# Help on turning



## vi3telit3 (Dec 27, 2009)

To be honest, it doesn't look like you have a problem turning at all. However, you do need to quiet that upper body and stop the outreaching of the arms for balance. What I've been doing lately with people I teach is telling them to hold onto their pants with their hands, something I learned off snowprofessor (PROPS!). It really teaches them better balance and form. It really makes you be more dependent on your lower body to do the turning. You should just try that, and go slightly faster to really learn those carves. Confidence is key!


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## Muki (Feb 8, 2010)

Try using your hips.


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## baldylox (Dec 27, 2007)

JordyJord said:


> Tthen you can use the weight on that back foot to control the turn.


Disregard above statement. 


You made a fair and accurate assessment of your own problem. You are struggling to engage the toe edge and you are throwing your arms and shoulders around to cheat. 

Keep your shoulders in line with the snowboard. When you are ready to turn you will do so by twisting the snowboard with your leading foot. Push your shin down toward your toes on your leading foot first. The tip will start to drift downhill and then engage the toe edge and you can follow through with the rear foot. 

EDIT: When I say twist, I mean you actually manipulate the shape of the board and twist it. I don't mean twist your body. It doesn't have to be very much. Simply flexing your front foot about a second or so ahead of your rear foot is enough to twist the board and engage the leading toe edge.










SnoWolf has a much more practiced explanation and I'll see if I can locate one for you.


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## Guest (Mar 15, 2010)

Thanks for all the posts!

I went again yesterday and had a pretty bad fall, now I have sore neck and pain in my feet... I thnk I know what I am doing wrong but I dont seem to be able to correct myself(feeling like this sucks). I have some more questions and would definitly appreciate some help and pointers.

1. When doing a toe turn, I feel like I had to rotate my shoulder and "kick" the back foot to make the turn happen. If I don't apply those extra movement, I would just be gliding down the hil, which forces me to brake on my heels.

2. I don;t think I can link the turns smoothly. Seems I had to come to a stop and then try to intiate the next turn.

3. When I try to do even weight distrution, I catch edges easily and usually fall..

4. During the first coupld of runs, my feet start to feel pain/sore to a point that I have to unstrap and walk the pain off on the hills. It gets better going into the day.

Sorry for the ranting, but I do feel disappointed everytime I come back from the hills without improvements...

PS: I am 5 feet tall and my board is 143cm in Length


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## SobeMike (Jan 13, 2010)

I may be missing something but it looks as if going a bit quicker would help you. Engaging an edge at that speed would be difficult from a balance perspective. also, it seems as if during your toe turns you get worried that it isn't coming around quickly enough early in the turn and then you force it through. Again, a bit more speed and a bit more edge will bring it around more smoothy. 

Two tricks that helped me and might help you.

Start a toe traverse and go very slowly across the hill while alternating putting pressure over your little toe on your front foot with your knee. Your shin should be against the toe of your boot firmly. as you extend your knee out over your little toe the board will start to turn up the hill and as you let off it will drift down. It is a good way to see how effective just using your front foot and knee is.

Do the same for heel side turns by opening your knee towards the heel side of the board. In other words, without moving anything else, move your left knee open like you are doing a butterfly stretch.

The second trick is to put your hands as if they are in your pockets and try not to move your arms at all while turning both ways. This neutralizes your upper body and gives you a stable base for your snowboarding.

Bottom line, until I stopped using my upper body during turns I would catch edges all the time because I would lose my balance and bam... Instant pain.


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