# Help riding in straight lines



## SlvrDragon50 (Mar 25, 2017)

I discovered this past weekend that I'm terrible at riding in straight lines. I was running a green that has mild terrain consisting of 3-4 ramps and drops (meant to get used to the sensation I assume, far too mild to get any air) along with 2 narrow paths on the side. Any tips on improving straight line riding? I tried to stay on my heel edge, but I would slowly drift to the side or I would not use enough edge and flat base it and start getting wobbly. Just more practice? I will admit that I probably would benefit from getting more comfortable with greater speeds, but there was a lot of traffic on the trail.


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## f00bar (Mar 6, 2014)

Bend your knees.
Make sure your shoulders aren't rotating forward.
Weight forward, not in the back seat.


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## Varza (Jan 6, 2013)

What he said. It comes with time and practice. You have the right idea, you have to stay on an edge.


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## Synathidy (Apr 4, 2017)

Yeah, I felt that way about going straight in my early learning days, too. It's ultimately a matter of maintaining good form and feeling comfortable on the board, which really both come from just snowboarding a lot. Keep legs bent, keep shoulders aligned with board, keeping a stacked, stable stance of shoulders over hips over board... consciously moving weight a bit forward is a huge in maintaining control.

I "flat-base" in brief moments as a ride a straight area (and when I ollie/nollie), but definitely tend to rock between toe and heel edge to maintain a sense of "edge engagement" and control. Otherwise, flat-basing for a long time can cause a sudden edge engagement to surprise your body and cause you to catch an edge over your frame, not having anticipated it. It's just something to get used to.


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## SlvrDragon50 (Mar 25, 2017)

When you say knees bent, should I be bending my knees more than when I'm normally riding?


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## wrathfuldeity (Oct 5, 2007)

Yes, neutral stance in the cereal box, stacked and aligned with slight weight on the nose. And your knees slightly bent...AND loose knees, ankles and feet. You want your body flowing the line...being pulled by the chi. With your body parts being stacked, aligned and loose...you lightly float like a feather/arrow being shot from a bow. You want to keep your upper body quiet and flowing the line and your lower body loose and absorbing. When you are loose and neutral you can flow and react faster than being tight and stiff. Another thing, is to look further down the hill to where you want to go...instead of being focused (tight) on what is right in front of you...then you just float and trust the board and looseness of your body.


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## robotfood99 (Mar 19, 2016)

Jedi Wrath also recommends chanting “Ohm~” as you float along.


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## Synathidy (Apr 4, 2017)

wrathfuldeity said:


> Yes, neutral stance in the cereal box, stacked and aligned with slight weight on the nose. And your knees slightly bent...AND loose knees, ankles and feet. You want your body flowing the line...being pulled by the chi. With your body parts being stacked, aligned and loose...you lightly float like a feather/arrow being shot from a bow. You want to keep your upper body quiet and flowing the line and your lower body loose and absorbing. When you are loose and neutral you can flow and react faster than being tight and stiff. Another thing, is to look further down the hill to where you want to go...instead of being focused (tight) on what is right in front of you...then you just float and trust the board and looseness of your body.


My, what a beautiful description.



SlvrDragon50 said:


> When you say knees bent, should I be bending my knees more than when I'm normally riding?


Well, different people might have different degrees of crouching for what they consider "normal riding," but for me, I'd say I do actually sometimes bend my knees just little bit more (or at least as much) than I would on, say... a wide open, smooth blue square run. You don't have to get CRAZY low, though. An early problem for me was thinking that I could just stand tall and casual in long, narrow, narrow places (because "oh, look how easy this part is!") and lulling myself into a lazy, high-centered form lacking stability. And then I would fall pathetically after picking up a bit of speed by catching an edge or something. Getting down a bit lower definitely feels better to me now. And like the dude above said, being relaxed, loose, and sure to look ahead where you wanna go are fantastically helpful.


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## SlvrDragon50 (Mar 25, 2017)

I think loose is the main thing. I've found myself getting looser while riding normally which made it tremendously easier to ride choppier snow, and I think I am tensing up on the straightaways worrying about falling over!


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## wrathfuldeity (Oct 5, 2007)

SlvrDragon50 said:


> I think loose is the main thing. I've found myself getting looser while riding normally which made it tremendously easier to ride choppier snow, and I think I am tensing up on the straightaways worrying about falling over!


