# I skid too much



## Guest (Feb 6, 2009)

you're one of the very few people who will actually admit they "skid" and not actually carve.

keep your knees bent, balance on your toes/heels and bring your knees close together. =) (the last one is the trick)happy carving!


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## Technine Icon (Jan 15, 2009)

When you're on an edge, focus on digging in as hard as u can. When on your toe edge, really get up on your toes and the same for heel edge.


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## Guest (Feb 6, 2009)

I have the same problem too 

I feel like no matter how much I bend my knees, it's still not enough. Lol.


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## max_tm (Dec 7, 2008)

IMO the key to progressing through this correctly is to build on it methodically, don't just hit up your favourite run and start trying to rip it up. Here's a pretty good start (note that before you start trying this, you need to have solid sliding turns, with lower body steering and not having to kick your back leg out to complete your turns):

The balanced body position is more key than ever in a carved turn: back nice and straight, hands over the tip and tail (assuming that you're riding standard softboot angles), knees slightly bent, and get your knees pushing *out* not in. We call this a "cowboy" stance and it works towards getting the pressures on your board more evenly distributed along your edge.

Now that you have a good solid stance for carving, head to a medium-pitch green run and focus on getting the feeling of the sidecut doing the turning: Start straightlining down the hill and make a toeside turn: gradually start pushing your toes and knees down into the snow, lifting your heels up (and slightly lean into the turn). The goal is to keep your back straight and slightly arched and to get your hips pushed out. Hold this position to see how it feels to have your sidecut turn you across the fall line, and if possible even *back up the hill* (this is how you'll know that you got it right!) Stop and look at your track, it should be a thin pencil line (don't worry about the shape for now, just make sure that there are no flattened out skiddy parts in the middle). Repeat this on your heel edge: straightline down the hill and gradually start bending your knees and lifting your toes (and slightly lean into the turn), I find that this is tougher on heelside as our bodies just can't get the edge angle up as easily as when we're on our toes. Again try to get turning up the hill and look at your track when you're done.

Now that you actually have the feeling of the sidecut turning the board, you want to focus on getting some turns linking, and the feeling of what it's like to be balanced on your edge throughout the turn. Start on a similar run and throughout these turns try to achieve that same feeling that you got above. Don't focus on flexing or extending, or getting your board super-high up on edge, just maintain a nice solid stance with knees slightly bent, and try to get that edge to do the work. Something that I like to think about when I'm riding like this is that your boots are full of water and throughout every turn you're trying to pour as much out as you can. To go from one turn to the other is simply a matter of decreasing your edge angle again and transitioning just as you would in a solid sliding turn, but this time being patient and again, letting your edge do the work.

In the turns that I described above, you'll find that you'll probably make bigger turns than you'd like to, so make sure you have a lot of room!



Once you've gotten this down, you'll probably start to incorporate this more and more into your everyday riding as you feel more confident. The next big step is to get some more performance out of your board by flexing and extending (bending your knees and pressuring down and into the fall line, and extending your legs and unweighting the board when coming back across it) but I'll leave more detail about that for another day.


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## Guest (Feb 6, 2009)

Thanks! I'll try that out next time I head up to the mountain


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## Guest (Feb 6, 2009)

max_tm said:


> IMO the key to progressing through this correctly is to build on it methodically, don't just hit up your favourite run and start trying to rip it up. Here's a pretty good start (note that before you start trying this, you need to have solid sliding turns, with lower body steering and not having to kick your back leg out to complete your turns):
> 
> The balanced body position is more key than ever in a carved turn: back nice and straight, hands over the tip and tail (assuming that you're riding standard softboot angles), knees slightly bent, and get your knees pushing *out* not in. We call this a "cowboy" stance and it works towards getting the pressures on your board more evenly distributed along your edge.
> 
> ...


To build on what you said about the heel edge, I always angle my binding backs forward a good bit and it REALLY helps for carving heelside. It's one of those things you need to get used to though, so don't just throw your binding backs on a ridiculously forward setting otherwise your legs will just hurt like a bitch and you'll feel like you're fighting the board instead of riding it.


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## scottland (Jan 8, 2008)

Technine Icon said:


> When you're on an edge, focus on digging in as hard as u can.


That's usually it right there. If board well, but can't get carving down, it's usually because you're not applying enough power to the edge with your legs. Carving takes some strength, don't be afraid to really dig in.


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## FunkyRooster (Nov 18, 2008)

Wow, This is some really great stuf right here.
I think I will have a much better chance at carving with this info. Really really apprectiated! 

I now dont think that I do skidded turns good enough either  I usually have to use my rear foot to controll so I may need to work on that as well. My wife is also learning but she is a little behind me so we will be on greens next outing anyways! Cant wait! Thanks again!


