chatty upper body

Was at Whistler this weekend and we made some videos..
I'm reasonably happy with how I'm handling the high-speed
blue groomed runs, but we also hiked up to some untracked
steeps (maybe 40+ persent grade, but I'm not good at telling
grades - they all look like vertical walls to me . My weight
transfers and rythm were satisfactory, but I was also waving
my hands quite a bit. I definitely could (probably should) go
faster and turn less there, which would probably reduce the
chatter. But still, what can I do to better manage my upper
body? Any drills?

On Tue, 8 Mar 2005 13:30:03 -0800, "Dmitry"
wrote:

But still, what can I do to better manage my upper body? Any drills?

Duct tape.

-- Robert

Robert Stevahn wrote:
On Tue, 8 Mar 2005 13:30:03 -0800, "Dmitry"
wrote:

But still, what can I do to better manage my upper body? Any drills?

Duct tape.

Butler drill - front forearm against your midsection, back forearm
against the small of your back (like a butler with the towel over his
arm). Try to link turns (on an easy slope at first) while holding this
form.

Another one I like is to put my hands on my knees.

For alpine style, you can hold a ski pole in both hands in front of you
and try to keep it level at all times.

Neil

"Robert Stevahn" wrote

But still, what can I do to better manage my upper body? Any drills?

Duct tape.

Would you drop into a 40+ grade rock-lined chute this way?

On Tue, 8 Mar 2005 17:05:33 -0800, "Dmitry"
wrote:


"Robert Stevahn" wrote
Duct tape.

Would you drop into a 40+ grade rock-lined chute this way?

Hmm. How about velcro then? :-)

-- Robert

Kinda going on the ski pole idea, you should with your body forward facing, turning at the hips, tucking your back knee in towards the crook of your front knee. this will allow you to ride "puppies up" or with your hands in front of you, kinda like driving a car, hands on the wheels. This will allow you to shift your hips to change directions versus having to try to throw your board around with your arms (thus the flailing arm motion). when you are on the groomers, it is much easier to work on this technique, and as you start to hit the big stuff, you get a little mental shift that gets you fighting the proper postion on the board. Speed is not the key to the chatter, that will only get you hurt until you have the proper form.

good practice for this is to find a groomer that you can carve down fluently with no sliding or scraping, just good clean edge to edge movement. You will concentrate on keeping your hands in front of you going down the fall line, NOT SIDEWAYS. Look far down the line where you are going and transition your hips into the turn and slightly shift your body weight from front foot to backfoot as you go through the turn. this is very slight. too much and you will chatter (too much grip for the angle of the turn, causing the board to give up edge and cha, cha cha until speed is slow enough to get grip again. stay too far forward and you will wash out, spreading the butter. This will teach you to carve and you can get real deep into a turn going really fast and its pretty fun. Once this is mastered on your first groomer (say a green or intermediate) then work your way up to the next designation (blue to groomed black) and work the same thing. you will notice that your skills hitting the headwall in control, checking speed as needed will be enhanced because you can make the turns with your hips and driving the bus with your body and eyes in the direction you want to go. This will also help out in the bumps. the less movement you need to make when initiating a turn, the easier it will be to progress down the fall line.

When you think you are good at it, go switch. If you can already ride switch, practice it on tougher hills, this will help when you get into trouble and get flipped around, plus it gets you to really know the board.

Hope this was what you were looking for. I have helped a lot of friends that had plateaued because of poor form, and I learned most of this from 14 years of riding, and riding with carvers and watching downhill snowboarders (on carving boards).

You will also notice that all professional surfers and anyone that is good will stand the same way, body facing down the line, not parallel to the board.



BK
stance 20 front 30 back
169 Nitro Shogun
Burton SI Ruler boot/binding setup
ride switch or regular almost the same.

"beekay" wrote

Kinda going on the ski pole idea, you should with your body forward
facing, turning at the hips, tucking your back knee in towards the
crook of your front knee. this will allow you to ride "puppies up" or
with your hands in front of you, kinda like driving a car, hands on the
wheels. This will allow you to shift your hips to change directions
versus having to try to throw your board around with your arms (thus
the flailing arm motion). when you are on the groomers, it is much
easier to work on this technique, and as you start to hit the big
stuff, you get a little mental shift that gets you fighting the proper
postion on the board. Speed is not the key to the chatter, that will
only get you hurt until you have the proper form.

