By Thomas Palka
April 2007
Feel like you hit a wall with carving? Carving in the “park and ride” style, where you get nice deep and fast carves, stand up in the transitions, then lower your body into the next turn? Still thinking about where you put your hands, wonder about counter-rotating, bending too much here or there? Hopefully this article will give you some ideas on things to try to improve your riding.
Those were the problems that I struggled with, and thanks to Lowell Hart, Joerg Egli, and the helpful folks on the BomberOnline forums, I feel that I improved my riding tremendously. I’d like to share some of the lessons I learned, in the hope that someone may find some of them useful.
DISCLAIMER: I am not an instructor nor do I play one on TV. There are many ways to carve and to have fun on a carving board – here are some ideas and techniques that increased MY OWN confidence and fun.
I believe that there are many styles of ride, and don’t believe that any style is better than others. There are techniques that work better than others depending on the terrain, on the snow, and on the equipment ridden. I tend to disagree with anyone who says “this is right” or “that is wrong”. Personally I aspire to ride in a variety of styles and to be able to transition between them seamlessly. I have a long way to go!
As you read about these various ideas, think about where your riding falls in the spectrum. For example, when considering ankle movement, do you ride with fairly stiff boots that are always locked? Or do you like riding in the unlocked mode and flex your ankles as part of the turn, getting a bigger range of motion?
It helped me to think of riding in terms of the range of my movement along four main axis, call them dimensions. Those are fore and aft, toeside and heelside (Europeans: frontside and backside), up and down, and rotation. Add the ranges of movement in the main joints used for carving: ankles, knees, and hips. Developing comfort in riding with with largest ranges of these movements will enable the rider to master many techniques and different styles, rather than staying in the rather static and locked park-and-ride carve.
For most riding it would seem that the rider should be centered on the board. I found that on heelsides I tend to my weight forward, to push the nose into the turn. On my toesides I tend to relax a bit and move slightly back of the center, especially at the end of the carve when I’m freeing up the nose to initiate the next heelside. Experiment with riding too much in the back, too much in the front, and see what your range of comfort is.
Some people like riding low, crouched over their boards and getting their center of mass close to the edge. Others prefer to ride high, standing up and enjoying the world. Riding in the medium position, where ankles are flexed and knees are bent provides the most versatile position. It allows the rider the space to bring the knees higher and to absorb the impact, just as it provides the necessary cushioning when catching some air. Riding low all the time is inviting the kneecap to go through the jaw, and riding high leaves the back unprotected.
Riding in the middle position offers plenty of movement opportunity in both directions.
Some people try to get low by bending their knees, and are unable to flex the ankles due to very stiff boots. That causes the butt to stick further back, and the only way to ride the board centered is to bend in the waist. That position does not the freedom necessary to move through the vertical range of motion and is inefficient.
It seems to me that many East Coast riders are all about staying right over the edge to provided maximum edge hold. That is a good strategy for hard and icy snow, but those of us fortunate to ride in other conditions have more leeway. As long as the center of mass (COM) is low, the body can be moved away from the edge and into the turn. Experiment, see how far it’s possible to lean into the turn. Note how getting lower makes it possible to lean further.
Rotation is a hot topic – lots of opinions about why it’s bad, why it’s good, etc. In my opinion, counter-rotation is bad – the rider moves the body one way to force the board to move in the opposite direction. But, properly used, rotation allows the rider to move into the turn first, forcing the board to follow. In some ways it makes riding a lot simpler, as the properly executed rotation will transparently move the center of mass over the correct edge. I like rotation.
After two years of riding in walk-mode I realized some inherent dangers of doing so – the boots are simply not designed to ride unlocked and may break. Enter the Bomber BTS, a spring-based system that controls the boot flexion and allows for largest ranges of movement.
The ankle is a small joint, and closest to the board. It is the most efficient (read: fastest) way to control the board, as a small movement in the ankle is immediately transmitted to the board. The more the rider relies on the joints further from the body, the bigger and harder he must make the movement. In my opinion using joints further-away is inefficient.