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## Rocan (Dec 3, 2008)

its not about pushing hard with your heels/toes... its all about balancing them.

bending your knees towards each other increases the amount of edge used, which, in turn, makes it easier for the tail to follow the nose.

try keeping the side to side pressure in your front and rear foot even.

and remember, always lean DOWN the hill =D


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## max_tm (Dec 7, 2008)

> bending your knees towards each other increases the amount of edge used, which, in turn, makes it easier for the tail to follow the nose.


I agree with the rest of your post but not with this, I completely have to disagree here. This makes little sense from am (intuitive) physics point of view or from a riding point of view IMO. Pushing your knees out (obviously not to some ridiculous extent) gets the camber of the board doing the work as opposed to having you squeeze your knees together, accomplish relatively nothing performance wise, both with edge hold and turn radius(debatable, as a a recent thread shows) and then not having any help disengaging the edge at the end of your turn because you pretty much did everything the board was supposed to do for you. Not to mention that it's a very poor stance balance-wise, which is such a crucial part of carving.


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## max_tm (Dec 7, 2008)

I was quoting Rocan but by all means ask away . I've never heard of CASI promoting squeezing the knees together so you're right this is pretty interesting difference (and the first one I've seen at the higher end of the riding spectrum!).
My train of thought on it is to think of the camber of your snowboard kind of like an elastic band, when you weight your board and press the sidecut's shape into the snow, it's like pulling the elastic band tight: at the end of your turn when you unweight, that stored energy snaps back. When you push your knees out (or at least not squeeze them in), it's like stretching this elastic band even harder (it takes more effort to get the sidecut to the snow in terms of weighting the board) but the snap back is bigger (or at least the same). When pushing your knees together, you're not promoting having the weighting action press the sidecut into the snow (you're almost "stealing" your boards opportunity to do this ), so at the end of your turn instead of having the camber release you up and out of the turn, it's probably just pushing your knees back apart in kind of an anti-climactic way. The reason why I don't think it de-cambers the board further is because I don't think the board really as anywhere to go, the only way to generate more power from the board is to actually camber it harder!

All the technicalities about rebound aside, which is mostly just pseudo-physics on my part, I don't see it as a very balanced stance to begin with.


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## max_tm (Dec 7, 2008)

Here's where the two strategies differ: Imagine a snowboarder up on edge, their board decambered and sidecut pushed into the snow. I'm suggesting that when you push out (or at least not in) with your knees, you will in a sense "fight" (or at least not help) the decambering of the board (which seems like a bad thing!), but if at the same time through the weighting process you are still pushing your sidecut into the snow and forcing the decambering to happen it will load up your board with much more energy to be released at turn completion.
Whereas with the AASI strategy if you're up on edge, sidecut pushed into the snow as before, where is there room to squeeze your knees together and decamber it further? You're locked into a turn at this point! (This is also a big reason why I don't understand how squeezing your knees can tighten up a carved turn, the arc has already been set and pressed at that level of angulation, and that edge will not give into someone just trying to squeeze it together).

I guess to summarize, I don't see the energy being generated through camber being solely because of the fact that the board is being deformed, but by how it's being deformed (pushed vs. manually bent).

Now that I think about this even more, there's the even more technical consideration where I again (intuitively) feel like squeezing your knees together would really take a lot of the bite out of your entire effective edge outside of the piece in between your bindings (but this is even more speculative than what I wrote above).

When I go back home for reading week I'll flip through my CASI manual and see what they have to say (if anything) about squeezing your knees together or apart. For now consider this the max standard, not the CASI one .


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## max_tm (Dec 7, 2008)

Sounds good, I'll do the same when I head out next week (let's hope so!) and we can trade notes .


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## Guest (Feb 8, 2009)

All this info at no cost. Im a new rider and i find myself skidding very often. I hope with all this information i will be able to start carving myself. Thanks for all the great info.


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## Rocan (Dec 3, 2008)

Snowolf said:


> Who were you quoting here?
> 
> As to your point though, this is a controversial subject. There is about a 50-50 split from examiners and DCLS about this. Some swear by it and some reject it. I disagree with the absolutism of your opinion on this.
> 
> ...


hehe... Snowolf agrees with me...

my life... has... purpose!!


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## jeri534 (Feb 19, 2008)

Instead of starting a new thread Ill just ask in here...


I can carve/scarve on green/blue runs, the thing Im wondering about is unweighting when going from toeside to heelside edge. I can properly unweight myself when going from heel to toe side but Im not exactly sure on how to do this when going from toe to heelside. I am properly doing the hump/dump technique so when Im on my toeside my pelvis is moved forward, I dont realy know the proper technique to unweight my board from this position, any tips?

When Im on my heelside I am in the "dump" position so unweighting the board is easy as just squatting down a little bit more then popping up while changing edges...


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