Dan

Welcome to the forum Zipfit! I'm always happy to see a manufacturer pay attention to our very niche market. As you probably know, we are definitely willing to spend money to fine tune our setups - I look forward to riding some alpine-snowboard-specific Zipfits one day down the road!

Hell yeah, thanks for the pics folks! Keep 'em coming!

So, here's a quick update. The neighborhood gym down the street from me suggested a personal trainer, who is a very chill guy and is also the state record holder for squat, bench and deadlift at 163 lbs. I told him about my lower back issues and let him know I wanted to strengthen the area, and I thought squat and deadlift would be good, as well as whatever else he suggested. He put me through some unweighted assessment exercises and the upshot was that I pretty much do everything with my lower back. When I do exercises that should draw on glutes, back, and core, I'm relying almost exclusively on the lower back. This rang pretty true to me. So the short story is that I probably have sub-optimal snowboard setup leading to sub-optimal riding posture - per feedback received here. That puts me in a posture where I need to compensate, and I'm doing most/all of that with the lower back, instead of those other muscle groups that might be able to share the load. So I definitely need to do a two-prong approach of revisiting my setup as well as spending some time in the gym, and getting those supporting muscles activated / engaged as well as building strength. So, with all that on my mind, I went up to Timberline yesterday. That's right, I'm too fragile to go ride at Libby, but I figured Timberline was fine -- it's pretty flat there anyway when the upper mountain is closed. I tried to think about posture and actually had one turn where I felt like my glutes were working, which was the first time I've ever had that sensation. I'm still prone to slip into old habits though and I left with a slightly sore lower back, but no major issues. Net net, I have lots to work on, between getting my setup dialed, figuring out how to recruit those other muscles, and then overall strengthening, but I think I'm headed the right direction.

Weekend pow days are a circus on Mt. Hood now, and most midweek days are the same...but occasionally a midweek powder day that comes after an extended storm cycle will still slip under people's radar. Spring powder days are also more manageable than Jan/Feb.

If a carver carves a turn and doesn't post a long rub-in thread with many photos on ASB, did it really happen? (i.e., "Where are the damn photos already?!")

Hi Teach, looks good! Here are mine, no chunks missing, just a little dirt. I'll PM you with my address.

WANT! But can't really justify it at the moment, alas. Looks like a sweet setup, some lucky guy will have fun with it.

I haven't skied since I was a child and was never good enough to rock a monoski, but when I see people use them, it looks like they combine the bad points of skiing and snowboarding without much benefit. Am I wrong about that? Having said that, I have deep respect for anyone that can tear it up on a monoski - it looks hard!

I have a set of red ones and I'd like to trade for yellow! They're used (came with a set of bindings I just bought); I'll post a picture tonight.

You should get in touch with @carvedog - I don't recall if he does formal lessons or not but I'm sure you could learn a lot from riding with him

Thank you Beckmann! Your post gave me what I think is a pretty big revelation: I always lock my right (rear) boot at a higher angle than the front. No particular reason, I just started doing it like that and no one ever told me that's a bad idea. So, that would force the uneven knee flexion, which forces my hips towards the back of the board, and then the torso lean to move my CoG back forward, right? Things I probably should have found out 10 years ago... This may not have a simple answer, but given that I'm still riding with the stock Deeluxe walk/ride switches, where should I set the forward lean? Should it be same on both boots? > This suggests that much of your heelside edge tilt is derived by moving your center into the turn, rather than originating at the feet and/or knees. Possibly a dumb question, but what should I be thinking about if I want to initiate heelsides from the feet / knees? I think I definitely do this by leaning to the heelside now, should I just be weighting my heels and trying to unweight my toes?

Oh yeah, that would make a lot more sense

I also have some jagged edges on the leading edges of my toe clips, but it's never been an issue with glove abrasion that I've noticed. Are we all on the same page that those jagged edges are a result of abrasion against the snow? That's pretty wild if you think about it, no? At any rate, if the snow can abrade aluminum (?!), I think that FlexSeal would also be a temporary fix at best. I think sanding / filing / grinding is the way to go, as others have suggested.

I was fine all summer, and it's not nearly as acute as last year, but yeah, I seem to have re-aggravated the same area that I screwed up last year. Thanks Keenan! I'll check him out.

I don't have any video of me riding, but I was able to dig up a couple of photos. This heelside photo is most applicable because heelside is where I'm tweaking my back. This is steeper than it looks and I felt like I was all over the place, so it's probably a good example of what I do when things are not going great. Mellow toeside - I don't think this angle is very helpful for our current discussion though.