As far as I understand it, there are two schools of riding. One is
when your shoulders are parallel to the board (duckstance) and the other
one when they are perpendicular. The disadvantage of duckstance is that
your ass is getting in the way on the heel side, and the with forward
angles it's inconvinient to throw the board around doing tricks, bumps
and steeps.

I actually have two videos, one on a steep and the other on tracked
out bumpy groom. As soon as I got some speed on a groomed run the only
hand movements were to compensate a little for bumps, but on a steep
after every jump-turn I waive my back hand as if I'm trying to throw
something back at the mountain I can only imagine what I'm doing
with my hands on steep bumps ). Oh well, Baker just got 30 inches
of snow so I'll just try riding under lift 6 hands in pockets

[some good advice skipped - thanks!]

When you think you are good at it, go switch. If you can already ride
switch, practice it on tougher hills, this will help when you get into
trouble and get flipped around, plus it gets you to really know the
board.

All my attempts to ride switch ended up with very scary falls, so
I'm just kinda ignoring this problem for now, this season has been
too bad for us in the NW - no time for learning!

You will also notice that all professional surfers and anyone that is
good will stand the same way, body facing down the line, not parallel
to the board.

I've seen some pictures of pro backcountry riders who don't do this,
they only have their heads turned into the direction of travel, not
the shoulders. I do agree that you're more stable and efficient with
shoulders facing down the fall line when carving.

Baka Dasai wrote:
On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 23:08:11 -0800, Dmitry said (and I quote):

As far as I understand it, there are two schools of riding. One is
when your shoulders are parallel to the board (duckstance) and the other
one when they are perpendicular.


More generally, you can either have your hips and shoulders square to
your binding angles (face the toes) or square to the nose of the board
(face the nose).

And furthermore, facing the nose only works for highly angled alpine
stances. To do it for duck, you'd have to rotate your upper body 90
degrees - no way to do that comfortably and as Baka previously mentioned
you'll lose your edge.

Listen to Baka, he got one of the highlighted quotes in The Snowboard
Journal.


Neil

The "face the nose" technique is an effective crutch for a hardbooter or
forward-stance softbooter who is looking downhill on their heelside turns,
as oipposed to into the turn - which leads to loss of edge angle and power
an the heelside not to mention the dreaded "sitting on the toilet" syndrome.
When I started hardbooting I fell victim to this and "face the nose" was
recommedned to me as a fix.

This issue has been thrashed around by the hardbooting carvers at
Bomberonline a number of times, and the general consensus is that for
maximum edge hold your hips and shoulders should be in line with your
binding angles. Twisting your upper body to face the front of your
board just puts a potential rotational force on the board. You can use
the muscles of your body to prevent the board from rotating, but as soon
as you hit a bump or get unbalanced, your board is going to want to
rotate to match the position of your upper body. And that will mean
your edge will blow.

It's true. I learned this lesson very well at the SnowPerformance carve
camp I attended in December. The thing is, they did not spend a lot of
time talking about facing the nose versus facing the toes. They spent a
lot of time working with us on angulating at knees, hips and ankles and
staying stacked over the edge, which implies, no, requires facing the toes.


It seems that racers always ride with their upper bodies in line with
their binding angles, at least on heelsides. On toesides they often
counter-rotate a little, but in this case the potential rotation of the
board is actually helping the rear half of the edge to dig into the
mountain, rather than skid out as on heelsides.


Back to the original subject, "chatty upper body". If you take all upper
body movement out of the equation - whether on hard boots or soft - which
way are you going to facing? Your upper body will remain aligned with your
bindings - if they are not, your upper body is not completeley relaxed, it
is doing some amount of work to maintain whatever other position it is in.

I agree with the others that learning to keep a quiet upper body on gentle
groomed slopes is the first step to quieting down the upper boady on hairier
terrain. I like the "Butler turn" method... but when you do that, don't
focus on your arms - get them loosely in position and then *forget about
them*. Concentrate on using your ankles, knees and hips to turn from the
board up.

Heelside turns - pull up on your toes (close your ankle), push your front
knee into the turn, letting the back knee do whatever feels natural - and if
you are in hard boots or a forward stance, bring your hip bone towards your
lower rib on your back side, the more foward your stance the more
aggressivley you can do this.

Toeside turn - push down on your toes (open your ankle), push your back knee
straight down toward the snow, letting your front knee do whatever feels
natural. If you are forward facing, pinch your hip towards your ribs on the
front side.