Fear= tensing up. For a long time this was me. One thing to understand when riding flat or nearly flat and going straightaways, is that there is no edge to catch...as long as you have a bit of weight on the nose. However if you are in the back seat, then you have weight on the tail and then the tail tends to want to swing around. This tail swinging around is especially true if you are not aligned with the board. The easiest remedy is to shift your leading hip toward the nose and remained stacked with some weight on the front foot...this will immediately quiet any speed wobbles. It is possible to flat base and be in the back seat (weight on the tail) but you have to make sure that you are aligned, stacked and not twisted up.

A thing about riding choppier snow is to be loose and anticipate the chop (hopefully you can see the chop) and get loose and able to absorb or suck up the knees/lower body to float over the chop while keeping the upper body relatively quiet...And quiet means loose but not wildly gestating or getting flung/tossed around by the chop. 

As for the chi reference. You use your eyes/head and look for a point in the distance to attach/anchor your chi and then let it pull you to that spot. Its a pull/attraction thing...not a pushing thing.

Hope this makes sense.


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## mojo maestro (Jan 6, 2009)

"I am not teaching you anything. I just help you explore yourself."...........Bruce Lee


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## wrathfuldeity (Oct 5, 2007)

@SlvrDragon50 Forgot to add....A thing to do when going straight and relatively flat, is just to rock your knees/ankles/feet back and forth (heel,toe,heel,toe...etc) but keep your upper body quiet and a *very slight* weight on the nose...it should almost feel that ur not at all weighting the nose. You will be basically be going straight with a very slight wiggle line. Do fast and slow rock'n wiggles and then you will develope the skillz to weave through the traffic on flatish narrow cattracks.


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## SlvrDragon50 (Mar 25, 2017)

wrathfuldeity said:


> @SlvrDragon50 Forgot to add....A thing to do when going straight and relatively flat, is just to rock your knees/ankles/feet back and forth (heel,toe,heel,toe...etc) but keep your upper body quiet and a *very slight* weight on the nose...it should almost feel that ur not at all weighting the nose. You will be basically be going straight with a very slight wiggle line. Do fast and slow rock'n wiggles and then you will develope the skillz to weave through the traffic on flatish narrow cattracks.


Got it. I'm not very good at doing fast transitions unfortunately, but I'll work on it this weekend.


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## speedjason (May 2, 2013)

Ride loose.


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## SlvrDragon50 (Mar 25, 2017)

wrathfuldeity said:


> @SlvrDragon50 Forgot to add....A thing to do when going straight and relatively flat, is just to rock your knees/ankles/feet back and forth (heel,toe,heel,toe...etc) but keep your upper body quiet and a *very slight* weight on the nose...it should almost feel that ur not at all weighting the nose. You will be basically be going straight with a very slight wiggle line. Do fast and slow rock'n wiggles and then you will develope the skillz to weave through the traffic on flatish narrow cattracks.


Was able to do it a little bit on the big wide hills but very little confidence on the narrow trails. I did discover that I was unconsciously turning my upper body when watching videos on how to jump, and that helped a lot in steering straight. I'm still flat basing on the narrow parts though and catching edges  Just need to practice some more!


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## WasabiCanuck (Apr 29, 2015)

Post a video of your riding. A picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million words.


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## wrathfuldeity (Oct 5, 2007)

SlvrDragon50 said:


> Was able to do it a little bit on the big wide hills but very little confidence on the narrow trails. I did discover that I was unconsciously turning my upper body when watching videos on how to jump, and that helped a lot in steering straight. I'm still flat basing on the narrow parts though and catching edges  Just need to practice some more!


Confidence will come with time. 

Flat basing and catching edges...just get on/shift hips to weight the nose...and likely too stiff/not loose enough...so that your lower body, especially the knees and ankles are loose to absorb the various little imperfections, slight ruts and stuff. This can often be a mental thing...instead of fighting the fear of catching an edge....just replace it, visualize yourself as lightly floating along and mindfully being loose. Ur almost there.


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## SlvrDragon50 (Mar 25, 2017)

wrathfuldeity said:


> Confidence will come with time.
> 
> Flat basing and catching edges...just get on/shift hips to weight the nose...and likely too stiff/not loose enough...so that your lower body, especially the knees and ankles are loose to absorb the various little imperfections, slight ruts and stuff. This can often be a mental thing...instead of fighting the fear of catching an edge....just replace it, visualize yourself as lightly floating along and mindfully being loose. Ur almost there.


