# Season 2 Questions, Tips & Critiques



## philadendron (Oct 21, 2011)

For your heelside turns, you might be swinging your back foot out a little too quickly, which results in more of a plow than a carved turn. Get some speed up (nothing crazy), then slowly transfer your weight to your heels and bend your knees. Let your board "slice" through the snow and keep it on its edge, traversing rather than sliding down the hill. When I do it slowly like this, I can almost feel the board "take" me through the turn on its edge. You'll be going sideways, so eventually you'll run out of space and need to transition to toe, maybe even just stop at the end of the heelside carve and look at your track.

BTW, I'm not an instructor, just a fellow 2nd year guy who likes to get better every time I go out.


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## Reykd (Jan 19, 2012)

which edge do you usually catch?

try constantly remind yourself to bend your knees and keeps your shoulders open and squared, this helped me a lot.

also commit to the turn put some good pressure on those edges.


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## gjsnowboarder (Sep 1, 2009)

Zombaco said:


> Carving / Dynamic Turns:
> I spent a lot of time working on this, trying to remember everything the vids from snowolf, SA, and snowprofessor said. I tried to keep my range of motion in the 3-8 range, but it's hard to tell for sure without going to the videotape. I seemed to have toeside carves going fairly well. I could see that I had a nice thin 'c' shaped line as I looked at my tracks. But heelside- a different story, every single turn was a wider path, more of a skid- what can I do to improve this? It feels like my shoulders are lined up with the board properly, I'm bending my knees and keeping loose (at least it feels like it). I also have a hard time on my heelside when trying ride flat (as close to flat as I can- slight on edge)- my back foot tends to skew out from behind my front foot (back toes out farther than front toes if this makes sense). Are these two problems related?
> 
> *Your problems are not related most likely. For the skidded out heelside turn try these two exercises. *
> ...


SnowBoarding Forum - S-turn_Look_directions - Powered by PhotoPost


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## wrathfuldeity (Oct 5, 2007)

Reykd said:


> which edge do you usually catch?
> 
> try constantly remind yourself to bend your knees and keeps your shoulders open and squared, this helped me a lot.
> 
> also commit to the turn put some good pressure on those edges.


ahhh u want your shoulders closed...that is parallel...nose to tail with the board


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## Reykd (Jan 19, 2012)

wrathfuldeity said:


> ahhh u want your shoulders closed...that is parallel...nose to tail with the board


by open shoulders i mean this


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## gjsnowboarder (Sep 1, 2009)

In boarding closed shoulders mean exactly what wrathfuldeity stated:

Another way to think about is your board is a doorway and your shoulder and hips are the door. The door is open when from left to right side of your body is not inline with the nose and tail of the snowboard. For example: I ride with regular stance(left foot forward). So my door is closed when my left should is pointed in the same direction as the nose of my snowboard and my right should is pointed in the same direction as the tail of my snowboard. This is the easy way to determine if I'm in the proper stance. Because my angle of binding on my left foot is a positive 18 degree my shoulders will vary 18 degrees from the nose of the snowboard when I am riding closed(i.e. snowboarding reference alignement Shoulder, hips, and knees are perpindicular to the front foot). When my shoulders move from this alignment my door is opening or closing in the direction of a certain edge toe or heel side. Typically when we say open the lead shoulder may be aimed at a higher angle then my lead foot. In this case my shoulder's would be open if I pass the 18 degree alignment meaning the front of my body is aimed more to the nose then to the toeside of the board.

The picture you posted deals with posture or bend in the spine. Being hunched over could have an effect on which edge is being pressured(i.e. another reference alighment : Weight between the feet and over the working edge), but most likely in this case is not a main cause of the board kicking out. The board kicking out probably means there is a pivot effect on the boards interaction with the snow. A twist in the spine could cause a rotationary force with lack of pressure which can cause unattended pivot in the board.

Hope this clears up the statement of "open shoulders".


