Originally Posted by beall

How do you maintaining and slow down on cat trails? sometime it is too narrow to do any wide turns for beginners. I tend to feather down in narrow runs.

Originally Posted by Snowolf

As you ride, imaging your body going straight down the hill while your board is making shallow s turns underneath you. At the outside of every turn, your board is at it's farthest point from you and your legs will be fully extended. As the board crosses underneath you, it will be at it's closest and will require you to flex your legs. This is dynamic riding known as cross under turns because now the board is starting to turn more independent of your entire body. A little bit of swivel in the waist will take place as well.

That is the goal for dynamic cross under turns. To start getting you there, do some very basic and simple exercises while you are riding. First pick a spot where you have a little more room to make completed turns. That is allowing the board to be completely across the fall line before making your next turn. As you make these linked turns, start playing with this flexing and extending. Before you initiate each turn, flex down to your 8 position and enter the turn. Ad you progress through each turn, gradually extend to your 2 position and pay attention to your timing. You want to reach maximum extension as the board completes each turn so speed up or slow down the movement to coincide with your turn. Drop back down to make the next turn and repeat the process.

An extension through the control phase of a turn increases edge pressure and helps make for a more powerful turn with less chance of loosing your edge hold. In really steep terrain, dynamic ridiculous is a must to maintain edge hold. On mellow terrain, it is just plain more fun and looks so much better. As you work with this, do these movements faster and tighter and you will really behind to feel this dynamic quality to your riding.

Originally Posted by Snowolf

Yes and no.

It is a great prerequisite for getting used to allowing the board to ride more independently underneath of you but I really did not get into unweighting with this person yet as it is a little ways past their current progression.

To answer your question more specifically, the unweighting is something a rider does deliberately to release their edge so they can then switch onto their new edge to initiate the next turn.

What I am having this rider do with the flexion and extension here is actually just getting them used to the timing of doing it. In reality for using a true down unweight, the rider hold off on that last final little bit of flexion and then does it abruptly at the exact moment they make the edge change.

The opposite of this and one most people very instinctively do is an up unweight where they will actually pop up and release their edge almost like a leaper turn. This works well on mellow terrain but is not something a rider wants to do on really steep pitches. The down unweight allows the rider to release their edge without popping themselves up and away from the mountain side and then trying desperately to get their new edge engaged again. The down unweight is a mush softer approach, like you would use if walking on glass.

I have a new video coming out that goes into this in depth. I just need to edit and post it....