Yea, I definitely notice a difference when I'm loose. I think I need to be more comfortable traveling at higher speeds too since I'm relatively comfortable turning and shedding speed now. Unfortunately I don't see any snowboard trips in my near future! Wish I were closer to the mountains sometimes. We ended up getting sucked into a phase of trying to learn how to jump so I didn't get to do too much straight line riding except for leading into the jump.


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## jasbar (Jul 17, 2017)

I was also struggling with this on my japan 2018 snow trip (first time snowboarder). I was on a rossignol district 2015 board as my learner board (20% camber in the middle and 80% rocker everywhere else). This was fine in furano where it was all big wide runs, but when we moved to tomamu there were a lot more cat tracks and I struggled big time on them.

I am planning my next trip now, is there a board profile that is more optimised for going straight down cat tracks? Any boards I should look at as my next board with this in mind? I plan on starting next trip with some lessons focused on this as well, but my wife and son loved these paths, especially the ones that went through the trees so I would like to do these more on the next trip.


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## SlvrDragon50 (Mar 25, 2017)

jasbar said:


> I was also struggling with this on my japan 2018 snow trip (first time snowboarder). I was on a rossignol district 2015 board as my learner board (20% camber in the middle and 80% rocker everywhere else). This was fine in furano where it was all big wide runs, but when we moved to tomamu there were a lot more cat tracks and I struggled big time on them.
> 
> I am planning my next trip now, is there a board profile that is more optimised for going straight down cat tracks? Any boards I should look at as my next board with this in mind? I plan on starting next trip with some lessons focused on this as well, but my wife and son loved these paths, especially the ones that went through the trees so I would like to do these more on the next trip.


If your fear is catching an edge, I like my NS Swift. That said, I still prefer my camber boards for feeling locked in on icier and hardpack material. But I don't think you should be buying a board profile to go down straight cat track as pretty much any board is more than capable of doing it.

If you're doing japan trips, I'd look for a nice powder board.


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## Snowdaddy (Feb 2, 2018)

jasbar said:


> I was also struggling with this on my japan 2018 snow trip (first time snowboarder). I was on a rossignol district 2015 board as my learner board (20% camber in the middle and 80% rocker everywhere else). This was fine in furano where it was all big wide runs, but when we moved to tomamu there were a lot more cat tracks and I struggled big time on them.
> 
> I am planning my next trip now, is there a board profile that is more optimised for going straight down cat tracks? Any boards I should look at as my next board with this in mind? I plan on starting next trip with some lessons focused on this as well, but my wife and son loved these paths, especially the ones that went through the trees so I would like to do these more on the next trip.


Myself, I flatbase the cat tracks by twisting the board torsionally alternating toe and heelside with emphasis on the front foot. Like initiating a turn. Once you get a hang of it it's not a problem. I think it makes sense to not have a very stiff board, but I checked up that board you rode and they say it's soft and playful. So it's likely just your technique.

I totally get having a board that is good for riding in places that your family likes to ride, but I bet you don't just ride cat tracks. Focus on a board that you can have fun turning at their speed instead. My family also likes cat tracks or narrower, winding and faster green/blue runs, but we also ride wider more open pistes as well.

Could try something with lifted edges near the contact points. Like the Bataleon or maybe the Jones. Or just practice more


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## Myoko (Dec 11, 2018)

My suggestion is to learn to be comfortable in the air, if only for a second but not to panic when it happens, and it will happen often in deeper chopped powder. Once you have no issue with that, you just need soft knees and to go with whatever you hit and not be in a panic to put the board back down. Look way down where you are going, sit down and stay feeling solid on your feet. Easy!


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## htfu (Mar 18, 2015)

thing that helped me with flat basing the most was :

- straight back
- arms at your sides
- upper body not twisted forward
- legs bend, but ready
- imagine you have a massive beach ball between your legs that pushes your knees as far forward over the front of the board (front knee) and backwards over the back of the board (back knee) as is comfortable
-- this puts even pressure across the whole board and, at least for me, helped to eliminate a lot of the twitchy-ness when flat basing at all speeds .. especially over rutted up terrain


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## neni (Dec 24, 2012)

SlvrDragon50 said:


> I'm still flat basing on the narrow parts though and catching edges  Just need to practice some more!


To avoid catching edges going straight, either always have one edge slightly in contact and to soft transitions whenever nerded to keep direction, *keep your weight well on front foot*. Catching edges happens when front edge and hind edge are in "disharmony". If you are in the backseat, the front part of thr edge looses the contact and if it then suddenly gets contact - be it by small unintended off-balance weight shift or by a change of snow height/bumpd), it suddenly grabs. Bam. If you however are weighting your front foot, the edge is in contact and glides. 