The knees act as the major shock absorbers. Many riders use the knees as the way of controlling the board, due to riding in overly stiff boots. They can be efficiently used to force different parts of the board during the turn – it’s connected with the fore- and aft- movements.
Bending in the waist seems counter-productive until after the ankles and knees have gone through their range of motion. Often riders bend at the waist to touch the snow, as that provides some mental comfort – I believe that once the ankles are flexed and the knees bend, i.e. the center of mass is low and close to the edge, the carve is so solid that it doesn’t really matter what the upper body is doing.
It is important to rotate the hips into the turns – the main effect of rotating into the turns is bringing the hips in-line with the board. Riders who don’t do it are often accused of “toilet-butt”, often their heads and/or shoulders are rotated in the direction of the turn but the movement just didn’t go low enough. With more experience, riders are able to rotate their hips without having to go through a big rotation in the upper body.
These are a few of the exercises that I found useful. Find more at the Bomber: Carving Practice Drills.
Ankles 1: Ride with stiff knees, stiff hips, and move only the ankles. Practice cross-under turns by riding straight on a fairly flat hill, putting all your weight on both toes and lifting the heels, then moving your weight to the heels and lifting the toes. Correctly executed, this will cause the board to ride in a straight line alternating edges.
Ankles 2: once you master “Ankles 1”, work on independent joint control. Start by doing cross-under turns with just ankles, then just knees (now you’ll be carving very small turns), then just hips (carving bigger turns), finally inclinating your entire body to make much larger turns.
Balance 1: Ride with hands behind your back to improve your balance. As soon as the arms are not available to make the brain feel balanced, the body will have to get into the right place. It will feel tipsy at first, persevere. This one did wonders for me getting centered over the board and knowing what my ranges of motion are.
Balance 2: Switch! I started riding backwards primarily to improve my riding-forward balance, to know that I really am centered. Very tentative at first, I discovered that I got a lot more control over the board by riding this way.
Rotation: Try rotating into the turns, driving with your body and having the board be always a quarter-turn behind. I.e. when you finish a turn, the body should already be turned into the turn. When the outside shoulder crosses the board edge you should feel that the board is getting on edge automatically. Keep rotating until you’re just past the middle of the turn. At that point start rotating back, already thinking about the matching next turn. It takes timing, but it can make carving quite effortless and very fluid. Rotation is a big element of the Pureboarding style.
Extension/retraction (European: push/pull): As you transition between turns, do not stand up. On the contrary, get lower than your middle position. As you enter the turn start extending your body (it will feel like standing up), which will result in more pressure on the board. Just as you get to the apex of the turn, release that pressure smoothly so that at the end of the turn you’re as high as you were when you started. With right timing it allows the rider to selectively decamber the board in a turn and to change the radius of the turn. This technique is an important part of the Extreme Carving style.
Changing the gear is useful too – switch angles, stances, boot tightness. Much of a riders balance is tied to having their gear set up “just so” – a good rider should be able to get on any setup and ride it fairly well within a run.
Changing the gear is useful too – switch angles, stances, boot tightness. Much of a riders balance is tied to having their gear set up “just so” – a good rider should be able to get on any setup and ride it fairly well within a run.
None of the exercises above are new and they all are in the aforementioned Bomber drills article. What I found most useful was combining any number of them. Examples:
Note that I’m still practicing – probably will for the rest of my life – but I took a selection from various movies that show some of the skills I was working on. Don’t expect the movie to be perfect – but hopefully it’ll illustrate what I’m trying to do!
I do ALL the above drills EVERY TIME I ride – now it’s become a part of my warm-up, a way to start the day with all the various movements. I have added some air moves, going into switch by catching air from bumps and turning the board in mid-air, hope to soon add some park tricks. It’s all good on the path to becoming a versatile rider.
As stated before, there’s a myriad of ways to carve. Personally I would get bored with the sport if I just executed the same toe- and heel-side turn every time, though it seems to please plenty of other riders. Practicing these drills and trying to combine them on different slopes opened up a door to more fun than I thought possible – the mountain is a big playground, and we should be able to enjoy all of it, mixing up styles as we fancy.