hktrdr

Suggest you experiment some more, as 23" still seems a bit on the narrow side for your height and weight. However, it is a pretty good stance width for your 157 board and by no means too narrow per se.

For comparison, I am 5'9"/150lbs and ride a 23" stance as well.

We are lucky people to get to play in dry and fluffy Japanese powder every year And so much of it this year!

dreampow

I'll try out a 23.5" and a 24" stance and see how it feels.

The rocker on the proto is as you say allowing me to get over my front foot way more and have way more control in the powder. I like that.

I watch everything Blauvelt has to offer and love his style, will check out Pat Moore.

Also Snowolf any thoughts on stance width. I guess its just personal preference, but would be good to hear your thoughts.

wrathfuldeity

looks good, nice and fun.

idk but perhaps compress abit more coming into the jumps, wait for it and suck up your knees more while in the air and then land with more knees...you land too stiff legged and your timing is off just a bit.

you still got some of the trailing arm girlfriend thing going on and perhaps it makes your heelside alittle weaker...and i think that straightening your back, bending your knees more for squat will add a bit more power and definition to you heelside.

and imo you use your upper body too much to compensate for lack of lower body dynamics. perhaps straighten your back up, instead of hunched, bend and compress you knees more and think about of moving your board under you more instead of lining up your upper body to make the turns.

lastly try riding steeper stuff to make you ride more compact. the terrain looks fun, fairly mellow and no consequence snow which perhaps lulls you into riding more open and standup and if you ride steeper stuff i think it would force you to ride more compact. i think you can ride more open to gain speed but then when you slash compact like a spring and then explode out of the white room with your board pointed right down the fall line so that you are in position to quickly accelerate for more speed or if it is steep and you need to be on the next edge.

I say again ride a bit more compact, glue your elbows to your ribs, bend your knees more and ride more aggressively. I think you could ride a bit more centered and less on the tail for more aggressive style instead of surfing...but dude I'd be surfing that shit.

but idk...i'm just some hack than can't ride any better and would defer to Snowolf

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dreampow

Not sure that elbows pressed to ribs will make my riding look better or be more effective, I take your point and I know my arms need to stay closer to the body. Specially the rear arm hugging the invisible GF.

Didn't get any footage from the second half of the season and I know that all the points mentioned here are better while not 100% by any means. Spent a few days solo riding working hard on all these points especially jumps into powder.

Also spent the last part of the season on a proto as opposed to the posi camber stick you see here.
That changed things up quite a bit too especially being able to get over the front foot more in powder.

I tend to spend a certain amount of time each day really focusing on improving and then also spend a lot of time just enjoying the epic powder. Sometimes its just relaxed surfing mode. Who could blame me with this kind of powder.

Oh and I do ride a lot of steeper stuff with trees, but my riding partner is not very comfortable with it yet so we don't crack out the camera. He is more concerned with just staying alive.

One thing I would love is a riding partner who is a better rider than me. I know from playing a lot of soccer that its a great way to up your game and learn.

You all need to get over here and show me some moves.

ThunderChunky

You're a bastard. Try going faster off those natural booters. The thing I find to be super helpful is to be confident. Go off stuff relaxed and confident you can do anything off it. Makes stuff less scary and makes it look way better. Just a general jumping suggestion. Freeriding natural hits are some of the funnest things in snowboarding.

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srdeo

Push yourself with more challenging terrain. More natural hits, drops etc. Your riding skills look good especially since you've been only riding for 4 years. And you look like you can ride much more challenging terrain than what you are showing on the clip. Or ride faster, that will make same terrain little more challenging, but with all that powder it would be hard to ride any faster unless pitch gets steeper.

As far as stance goes, go with what feels best to you. It is really more of personal thing and it depends on the board also. With stiffer boards narrower stance feels better and with softer boards, wider stance feels better. You don't always have to ride same stance and same angle with all your boards.

And if you feel like getting bigger board, I would get narrower longer board vs wider shorter board since you seem to ride a lot of trees.

HoboMaster

I don't think your arms need to be glued to your ribs either, I ride with mine hanging about 4-6 inches off my hips in the air. They're generally kept below my waistline except when making big turns, then I rotate them to gain inertia. Having them floating at your hips really helps keep you balanced, dynamic riding involves using your entire body.

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PowderHound and TreeNinja

cjcameron11

I have nothing to contribute riding wise but i just wanted to point out that i really hate the sound track you used. I know its not very constructive criticism but hey thats all i got, btw i like the riding.

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IdahoFreshies

well it looks like you had a very productive year! Looks like you had some amazing pow to ride in. Looked pretty good. Now its just cleaning up the form and hitting bigger features. i get super pissed if i ride a line and know that it was sloppy and my stance and turns weren't clean and up to my standards. Cant wait till next year when i can actually ride some good snow hopefully.

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wrathfuldeity

The elbow glued to the ribs visualization/idea was a point an instructor bud cued me in on...it is that when you are compact you can slash harder or perhaps decamber and then explode/pop to the next edge while having more power and less movement. It has helped me this year, in that when I was flapping away, sometimes my body and arms were not in position (or counter rotated to what I wanted to do) to quickly maneuver. And when I tried to keep my elbows tucked it forced me use my upper body more efficiently and resulted in more quick, dynamic and forceful turns...it seemed I could then snap turns. I guess it helped get the upper body together for anticipatory rotation verses with arms flapping, which seemed that I was abit late/lagging and trying to play catch-up...thus responding instead of strategically anticipating. I think it has also helped with my fore/aft movements and also the up/down compression/absorption stuff when flying blind in our flat light conditions. And I really noticed it when trying to keep my leading shoulder pointed down the fall line when riding moguls.

Perhaps Snowolf will offer a comment about this.

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