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## Zombaco (Dec 14, 2011)

Thanks for the advice and input everyone. Looks like a nice homework list to work on this weekend . 

I'll have to be more conscious of my shoulder alignment heelside. It may be a combo not being inline over my board and hunching over in the shoulders. I know I catch myself in bad posture (hunching over in my shoulders) at work and not sitting with a straight back. It could be I'm unknowingly doing that while riding too, and I've got a feeling I'm probably opening my shoulder up past my nose- this opening referring to actual twist in my spine. I'm riding at +15/-12 so I know I shouldn't be opening too much, but probably why I'm not getting the thinner carve lines heelside. I'll definitely give the fore / aft movements a go and try the different unweighting techniques

gjsnowboarder- thanks for your detailed instructions. Maybe a stupid question, but what is "CM" in your explainations? Centered mass? I get the gist of what you said, but unsure of this term. And thanks for the switch diagram, makes a lot of sense.


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## wrathfuldeity (Oct 5, 2007)

Reykd said:


> by open shoulders i mean this


fwiw...this would be straight back or humpy back. Straight back would be preferred so as not to promote bending over at the waist and taking it in the arse...better to hump :laugh:


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## gjsnowboarder (Sep 1, 2009)

Zombaco said:


> Thanks for the advice and input everyone. Looks like a nice homework list to work on this weekend .
> 
> I'll have to be more conscious of my shoulder alignment heelside. It may be a combo not being inline over my board and hunching over in the shoulders. I know I catch myself in bad posture (hunching over in my shoulders) at work and not sitting with a straight back. It could be I'm unknowingly doing that while riding too, and I've got a feeling I'm probably opening my shoulder up past my nose- this opening referring to actual twist in my spine. I'm riding at +15/-12 so I know I shouldn't be opening too much, but probably why I'm not getting the thinner carve lines heelside. I'll definitely give the fore / aft movements a go and try the different unweighting techniques
> 
> gjsnowboarder- thanks for your detailed instructions. Maybe a stupid question, but what is "CM" in your explainations? Centered mass? I get the gist of what you said, but unsure of this term. And thanks for the switch diagram, makes a lot of sense.


Yep CM = Center of Mass. basically it is in relation to the pull of gravity or centripetal force takes you. i.e. your core on a person typically. Silly me not writing out what an acronym means. it can move vertically or horizontally.

As for the hunched back where the bend might be the worse. Typically its at the waist/hip level not necessarily at the shoulder level that causes issues. Your back is supposed to have a natural curvature. When you try to correct this it is possible to over straighten or hold your back to tight. In a heel side turn this could cause you to full body lean up the mountain and use your arms as a counter balance( arms come out voer your toeside to counter balance the leaning or departure of the CM from the heelside to over the snow). The other misalignement in the other direction is called breaking at the waist. This is represented by the back coming over the toeside of the board but the butt hanging out past the heelside edge. Due to the butt shifting the lower half weight of the person over the snow and counter movement of the upper body weight is then need to keep the CM over the heel edge. Both of these moves can be cause improper alignment and ineffective/ineffecient riding. 

Using your hips for alignment and focusing on them might be the real fix. Free up the hips by scooping the butt underneath the upper body can be a very usefull movement. On heelside think of pinching your butt cheeks together lightly. On toeside turns think of pressing your hips forward. a way to practive this is to grab an exercise ball and back up to a wall. Place the ball into the small of the back, now do squats, and feel your back form to the curvature of the ball. Notice as you drop down how your knees may flare out over the pinky toes to be able to get lower. Remember to keep your weight on you heels. Now use that movement and alignment in your heelside turns on a snowboard. For the toesides, use the ball again. turn around to face the wall with the ball inbetween. press your hips forward into the ball and try moving up and down this time focusing keeping your hips foward. Remember the ankles will come into play here and you will want to keep your weight on your toes to mimic riding your toeside. If there is a mirror handy you will be able to critque yourself and feel the movements necessary to create any weird back alignment you might experience.

