i am terrible at riding switch i tried a couple times over last weekend but i just can't manage to do it. any1 have some tips that might make learning to ride switch easier? also my bindings are set at about 14 and 12. my front foot being 14.
Wrong :blowup:Your weight should be on your front foot 100% of the time.
This is great advice! That was a huge thing for me, riding lazy when learning switch caused me a lot of pain. I forgot how much slamming on cat tracks hurt. I feel like its almost worse than knuckling a small jump. learning switch on a mellow blue or a steeper green opposed to a gentle slope is key.- go extra athletic, no lazy stance, really get into your quads and lower your hips, press your shins over your toes, keep your body square. I tend to ride a pretty lazy stance in primary with no worries but that laziness will get me an instant scorpion riding switch.
thats a great idea and all, but if you're not proficient switch throwing 1's on rollers will eventually wreck you anywayAt that point I pretty much decided that switch riding will be used when coming out of 180s and that is it.
Not to get OT to much, but I love it when the apline skiers try to race by me through the rolls and ill pop back to back 180's, end on switch and keep cruisin with them.through my 2 day instructor training I spend 80% of the time riding switch, so i basically learned how to ride switch by practicing and revisiting the very basics, in level 1-3 rider progression. After 2 days of doing this I can ride switch very confidently on steeper/rough blue terrain (at night with 3" of fresh snow to be precise :laugh
Biggest things I had to fix when taking my switch to blue terrain where I really found where my weak points were, basic skills that seemed to just get lost when I went switch:
Commit the entire edge to the turn! Because you are not confident with the switch turn you are not mentally fully committing the entire edge into that turn, so make sure when you are going to turn you take special note to just sack up and push that entire edge in the snow.
Dip your body to match the slope of the hill through the turn! It was amazing the difference it made when when i went to switch, and I committed that edge and I put more weight on that front foot and i laterally dipped my upper body to the slope of the hill through the turn.
Until you can carve switch and get more comfortable, get that back leg around quickly soy you are not lingering on finishing the turn. Weather this is with a sweeping motion or some counter rotation get that turn done.
jumping and spinning 180 on a run then ripping down half the hill switch feels great
Good luck with it!
good for u! hopefully i can pick up switch easier now with everyones adviceI ride switch on greens and blues top to bottom on my directional twin now, and my new true twin?? Shit, I almost look like I know what I'm doing!!
god i just love claims like that.Well, my story is I rode regular and was able to do double black diamonds my second time snowboarding. Not really fast, but maybe fall only 20% of the way? I took me so much more switch riding I lost count before I can do double blacks. I think like snowolf says, you pretty much are imprinted with your usual riding. Then when you do switch, it feels really arward and scary. Not only muscle memory, but just looking in that direction and having a blind spot on the opposite side is really weird and you just have to force yourself to do it.
Now, to date, I prolly logged more switch than regular because I use it to "save energy" for doing hard stuff regular when the opportunity arises. But STILL if I had to guess, my switch is 80% as good as regular! :laugh:
But I would agree somewhat on the front foot weighting. That's one way to keep your stance switch and not reverting when you don't want to. It's a matter of conciously doing it to break that habit before you body will get used to switch.
Because of the relatively poor snow conditions this week, I've been practicing switch a lot the last couple of days. It takes a day or two of practice to be able to ride green runs while linking turns cleanly. I think by the end of the week I'll be able to ride anything short of tough blacks in switch.
Biggest problem I'm having right now is that I find my edge transition is delayed when going from heelside to toeside. Kind of a reluctance to commit. I can overcome it by concentrating on it, and eventually I'll be confident enough that it'll be automatic.
Yeah I went through the same thing, never knew there was a dominant eye until I bought guns! I'm left eye dominant, but shoot my rifles and shotguns right, which really screws me up.In an AASI training clinic where we did a lot of switch riding, the TD brought up the whole dominant eye thing as well.