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#11
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Bindings: Logic vs Reality
Iain D wrote in message ...
Jason Watkins wrote: Other people mentioned this, but I'll say it more directly: there are 2 ways you can press on your toe side edge: standing on the balls of your feet (and toes, to some extent), or pressing your shin against the tounge of your boots. Everyone blends these two together, to some extent. If you've got soft coosh jibtastic boots, you probibly won't have much cuff to lean against, so your calf has to work harder. If you have boots that have a little stiffness however, sometime on a toeside turn try pulling your toes UP towards your shin and leaning on the edge. This way, your calf is working less, and you can put your bodyweight behind your entire shin to press that edge. Riding this way really helps when you need to go through some choppy stuff. Interesting! So essentially you're pressurising the toeside edge through the stiffness of the boot. I can see this would do 3 things: * save your calf muscles (as you say) * lower your edge angle (as the boot flexes) * provide more suspension I can see these would help in crud. What do you do heelside to achieve the same effect? Of course, Phil and Mike will be slicing straight through the crud ;-) Yea, I always felt that the stiffness of the boot tongue was key to a toeside. When I think of carving mechanics, I always focuses on driving my hips and knees through the turn. In doing this, this uses you quad, glut and hamstring (strong) muscles to power the turn compared to using your calf muscle (weak) to stand on the ball of your foot or on your toes. To the original poster, these are the two reasons why we don't line up the boot shift towards the toeside edge. First, the calf muscle (which would be the only muscle engaged) is a little weak to hold a carve compared to the upper leg muscles. To see this, try walking up a flight of stairs by only place your toes on the edge of each step (much harder when you only use you calfs and hamstring) Second, the boot is designed to transfer energy from your entire legs into the base of the boot and then to the board. So use the boot as a nice lever (also why stiff boots are so important for good toesides). I'm surprised you have more difficulty with your toeside turn as that quickly becomes the easier turn direction for most people. Regularly snowboard setups are usually not setup right for good heelsides (more on that later) For heelsides, the obvious counterpart to the boot front is the highback. When you push back on the highback, the energy it transfered down the highback and acts like a lever on the board (for hard boot, the tough, plastic boot itself acts as the highback). The key to a good heelside? Very high forward lean settings (I have mine close to the maximum settings - properly heelcul adjustment is important too) - this gives you the response and power to do a good heelside. Problem is that cranking up the forward lean can be uncomfortable as the highback will dig into your calves when you stand up stragiht legged. Of course, this should be a non-issue since you are *bending your knees* the whole day right? Well... that's the ideal... so maybe you can consider high forward lean as incentive to bend your knees more, which will help your riding even more. "I bend my knees" you say? Unless you are a professional rider and or you have already done some videoing of yourself to correct your form, I can easily say that you are wrong and not bending your knees enough. Everyone (including myself) just thinks their knees are bent more than they actually are. Just get a friend to video you on a run and you will be like "omg, I look like that?!?" after the embarrassment, the video review will really help you fix your form as well. |
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#12
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Bindings: Logic vs Reality
Interesting! So essentially you're pressurising the toeside edge through
the stiffness of the boot. I can see this would do 3 things: * save your calf muscles (as you say) * lower your edge angle (as the boot flexes) * provide more suspension Yup. Although, you can still get as much edge angle as you like. Just by 'squating' down. If you go all the way down to where you're almost sitting on the highbacks of your bindings, your board will be 90 degress to the snow. You actually have full range of edge angles while keeping your body totally upright (no lean). So depending on how fast you're going, you can lean enough to balance the speed, and edge enough to make the shape of turn you want. I can see these would help in crud. What do you do heelside to achieve the same effect? Of course, Phil and Mike will be slicing straight through the crud ;-) Then I suppose it's no suprise to hear that I'm going to try hardboots this year. We'll see if it's versitle enough that I don't find myself wishing I was in my other gear durring the day. I really like the idea of fast agressive freeride, so as long as I don't get tossed to much in bumps and can still hit jumps in em, I think I may perfer hardboots. |
#13
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Bindings: Logic vs Reality
On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 09:42:33 +0000, Iain D
wrote: Interesting! So essentially you're pressurising the toeside edge through the stiffness of the boot. Yes, and for those of us who are proponents of this, it's also the reason 'heel lift' tends to be a red herring. You only get heel lift (unless you have really poor fit!) by pushing with your toes or balls of your feet, not by pressing with your shins. -- Robert |
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