Hope this wasn't to wordy, seems I have typeria tonight.


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## Zombaco (Dec 14, 2011)

First off, thanks for the replies. I had a great time riding all over Mammoth now that the whole mountain is open. Definitely put some of the tips to use and got some good results. Also spent much of my time not thinking and just riding. Blasting through trees (finally! thank you snow), riding areas I've never considered before, and all with confidence. I'm also looking at upgrading my board & bindings (current- 08 Gnu Hampus Mosesson & K2 Sonics) so I demoed an Attack Banana with Flux TT30s (5th option for bindings no right sizes in first four choices). Happily surprised how easy turn initiation was with the r/c board, and non-bouncy ride at high speeds with those bindings. I plan on demoing a few more options in the next couple trips too.


To the ride:

For my carving/dynamic turns I did notice my weight being more over the inside of the turn instead of the board on my heelside turns. So I worked on getting over top of the board more and working the angulation as Snowolf mentioned. Still a lot of work to do to get it down, but it did feel like my heel edge was holding longer before skidding at the bottom of the turn. It felt like it clicked on a couple turns with very little skid on both edges.

I tried get the down unweight going and more fore / aft movement as you guys have described. The fore movements seemed to be coming along well. The aft with down unweighting I had some trouble with. Trying to put those two together was causing some issues. I kept finding myself doing one or the other but not both together, especially going heel to toe. Yay, more practice! :laugh: Of course two days isn't nearly enough time, but I can feel how it could possibly come together at some point for better turns.



Snowolf said:


> To get a feel for how it works, stand on your board on flat ground. Stand tall then suddenly collapse your legs allowing your upper body to drop down toward your board. You will see and feel a very brief moment where the board actually pops up off of the snow as you begin to drop.


Didn't try this, forgot once I saw the lift lines. Will give a try next time, especially since I gotta wait til President's Day weekend for the next trip (way too long, stupid job).



Snowolf said:


> What are your binding angles set at? You might have a slight twist of the hips that you are not aware of. This can happen a lot because people often are not 100% symmetrical in their anatomy and there can be a slight rotation of the hips as they relate to the legs. You might have to learn to compensate a little bit by slightly changing you binding angles. Another thing that I have done is use a little less forward lean on my rear binding than I do on the front. Play around with your equipment and see if you can solve the issue with a slight adjustment. If not, you are going to have to work on using some hip rotation to counter this tendency to have the rear foot slip forward on you.


I seemed to have figured something out with riding flatter when I need to. I have my bindings at 15/-12. I think I was opening my front shoulder. To make myself not do this I rode these sections with my front hand on my front thigh. This worked well the first day on my cambered board, and on the demo board. Definitely me and not the board. I used the same angles and tried the less forward lean on my rear binding, and everything just kinda clicked when I flat (or near flat) rode over flat hill sections. The guy that setup my demo had also mention that the r/c boards can feel more like a skate when riding flat, distributing my weight evenly over the rocker in the middle. Made a lot of sense.


Didn't try any grabs, but did get popping more on straight airs- mostly on side trail hits. Did 8 park jumps with nice pop and landing on 7. The missing one- I knew I didn't have the speed but went off anyway, cased it on the knuckle then SMACK straight to tailbone and back of the head. Definitely one of those happy I wear a helmet hits. The demo board had really nice and easy pop off the lips too.

Tried all four 180s, all on side hits. Mostly successful landings. Figured out it's way easy for me to go counter-clockwise- BS and Cab then going FS or Switch BS.

Switch- didn't ride all that much switch this time out. But I did feel like my vision was opening up a little more than what I remember from my first trip this season. Picturing the different phases of the turn from gjsnowboarder's graphic really seemed to help. And I think snowolf is right on the money with the dominate eye thing (which I also think ties into my Bs & Cab 180s being easier)


Now if I could just get the vids from my buddy....


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