "play ball" (or in this case, get down the hill), but I usually do it in a way that is not 100% correct and is incredibly inefficient and then have to work extremely hard to transition from "getting down the hill" to "getting down the hill the right way". In my experience, the later takes 90% of the time and effort and is sometimes not intuitive. I liken it to basketball - you can quickly learn to shoot so the ball goes in the basket, but your shooting form will likely be terrible/ugly without proper coaching (that's where you guys come in).

Thanks for your help - I would really like to have the right technique for many reasons - 1) Good technique seems to result in less crashes/caught edges, 2) less stress/fatigue on my legs (I have to stop 2-3 times down a run),3) can go faster without feeling unsafe and lastly, 4) can enjoy myself without constant fear of crashing/burning.

Wangta

thanks Snowulf - I have actually watched your videos. Ironically, I watched your videos the night before my last day at Breck and tried to do the turning as depicted in Part 4. You make it look so easy...it felt like I was doing the same thing but when looking at my video vs yours...obviously not! My back-end seems to slide alot more than yours, and your trailing lines in the snow look alot cleaner. When I watch your videos its hard for me to tell when you're bending your legs and/or using ankles - they are subtle movements?

Yeah, I think this is something that gjsnowboarder pointed out as well. So am I understanding this correctly - my shoulders should be pointing due east (assuming board is pointed directly north), and only my neck should have my head pointing forward (I'm the left guy in the pic below)? I have no idea what dynamic skidded turns means - I'll look it up.



Yes, you had been helping another person with toe-side turns and I had thoroughly read your responses to him (http://www.snowboardingforum.com/tip...ide-turns.html). I think I understand the concept - the front foot, depending on weighting toward toe or heel, initiates the tilt of the board and allows the natural shape of the board to start a turn, right? I practiced this a little bit on some flat areas and kind of felt what you meant. Maybe I'm not doing it right but it seemed that the board didn't turn THAT much, meaning, that when I attempted to lift the right side of the board by lifting my toes and pushing back into the backstop, the board did start to turn left but not much. Maybe I wasn't going fast enough? How sharp of a turn does this method allow you to do?

I think I get the timing of the back foot. So the first foot initiates the turn, and commits the FRONT edge and allows the board's natural shape to begin a turn, THEN the back foot locks in the BACK edge to avoid the end of the boarding from skidding or fish tailing out (the ruddering effect). Is this what results in your turns looking alot cleaner than mine? I actually did notice the difference in your tracks in the snow vs. mine - mine look like i am going much faster than I actually am and that my ass-end drifts (like a car) on every turn.

Got it - I actually read your description in the thread above and it instantly made sense to me why I am getting so fatigued doing toe-side turns. As mentioned in my original post, I have historically been using 100% of my TOES and FEET to do toe-side turns. I'm not sure about others, but that is physically impossible for me to sustain - my legs and feet start cramping like crazy and I have to stop multiple times in a run. So what you're doing when you drive your shins into the boot is utilizing the boot's natural stiffness to help engage the right side of the board (I have Salomon F22s - pretty stiff boots). To be honest, I didn't know what stiffness of the boot mattered - I'm guessing this is why?

One questions I have on this - how does this help with balance? So I tried this at very low speeds, trying to use 100% of the boot and shins to maintain a toeside turn (my feet thanked me), and I noticed that my balance was terrible because I was essentially bending my knees not for balance but to engage and maintain the edge. Does this get better with time/practice? I like the fact my knees are bent, but I liken it to a ballerina in a squat like position on her tippe-toes on an angled floor - you push her and they'll fall over.

So I think I'm starting to get this. So stance wise, for both heel and toe-side turns, I should have knees bent, and most of edge initiation should be done with my leading (left foot) by either: (1) Toeside: Pushing shins into tongue of boot to engage right edge, (2) heelside: Lifting toes and leaning back on backstop. So as I visualize that, its like body from the knees up is staying static and my toes/heel and either shins/back of leg (calf area) are initiating the edge?

