# Help me stop pressuring my back foot!



## jml22 (Apr 10, 2012)

Bend your knees bounce up and down.
Heel side = get your but to the ground like you're sitting in a chair would be the most simple explanation.
You gotta be aggressive, no half ass stuff


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## snowklinger (Aug 30, 2011)

grow balls.


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## RagJuice Crew (Apr 8, 2012)

jml - thanks, it's a start
snowklinger - :laugh: Nope, I've tried various mental gymnastics to figure out how acknowledging I'm doing it wrong would equate to not having the balls to do so, to no avail. Thanks though - to be fair, it's _usually _the right advice!


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## Jason (Feb 15, 2011)

Friend of mine was having a similar problem. The internet told him to go to the bunny slope, strap in ONLY his front foot and start riding. You can't put pressure/rudder with your rear leg if it's not strapped in. It seemed to help him and may be worth a shot.


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## Outlander (Nov 28, 2011)

RagJuice Crew said:


> An off shoot of the "Pressuring The Front To Start A Turn" thread...
> 
> I've been very conscious of late that my snowboarding technique is, well, shit. I mean, I can board most slopes and go a decent speed and my edge control if fairly good. But my actually style is poor and it leads to (a) a sore back leg and (b) problems progressing.
> 
> ...


Old habits are tough to break. One thing that can help to develop the muscle memory for this is to actively push a little against your rear binding to shift your hips toward the nose of the board. This will naturally cause you to flex your front knee more. 

What are your stance angles? If you are riding a duck stance, angling the rear binding back another 3-6 degrees also helps some people find a better, more comfortable range of motion to shift forward.


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## jdang307 (Feb 6, 2011)

snowklinger said:


> grow balls.


Yeah, that's about it right there. About 60 days in you've developed the bad habit. Leaning on your back leg while your front leg is straight? You gotta spend the whole day on steeps with your body centered and you will eventually get used to it.

How steep are your slopes? Go steeper. I can't imagine tackling steeps in the back seat like that. You'll be on your ass the whole time.


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## Jed (May 11, 2011)

Yeah, this is going to take some work (bad habits suck to break).

A couple suggestions:

1) More forward lean on your bindings (particularly the front one - but you can't really just put more forward lean on one binding... that would be weird on heelside turns, so put it on both)

If you're not bending your front leg, putting more forward lean on your binding will force you to bend that leg. It's an old trick instructors sometimes use to force beginners to bend their knees because you can't not have your knees bent if you have lots of forward lean.

As you get more used to keeping your front leg bent, you can start reducing the amount of forward lean back to lower amounts (assuming you want to - some people like lots of forward lean).

2) Pretend you're a teapot

Stick your front hand out in front of you and pretend that your front hand is the spout of a teapot. Now you want to pour a little tea out of your spout every time you turn. This will force you to stop riding so back foot and put more weight forward each time you turn.

This works best on slightly steeper terrain, but the same principle applies on less steep terrain.


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## RagJuice Crew (Apr 8, 2012)

jdang307 said:


> Yeah, that's about it right there. About 60 days in you've developed the bad habit. Leaning on your back leg while your front leg is straight? You gotta spend the whole day on steeps with your body centered and you will eventually get used to it.
> 
> How steep are your slopes? Go steeper. I can't imagine tackling steeps in the back seat like that. You'll be on your ass the whole time.


Less bent, not straight. Straight_er_. Nice idea on the steeps but I ride pretty much anything inbounds, just the wrong way as it turns out! :laugh:



Outlander said:


> Old habits are tough to break.





Jed said:


> Yeah, this is going to take some work (bad habits suck to break).


Was afraid you were going to say that... :laugh:



On the bright side, took on board some of the hints and tips in this thread and made huge progress today (much quicker than I had hoped too), so thank you all!

I have avoided changing my stance for now as I'm riding ducky so I can improve my switch riding - it was doing this that highlighted the flaws in my regular riding, as is so often the case - so figured I'd try the rest first.

So, new boots are (almost) completely broken in. And to be honest that probably made the single biggest difference. Wearing a better fitting pair of boots immediately made improvements easier and lessened the flaw itself. Throughout the day I did a lot of one footing to get a feel for it, did the whole tea pot thing, actively pushed against the rear binding and really bent my knees in to it (so thank you in particular to Jason, Jed, Outlander and JML). Also made a point of, along with the "pushing against the rear binding", shifting my weight to what felt like more to the front and bending my front leg what felt like more than the back, which resulted in things actually being more balanced and even. That was stellar advice Outlander, nice one.

The more I did it the more it felt natural. Add in the new boots and I could feel the effect of my bindings more, my turns were naturally led by my front more than my back, and I spent the day smiling. Still not quite there, obviously, but felt like progress I actually enjoyed myself more on the mountain than I have for weeks. Kudos lads.



TL;DR - tried some shit, saw great improvements, thank you!


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## Jed (May 11, 2011)

Awesome man, glad it's working out, those bad habits can be a tough nut to crack but it looks like you're making good progress.


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## IdahoFreshies (Jul 9, 2011)

make sure when you are making your turns that you are leaning forward to match the pitch of the slope and using that torsional flex of your board to your advantage


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