ig88

Thank you. Great insights.

I think studying your lines retrospectively on the lift can get really interesting.

slyder

I picked out that your front knee if very stiff and straight a lot of the time. Most of your weight seems to be at best centered and a bit more to the back, especially when you have that front knee locked.

You seem to initiate the turns with your hips giving you the skidded turns. These are fine if this is how you are trying to turn.

Your camera work gives a great view of your feet showing that there is no torsional twist on your front foot to start your turns to pull the board into the turn giving you that sharp turn or carve.

Like Donutz said, you should see a clean line in the snow behind you, not spray.
Wolf will nail it down for sure he has this answer on file and then modified for each rider. He is stronger at pointing this out than me but this is what I see.

Skidded:
Carve:


You can see the tight line and how the rider is on his edge in the pic behind the rider:

__________________
Thanks
-Slyder

cb1021

word up. get speed, feel the G

pwol

I'm not going to reply to every post individually, but I wanna say thanks to everyone. I've gotten some insight and help from every post.

I think most of my problems come from bad body position and being so stiff, especially in the knees. (among many other things lol)

Again when I took my group lesson they only got upto the falling leaf. I never had any really knowledgeable snowboarders around to learn from. My friend who is a casual rider told me to use my back leg to help turn on toesides so I've just been doing that ever since. Hopefully I can try getting on the right path when I go up again tomorrow!

Also to clear things up I never said I was carving, I meant I need help learning how to carve properly.

hktrdr

Hm, not really. I do not see the OP turn very much at all. Rather than making skidded turns, it looks like he is just swiveling the board while continuing to travel in the same direction. That can be a useful technique, but it sure as hell is not turning...

This is not to knock the OP - he is doing some things quite well, especially for a beginner. However, there are definitely several technique issues that he would be well advised to address before they become ingrained. Me thinks another lesson is in order.

ARSENALFAN

Yikes. I hope that hill gets some snow real soon! We have hills that look like that in August.

pwol

That footage was shot a month ago (before Thanksgiving lol), hopefully it'll look better tomorrow!

jml22

True carving is hard to perfect and not always necessary (even though it's fun), but it's kind of hard to do it effectively through the trees and bumps etc....
Being dynamic is what's important.
Like someone said before it looks like you're wagging your tail and going straight down the mountain and not actually turning.
Watch the snowprofessors on videos, take a few hours to practice by yourself.

Bend your knees, get your weight forward so you're perpendicular to the slope and get full control of your board. Those would be the main things to work on right now. Start turning and then get more dynamic.

cocolulu

What you're basically doing is sideslip turning. When you're sideslipping, you're applying the brakes, so you're not really carving.

The issue is that you're going one direction, and you whip the board another direction. It will sideslip until you ease up and let the edge take you in a new direction.

To carve, the goal is to get you're board at an angle and let the edge cut an arc through the snow. You will feel your board cut and sweep in an arc across the snow. It will not feel like grinding. You have to be patient with your board. Don't swing the board around, get on the edge, get your balance, and let the board turn you. If you try to rush the turn, you'll sideslip.

I frankly think you can carve on greens, it's just hard to get the speed you need for hard carving and hard turns. But greens is a good place to start, because you don't feel the need to apply the brakes and skid. Then you can take it to blues and blacks and try harder carving.

NoirX252

I just got back into riding softboots more often, and have realized how much knee drive really helps, although I have a question snowwolf.

1. instead of front/rear knee drive, what would driving both knees towards the turn do? as in heel side, rotating both knees/feet into the turn, regular stance, rotating the lower body joints counter-clockwise... and clockwise for toeside.

2. how radical should fore/aft be? if i get extremely radical, I feel like the turn ends before I get a chance to go aft, even on really big sidecuts on alpine boards, should it be automatic/subtle at higher levels of riding?

Knee drive is really powerful stuff..
Alpine gear..
1. snapped used bindings
2. bought new bindings, snapped it after 3 1/2 hours of riding...

I just for shits tried it on softoboots, and despite it doing slightly different stuff at angles like 15/3, it still adds to the performance. I've seen videos like casi (twist the discs) always thought it was a load of bs, nope, I won't discount anything now and experiment super freely.

(PS: softboots have come such a dam long way, it's amazing)