Got it and totally agree. Dumb question but is this the way that good snowboarders turn? Meaning, they never use their back foot to turn, etc?

Wangta

Got it - for beginners, it seems counter-intuitive/dangerous to put weight on the front foot, especially on steeper terrain.

Good point - I'll try and find a medium-banked slope to do this.


Got it - helpful visuals. It's tough to know how this is gonna feel without being the mountain strapped up - there is no way to practice this without the board, huh?

I think this is the part I'm going to struggle the most with. So thinking about this...essentially the rotation of the hips is to help initiate the turns. On toeside, pushing the knee down and in helps the board cut to the right quicker?

gjsnowboarder

Yes, the picture you posted is a great example. of Open and close. Another way to tho think about it is your board makes a doorway from nose to tail, and your shoulders/hips/knees make the door ( hinge is attached to the tail). We typically want to keep that door closed. When we ride the door can swing open in the direction we are riding. Front shoulder will point out past the nose over the edge you are riding.

We usually refer to this as ELVIS knee. Or youi can feel like you are pointing your heel out to the nose of the board or on heelside the toes toward the nose of the board. The back foot can mimic the front in this but it isn't necessary for what we are working on here.





That is correct and a good way of visualizing it.

Well you can move your ankles at different ankles as compared to your knee. You can move your ankle up and down at the same time you can collapse/straighten your knee. you can also combine this by position of the hips. So as i am lower my body down using knee bend I can either flex my ankle up(ie toes up) to increase the bend in the boot more) or I can extend my ankle down to increase tilt in the board. The bending knee creates downward pressure on my toe edge while the ankle flexing the toes down increases tilt in the board. Or I can flex my ankle upto help keep my board flatter and increase the pressure on my toe side.

Looking through means looking through in the direction the nose of the board is headed. This is not the same as looking down the bill. S turns will cause us to need to at time being looking sideways across the fallline, diagonally down it, straight down it, and so on.

P.S. If you can afford it even a half day or a one to two hour private lesson, could help you progress much faster. Definitely something to at least price out. the video really helps.
P.S.2. I would suggest the next time have the person below and ride toward them, but off to the side and past. That way you get to see yourself from multiple angles) Plus it helps us to pick out actual cause and effect movements when the length of time and line of site is more.

gjsnowboarder

Four ways your board interacts on the snow
Tilt- raising that circlular edge cut edge of your snowboard cause the opposite side to engage into the snow
Pivot - think like window wipers on a car. the board can spin about a pivot point. The pivot point can be anywhere on your board. For now think of the board pivoting either underneath a foot, or in between the feet.
Twist - The board is flexy, it has four contact points. The contacts point are located where the angle of sidecut takes the path of the sidecut away from the length of the board. Two contact points on toe and heelside edges. One toward the nose, one toward the tail per edge. We can twist the board to engage these contact points one at a time or two at a time. This is typically down by an ankle movement opposite fo the the other foot.
Pressure - Bend in the board or downward/upward pressure), We can pressure the board down into the snow anywhere along it edge. This includes nose and tail.

For your questions the downward pressure cause by moving your weight toward the snow cause the edge to press into the snow and with forward/backward momentum edgages that side cut. Edge angle cause by tilt can increase/decrease that radius of sidecut. I know its fairly technical, but if you can think of is my toe/heel edge pressing into the snow when I am riding it will help you.

Wangta

I was just thinking the same thing. Where are you guys both located? I'd love to spend some time with you guys - would be great to learn via proper instruction. Things that feel weird right now are probably right, and vice versa - I obviously don't know the difference at this point.

Here's another video going down a fairly steep slope at Breck (nice faceplant included):



One more from a bit far away - not sure how useful it is:

metric

Great job for only having ridden under 10 days. I think the rest has already been covered, but I would just add to bend your knees more and keep your weight forward to initiate the turns more smoothly.

I'm actually in the process of learning switch so it's a bit like learning all over again. I have to constantly remind myself to keep my weight forward when I'm riding switch.