EMOVE (Tom) wrote in message ...
Having grasshopped my way from novice to nutcase last week, I made some major
breakthroughs, gradually refining my technique and learning to understand the
physics of the board, and my muscle reactions / aches, enough to get my board /
bindings set up really nicely.

Now..one grasshopper question on technique...

Turning from toes onto heels is fine at all speeds, but I had quite a few falls
at first turning from heels to toes, especially at high speed. The final
breakthrough seemed to come when I started bringing the back leg round more
purposefully as I turned from heels to toes, as I'd seen others do - really
consciously flicking it round as I made the turns. From that point, my crash
ratio went down rapidly. I was already OK with my body / shoulder / hip
movement and weight distribution, but this made an extra difference.

So, my question is, is the above something that most people do a lot, is this
correct technique (at medium to high speed - clearly you sometimes have to do
that, eg sharpo direction changes at low speed) or does my need to do this mean
that there's still something not quite right in my technique? It felt fine, but
quite tiring and took a lot of concentration. That said, it was only my second
week boarding, apart from practicing on indoor snow in the UK.

Many thanks anyone - I am one happy grasshopper on a board!

Tom
High Wycombe
UK

Hi Tom, the reason why you crashed before is because you are stil
mastering fine edge control - as you turn you board in the toeside
direction (right for regular footed riders) you may have difficult
maintaining proper pressure while teetering on your toeside edge.
Since you are essentially "balancing" on the edge) as you rotate the
board in a turn, you can accidentally swing too far off your toeside
edge and then catch you heelside edge. The heelside edge gripes into
the snow like an anchor and whips you down into the ground hard like
none other.

To visualize this, pretend a CD case (any rectangular object) is your
snowboard and slide it across your desk. Now keeping the direction
almost the same, slowly turn the board in the toeside direction while
raising the heelside edge in the air, you will notice the toeside edge
is skidding "across" the direction of travel, now wobble the heelside
edge to simulate the constant teetering of balance that you have with
someone who is still hasn't quite mastered edge control, if that
heelside edge ever wobbles too far down and comes down to the ground,
you "catch" your edge and crash.

As you have noticed, this "kick-out" method dramatically reduces your
chances of crashing as it whips the board around, dramatically
reducing the "danger time" where you need to balance on the edge but
your board/body haven't quite lined up for it yet. Most beginners do
this a lot and regular riders will do it when they *really* want to
turn the board (at low speeds as you mentioned).

However, in terms of technical snowboarding, it is bad technique for
medium to high speeds. You really want to "carve" with the board by
pressuring the edge such that the board transcribes an arc in the snow
itself. There is no skidding because you board is always pointing in
the direction of travel. When done properly, it is rather effortless
in terms of energy used to intiate the turn.

When you carve you will change the direction of motion much more
quickly. Note that this slightly differs from the changing direction
that your board points in. With the skidding method, you will change
the direction your board points very quickly, yet you will notice you
still are moving in virtually the same direction.

Hence, you can see for the most part carving is superior to skidding
when you are going at higher speeds (unless you want to slow down), it
allows you to change the direction of travel more quickly, wastes less
speed, and uses less energy. I won't go into it too much, but your
board is designed for carving (that why it is flexible and has a
sidecut).

So now it's basically a matter of personal preference. You could keep
up with the "kick-out" skidding method until you get better edge
control, and *then* unlearn it in the future when you want to do
really carved turns. Or you can start trying to learn the proper way
now, accepting the fact that you will crash a few more times - however
the benefit is that you won't have a long ingrained bad habit.

Another poster mentioned "twisting" the board with the front foot.
This works for lower speeds and less torsionally stiff boards. However
at high speeds, the less torsionally stiff (i.e. most twistable) board
tend to be less responsive and chatter a lot - so you will need to
move to a stiffer board where this method is less effective (and again
more energy consuming). Proper carving technique will do something
similar, without "twisting" your board.

So you are probably now all excited and like "ok so how do I carve?"
Well that's a long story and would make this long post even longer.

--Arvin