The flicking of the board on your front-side turn with your back foot is
something that I teach newbies all time. That heel to toeside is one of the
tougher things for newbies to get and this really seems to help. However,
that said...I've heard many people say this is incorrect form? My
philosophy is to give people something they can work on and get comfortable,
they can then tweak it from there. By being able to really throw the board
around on your toe edge, gives you much more confidence and allows you to
slow your speed much more easily. Again, maybe bad form but it does seem to
work for people, I think its tough to expect new riders to just go out and
tell them 'heel to toe'...'heel to toe'.

"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