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.

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.

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