Rob Stevens

The back foot pivot isn’t like the front foot version. When you do it on your front foot, the tail does go out wider and takes a different path. A pivot on the tail does not break the carve, happening as you’re carving from the back foot to the tail and lifting the front foot to a higher line. The track you leave in the snow would not show anything less than a carve. You can also do this as a centre pivot between the feet at the edge change as the board goes flat, to lose speed or make a quicker edge change. As this largely happens in the flat phase, like the tail pivot, you would not be able to see anything other than a carved track. These are hard to do, hard to spot, but very effective at tightening a turn without relying on bending of the board at the centre of the turn via edge angle, or the type of more centre-of-the-board pressure a narrow stance allows.

Have you narrowed your stance at anytime to confirm your feelings? You’d be right in thinking the way you do, but there are techniques that wide stance carvers can use to make up for diminished bend in the board. With pressure easier to manipulate between the feet, you can ollie into the new turn to change edges and tip the board over aggressively early in the turn. A mellower version of leaving the ground to go from turn to turn would be pivoting on your back foot to close the turn and change edges.

Literally from your first post, you asked about racing. People answer with freecarve advice and you remind us that it’s about racing. So it’s moved to the Racing forum. You then say it’s not about racing. Then you post James’ video of him at a moderate pace, with a quick switch and generating early edge angle well above the fall line, but taking the whole runs width on perfect RMR groomers to say he doesn’t pivot, or drift, or do anything other than perfect carves. News flash: That’s how you do that, but you seem to know. Like your coach who you’ve broken up with, maybe we’re being trolled too. Now I’m done.

This one and then I’m done. “Yes”. If you need to ask why, go out to your steepest black run and freecarve without sliding some portion of one of your turns. When you get out of the hospital, ask that question again, but rhetorically.

Same same. Unlike what the video says, BK is initiating the drift with countering… if he wants to start one on the heels, the back hand goes back. If it’s a toe turn, the back hand comes forward. In either case, he’s creating momentum with a large appendage so he has something to act against and “move his back foot”. I’d also say that you can practice drifting above the fall line and then gradually engaging the edge at anything from a slow pace and right up to race pace.

“Asking too soon” is unfair. You ask when you want to.

If you want to look it up in the ski world, you’d search “stivoting”. Steer / pivot. Before the skiers picked it up, we called it “Skivoting”, or skid / pivot. Really, it was just a tactic in our “Slarving” conversations at CASI where we’d be looking to do things that would allow the most carving while also riding steep slopes, knowing that pure carving would only make you die Doesn’t matter… Same same.

Your original question centred on altering the radius of your turn on steep slopes. While that video does show solid form and is a mirror of what you’d ideally want to do, it is missing the “skivot” part. If you were to try what the racer in the video is doing on a steep pitch, you wouldn’t get far. Any course that can be purely carved is not a “steep” one, unless it’s so open as to not be a snowboard race. Not since single SG races went away. You said you wanted to leave “skivot”’s aside as the concept is confusing you… your present confusion doesn’t matter. You’ll have to figure it out. Your other option is to try to rail every course you come across and never finish one. At the risk of creating further confusion, you’ll… - Be rising up towards the edge change phase. The board will be loaded here and when you top out, the pressure will release and you will use it to bring the board up and under you, establishing the platform you’ll move to the next turn from. - In the video you posted, the rider begins to drop his hips towards the platform, creating simultaneous but gradual edge angle towards to fall line. He is on a pure, carved edge. This is the important part… if you do it like this on a steep hill, you will immediately accelerate, get “late” and blow out two gates later. - Knowing that you’d rather finish than blow out, instead of lowering yourself and engaging a railed edge above the fall line, you will take a moment and stay in your extended position, prolonging the “floating” part of the turn. While there and with a bare minimum of edge, you will either pivot on the nose or between the feet. I like to do it by slightly counter rotating. As before, the situation may call for rotation, so you should know how to start a slide using either. - In engaging this slide, you can maintain or reduce speed while also aiming the nose of your board into the fall line sooner than you could if you went right to your edge, made a rounder turn, taking “the long way”. - Once your board is aimed either into the fall line or more towards the next gate, you can now drop your hips towards the inside and build the edge angle in a carved turn towards max edge and force at and just past the panel. What you’ve done here is to insert the skivot between the switch / flat base and the part of the video you posted where the hips move down to create a railing edge. That allowed you to maintain a more direct line and a more manageable speed. If you’re actually an SBX coach or racer (not very clear) you may find some basis for your edge change question (so many “crosses”…) in the tactics you’d use on jumps. What did you have to do at the lip of a jump if you got hung up in traffic and felt like you were going too slow? What did you do before you got to the lip if you thought you would overshoot the landing at your current speed? Your answers have pressure implications which can be applied to turning. Remember too that “pressure” is not only applied, but received. Depending on the phase of the turn, you may be trying like mad to reduce it, but it only increases. Or build it, but nothing is happening At this point, you might also film yourself so that you can be seen on a steep course that you can’t rail. This would allow us to see if the reason you’re having difficulty grasping some of this is either you asking too soon and without enough knowledge base, or us getting it wrong.

Burton?!? I resent the implication! That said, AK and Fishes are rad.

Not in a bad way. If you want stiff, they’ll give you that. The design of them offers an even flex and they go under the laces well. In the 80’s and early 90’s, I ran them with my Koflach Hunters.

This is a flat course, so missing the element you started this thread asking about.

This has been a hack since the Raichle Flexon’s in the 1980’s It’s been almost 30 years since I last ran those, but if I were doing it again, I’d have a stiffer front one than in the rear.

I’ll say it again, but differently. You wouldn’t extend to the apex unless you were ****ing up and needed to do what you had to do to stay on your feet. It’s not ideal, but better than falling over.

You might extend a bit more as you go “out” while doing the skivot, but through the apex you’ll be at your most angulated and “lowest”, so not extending. Again, I’d say that extending to the apex is either a freecarve / EC move, or you’re making a recovery “shape” if that’s happening in a race course.