As others said, ride low so you have the ability to react immediately. You don't have to crouch, but knees need to be bent enough to react, absorb. 

Avoid flatbasing (i.e. no edge contact at all) as long as you're not yet confident going straight with tiny little edge contact. Flatbasing will come with practice automstically when you built up the muscle memory to do all the balance/mini-adjustments. You can exersise it doing few meters flatbased, then put edge back in contact *with weight well on front foot*, go back few more meters flatbasing a.d.o.. The stretches will get longer by time.


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## LALUNE (Feb 23, 2017)

Varza said:


> What he said. It comes with time and practice. You have the right idea, you have to stay on an edge.


Not necessarily, you can absolutely flat base the whole way to go straight. It just feels more secured on edge, for most people.



wrathfuldeity said:


> Yes, neutral stance in the cereal box, stacked and aligned with slight weight on the nose. And your knees slightly bent...AND loose knees, ankles and feet. You want your body flowing the line...being pulled by the chi. With your body parts being stacked, aligned and loose...you lightly float like a feather/arrow being shot from a bow. You want to keep your upper body quiet and flowing the line and your lower body loose and absorbing. When you are loose and neutral you can flow and react faster than being tight and stiff. Another thing, is to look further down the hill to where you want to go...instead of being focused (tight) on what is right in front of you...then you just float and trust the board and looseness of your body.


Always spot on.

One thing I observe is that when people think they are bending their knees and on "flat base", they are actually bending on the back and stick the butt outside of cereal box which naturally put them on heel edge (I would bet my money on them catching heel edge on cat track). And it's ok to feel wobbly when you flatbase compared to on edge, just get your composure and be loose.


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## drblast (Feb 28, 2017)

Also, flat-basing on low-angle green runs and cat tracks is really, really hard unless you have enough speed built up. It's like riding a bike; at slow speeds it's way harder to stay balanced and every tiny bump and rut is going to throw you off, and you're going to spend a ton of effort trying to stay balanced.

A lot of snowboarding is getting comfortable getting up to and staying at speeds where the things that are problems as a beginner at beginner slow speeds just aren't problems anymore. That comes with a lot of practice and even if you *know* what to do it's not going to help unless you've done it 1000 times. I taught a buddy to ride a few years ago and he's just now keeping up with me and realizing how much less exhausting it is to go fast.

If you want a board that will help you ride straight then traditional camber is your friend.


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## speedjason (May 2, 2013)

I am gonna say practice skating on flats. If you can skate a long distance without the board rotating on you, you can flat base anywhere.


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## virtu (Jan 22, 2016)

CRC profiles are trick to flat base, even putting my weight on the front foot I was having a hard time until I started rocking the board and being more aggressive with my Lib Tech TRS.
RCR profiles are easier, just like flat to rocker and full camber. My flat base problems only happened with rocker between the bindings, and to avoid that: rock the board.


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## neni (Dec 24, 2012)

virtu said:


> CRC profiles are trick to flat base, even putting my weight on the front foot


Interesting. I don't have problems flatbasing any of my CRC boards (all qre NS, tho). Once weight is on front foot, they run smoothly


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## virtu (Jan 22, 2016)

neni said:


> Interesting. I don't have problems flatbasing any of my CRC boards (all qre NS, tho). Once weight is on front foot, they run smoothly


You are way more experienced than me, that's why you don't have problems flat basing


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## supern00b (Jan 27, 2020)

I have trouble internalizing how to flatbase with bent knees. From standing straight up to bending my knees, I feel my shins push hard against the boot, making me go tippy-toe side almost immediately. In order for me to be flat on both feet with bent knees, I have to either
1. Bring my hips forward w/ my glutes with my back noticeably arched, as if I were dry humping the air or
2. Bring my hips back and sit slightly into a really high invisible chair, which is extremely exhausting on the quads.

Any cues I should be following otherwise? Or do I just have to fight my boots more?


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## neni (Dec 24, 2012)

supern00b said:


> I have trouble internalizing how to flatbase with bent knees.
> ...
> 2. Bring my hips back and sit slightly into a really high invisible chair, which is extremely exhausting on the quads.


2. sounds good. And yes, it's demanding on the quads, thus I think you're on the right path. 

Later on, when for example in need to keep speed over a long straight stretch, forget the high chair, use a low chair and squat as low as bringing the front thigh parallel to ground, weight mostly over front foot. That'll get you the most speed/distance covered.


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