# Dealing with uneven terrain



## NWBoarder (Jan 10, 2010)

Stay loose and get low. It's tough to say without video, but you're likely standing taller than you should be and riding stiff legged. Keep your knees bent and loose. You really want to try and absorb the bumps. It takes some practice, but you'll get there eventually.


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## stickz (Feb 6, 2013)

nw told me that exact same thing last yr...He's 100% correct. This really
comes with time bro. Really try and relax more in general when your riding. Loose trucks save lives is what a skateboarder would say. So think of your knees as trucks and always stay loose, never stiffen up. To practice try and take those small jumps your hitting now at speed and not catch any air. 


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## wrathfuldeity (Oct 5, 2007)

flysolo. said:


> My question is, whenever I ride on uneven terrain, I cannot go fast as I want to and turning is not super easy. By uneven terrain I don't mean moguls, but very bumpy terrain (not sure if that explains it lol). When I see good snowboarders, they are turning in those terrain like it's nothing and just cruising past it.
> 
> How do they absorb those bumps so well? Or rather, how do you get better in general on riding when not on ideal terrain. I mean it's almost like I bounce off bump and have hard time absorbing it sometimes. Is this just matter of experience? or Strength your legs? I don't know what it is =(
> 
> I tried going straight fast, and quickly breaking on my heel side but this causes alot of trouble for me. Either I end up completely stopping bouncing a couple times or I slide sideways,


what NW says...another way to think about it, is that you suck up your knees...and skim over the bumpy. New riders keep their legs straight and tend to extend over the bumps and while in the air and get bucked...but ride low and suck up the knees instead of extend your legs. And when stopping you don't extend...but suck up the knees and compress down. Ya also got to *not* pay attention to the small bumpy and learn to trust the board to just skim over them....and while doing this, keep the nose in the fall line instead of getting to transverse or perpendicular.


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## neni (Dec 24, 2012)

As mentioned, ride low/knees bent and being loose is key. Imagine your body being one big shock absorber. With straight legs, stiff hips you can't absorb. If you jump off an obstacle, how do you land? You'll absorb the impact by bending the knees/hips. Uneven terrain is like hundreda of impacts. The faster you go, the looser you need to be.
It takes some time till you get the strength and muscle memory to have the muscles loose and tense from bending at the same time. Practice riding low on even terrain and exaggerate bending. If you feel that your hips or knees are stiff, stop for some seconds and loosen them, do some hops, shake or you know hula-hup?


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## ItchEtrigR (Jan 1, 2012)

Ride more, get used to the speed, learn to relax, you can manage a bit of speed without eating shit, you just gotta have faith...

A good tip is to pick a spot downhill and reach it without traversing or bleeding off speed, as your comfort level increases, increase the distance between those spots. Rinse and repeat.


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## SkullAndXbones (Feb 24, 2014)

there's only 2 ways i know of to deal with this kind of terrain. 1, kinda like what everyone else said, relax and go straight through. let your legs and board absorb the shock. 2, do a little big of rocking back and forth in between the bumps. kind of hard to explain because it's not really carving but it kind of is because it's short, quick carves in and out of the bumps. you have to be able to spot the gaps though. both of these require a level of commitment though because you're going to pick up speed and the last thing you wanna do is turn your board sideways to slowdown because the bumps will buck your board into the air and cause you to fall. to be honest, even though you're going fast, you are much less likely to fall going straight through then you are if you try to slow down and do heavy carving.


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## no_bad_snow (Mar 12, 2014)

^this: your legs/knee shock absorbers can only do so much. To ride crusty snow, snow-cat snowballs, or ride through lip between the groomed and ungroomed you have to hit them dead on. This means no sliding turns, 100% carve and you'll be much more stable.


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## behi (Feb 27, 2013)

flysolo. said:


> I tried going straight fast, and quickly breaking on my heel side but this causes alot of trouble for me. Either I end up completely stopping bouncing a couple times or I slide sideways


That doesn't work. You can go quite fast in chop, if you don't turn the board sideways. 

You want to make smooth turns, just slightly washing out the tail for speed control ('scarving'). Large brake maneuvers are a recipe for disaster, if you go fast enough.

Foot steering won't work well enough / be fast enough, you need to be good at dynamic turns. (If you want to be able to control speed anyway.)


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## t21 (Dec 29, 2010)

Just before you hit the small bumps,crud or whatever is uneven, you position your body to a half squat and relax your knees. each bump you feel your knees would act like a shock absorber. Keep your upper body straight and look ahead where your going to anticipate any other bumpy lines.


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## flysolo. (Feb 1, 2014)

Thanks for the tips guys it took me about half a day to get going but I was cruising pretty fast even on bumpy terrain. I haven't mastered it yet and I still fall sometimes but thanks to your guy's tips I feel like I had some progression last night

I kept everything sort of loose but still reactive and this really allowed my turns to be more dynamic. No more of that ugly feeling of skidding over bumps and such. I was going down straight and doing (cross under turns?) 
Smoothly and controlling my speed.


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