For both the toeside and heelside it is impoartnt to focus on starting the
turn at the board, using the feet and ankles, and then moving the knees and
then at the hips. It's a smooth seqeunce of movements and not a set of
discrete movements. The upper body is a passenger, along for the ride, keep
it relaxed. Start on a slope that is groomed wide, and and just steep
enough so that you can get on edge and not lose speed - but not so steep
that you gain speed.

You will find that you can aggressivley turn the board, carvibng the whole
time, which much less effort than you think! You can try this drill on
steeper slopes and at faster speeds as you get more comfortable, and start
making the second knee do some of the work as well.

This drill also works well if you stay out for one (or more) run too many.
Try to make that last run with your upper body completeley relaxed. I find
it helps keep my legs from cramping up, due to the fact that the drill
eliminates unnecessary movement and tension.

Mike T

Mike T wrote:

The "face the nose" technique is an effective crutch for a hardbooter or
forward-stance softbooter who is looking downhill on their heelside turns,
as oipposed to into the turn - which leads to loss of edge angle and power
an the heelside not to mention the dreaded "sitting on the toilet" syndrome.
When I started hardbooting I fell victim to this and "face the nose" was
recommedned to me as a fix.


I think facing the nose makes you "sit" on your heel rather than over
the board so in effect it cancels out the sitting on the toilet motion
and keep your weight over the board. But for shallower angles you just
gotta keep that butt in.

stu




This issue has been thrashed around by the hardbooting carvers at
Bomberonline a number of times, and the general consensus is that for
maximum edge hold your hips and shoulders should be in line with your
binding angles. Twisting your upper body to face the front of your
board just puts a potential rotational force on the board. You can use
the muscles of your body to prevent the board from rotating, but as soon
as you hit a bump or get unbalanced, your board is going to want to
rotate to match the position of your upper body. And that will mean
your edge will blow.


It's true. I learned this lesson very well at the SnowPerformance carve
camp I attended in December. The thing is, they did not spend a lot of
time talking about facing the nose versus facing the toes. They spent a
lot of time working with us on angulating at knees, hips and ankles and
staying stacked over the edge, which implies, no, requires facing the toes.



It seems that racers always ride with their upper bodies in line with
their binding angles, at least on heelsides. On toesides they often
counter-rotate a little, but in this case the potential rotation of the
board is actually helping the rear half of the edge to dig into the
mountain, rather than skid out as on heelsides.



Back to the original subject, "chatty upper body". If you take all upper
body movement out of the equation - whether on hard boots or soft - which
way are you going to facing? Your upper body will remain aligned with your
bindings - if they are not, your upper body is not completeley relaxed, it
is doing some amount of work to maintain whatever other position it is in.

I agree with the others that learning to keep a quiet upper body on gentle
groomed slopes is the first step to quieting down the upper boady on hairier
terrain. I like the "Butler turn" method... but when you do that, don't
focus on your arms - get them loosely in position and then *forget about
them*. Concentrate on using your ankles, knees and hips to turn from the
board up.

Heelside turns - pull up on your toes (close your ankle), push your front
knee into the turn, letting the back knee do whatever feels natural - and if
you are in hard boots or a forward stance, bring your hip bone towards your
lower rib on your back side, the more foward your stance the more
aggressivley you can do this.

Toeside turn - push down on your toes (open your ankle), push your back knee
straight down toward the snow, letting your front knee do whatever feels
natural. If you are forward facing, pinch your hip towards your ribs on the
front side.

For both the toeside and heelside it is impoartnt to focus on starting the
turn at the board, using the feet and ankles, and then moving the knees and
then at the hips. It's a smooth seqeunce of movements and not a set of
discrete movements. The upper body is a passenger, along for the ride, keep
it relaxed. Start on a slope that is groomed wide, and and just steep
enough so that you can get on edge and not lose speed - but not so steep
that you gain speed.

You will find that you can aggressivley turn the board, carvibng the whole
time, which much less effort than you think! You can try this drill on
steeper slopes and at faster speeds as you get more comfortable, and start
making the second knee do some of the work as well.

This drill also works well if you stay out for one (or more) run too many.
Try to make that last run with your upper body completeley relaxed. I find
it helps keep my legs from cramping up, due to the fact that the drill
eliminates unnecessary movement and tension.

Mike T