Weak ancles or bad boots?

Haakon Riiser wrote:

As far as I could tell, the natural carving radius (if there is
such a thing) was smaller on 21/6 than on 15/6, and this actually
made carving more difficult for me. It was easier and more stable
when the carving radius was large.

The natural carving radius has to do with the sidecut and flex of the
board, your stance angles don't affect it. Whatever you were feeling
had more to do with your comfort with the stance than with the carving
radius.

I note that many people use the word "carving" to denote any sort of
turn. Carving means that your tail edge follows the exact track of your
nose edge, and you leave a thin track in the snow.

Neil

Haakon Riiser wrote:
Should you also adapt the stance angles for this? I'm currently
using 21/9 on the front/back foot, but I haven't settled on
anything yet. I started learning on 15/6 (the place I bought
the board chose these angles for me), and then I tried 21/6.

21/9 is fine as is 15/6. It is a lot of personal preference. The more
forward angles you get, the more your can quickly get your board on
edge and carve into a turn - this is probably why the radius felt
"tighter". (up to about 36/30, after that most regular snowboarding
boots/bindings lack the proper lateral support to carve well).

I've put a lot of time into reading about good stance angles,
and while most agree that big positive angles are good for high
speed carving, and small angles are good for freestyle, I've
not found much information on how big the angle between the feet
should be. All I've heard are some claims that it can be bad for
your knees to have more than 15 or 20 degrees between the feet.
A lot of professional snowboarders don't seem to care about that,
however; I found listings that showed that several of them far
exceed 20 degrees.

Well once you go into higher angles (over 30) it start being very
uncomfortable to have a wide splay (narrow 3-6 degree splay also makes
it easier to have you hips lined up for quicker board movements). I
would say stick with whatever is comfortable for you... I ride 21/9,
18/3, 15/-3 depending on the board (I spend nearly every day of my
first 20+ day season fiddling with my angles and splay until I found
something I liked). Wider splay is my easier to stay "neutral" on and
also absorb the impact of jumps, but it also kind of locks your hips in
a neutral position as well as on knee is going on way and the other
knee is going the other.

Btw, I've searched the web for animations or video clips showing
proper snowboarding techniques, but I haven't found anything yet.
Does anyone here know where I can find something like this?

I haven't found any softboot videos that are great, but here's some
good basic stuff to give you the idea
(http://www.extremecarving.com/tech/tech.html). They are in hardboots,
but they have relatively low angles (for hardbooters) and the motions
they are doing in this intro are perfectly applicable to regular
snowboarder and should give you an idea - especially the push-pull
videos at the bottom. You can easily do that with any snowboard on a
shallow slope.

This is taken from their website
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Basic position

The chest is vertical (don't lean forward), the knees are flexed, the
arms stay along the body and must never be opened, except during the
lain turn (see forward).

Whatever the board or feet position is, the chest is facing the same
direction as the feet (so it is more pointed at the nose in hardboot,
than in freestyle).

Be aware of your gravity center in the region of your hips, because all
your movements should start from here.

....

Questions:

1. Why is it good to keep the arms along the body?
Because in case of misbalance, the arms will oscillate and
increase the loss of control. Try to recover your balance by replacing
your board correctly instead in gesticulating.
2. Why is it important to keep the chest upright in all
circumstances?
Because if the chest is not over the center of gravity (the
hips), The balance will be lost in case of shock caused by a bump on
the piste.
3. Why is it necessary to keep the knees flexed?
in order to absorb all shocks caused by bumps, like with a car
suspension.
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