Thanks Mr.E! As I mentioned above, I've done only body weight stuff for quite awhile. That includes planks, which target the whole core, but I do think I probably need to add weights and start doing more whole-body exercises like deadlifts. I'm fortunate to have a really attitude-free neighborhood gym near me and I know once I get myself to show up and say "um, can you show me how to do this?" I'll get good coaching from the staff, just need to get over that initial hesitancy. Not too surprising - they're saying the same thing about ACL repairs now too. My symptoms would have to be much worse before I would consider surgery.

Thanks Beckmann, if you want to know how I ride, think about Chris Klug, only more fluid. Seriously, I unfortunately don't have any recent pics or video, but as noted above, I am quite inflexible and accomplish "getting low" at least partially by rounding my lower back. It seems I've hit my body's limits for that approach though. Possibly related: I typically ride with a pack, though I've trimmed the contents down to about a liter of water, a layer (depending on time of day, I might be wearing it, or it could be in the pack), and usually a hat. Not sure if you can opine on this sight unseen, but I'm using the stock walk/ride switch in my Deeluxe boots. I think that switching to a BTS could help because I could flex my knees more and reduce the need to bend my back to get my CoG down. Does that make sense?

Thanks SunSurfer! That stretch is great and I'm adding it to my routine - I have very tight hamstrings and a lot of hamstring stretches don't work for me because I'm just too inflexible. (I'm a road cyclist and I've heard tight hamstrings are pretty common for us.) I'm not sure if clipping in was the cause, but I can confirm that clipping / unclipping does hit the exact muscles that I tweaked. I'm guilty of rounding my back when riding as well - that's the easiest way for me to get low, but I'm getting the idea that's not sustainable.

Thanks Corey! I watched the video and the video linked in the video (took me awhile to figure out I had to turn off my ad blocker to see it :-)). Though I'm a little leery of "just work through the pain", I can vouch that doing nothing hasn't helped: the original injury was at Libby last year, as I'm sure you remember given that you were driving my gimpy ass around. Thanks for the tip on the 'bus driver' exercise too, it has been a long time since I did anything other than bodyweight stuff, but I think it's time to get back in to a gym.

Are you looking for somewhere where you can stay on the hill, or are you open to driving to/from the lifts each day?

Thanks F2A2R! I really appreciate getting your perspective, definitely do not want to do permanent damage...I'm at the age where I'm coming to understand how depressingly easy that is to do. I have a few questions for you: What kind of specialist would you suggest? Have you had good results from any particular specialty? I did see some good sports-focused physical therapists last year, but of course no one knows what carving is or what motions are involved. I suppose I could show them some video or something??? Interesting that you mentioned the clipping in movement as a possible concern. I use standard bails too...did you just give me permission to upgrade to step ins? The pain I'm getting...I don't really know how to describe it other than muscle pain / spasms alongside the spine. I have a big knot from last year that's still there despite some trips to massage.

I bike commute, and tow my dog in a trailer (100 lb load) 2 or 3 days a week. Just the bike commuting helped a little bit, but when I added the the dog it really helped my leg strength for carving a lot. I know not everyone is going to tow a big dog to work, but I think any kind of cycling workout with some heavy resistance intervals - hill climbs on road or MTB, or an exercise bike where you do high resistance for part of the workout - would help.

So...I've been having some lower back issues lately. They first cropped up last season (I had a muscle spasm that left me unable to clip out of my board, and couldn't walk right or sit up in bed for days), and they came back this weekend, though not as bad as last year. It's muscle pain on the sides of the spine, more on the left side than the right side, but I've had issues on both sides. If I have my knees bent and stay low, I'm good, but a few specific things cause problems: hard heelside falls, especially if I sit down hard (i.e., as opposed to the more common low side slideout). Hitting chop straightlegged and soaking up the bumps in my back is also a problem. Stretches I'm doing include pigeon pose, cat/cow, child pose and that lower back stretch you did on your junior high soccer team where you put your left elbow to the right of your bent right knee and twist to the right, then reverse. For core strength, I've been doing planking, and this exercise I got from a physical therapist where I get on all fours and then extend my right arm and left leg at the same time, hold that pose, then switch and extend my left arm and right leg at the same time. Admittedly, I've been pretty inconsistent with all of that except planking, but given that issues from last season are cropping up again, I'm motivated to do better. Does anyone have any suggestions for similar issues?

That kind of looks like a business that's placing safety and the quality of the experience they offer over making money...hats off to Crystal for having the guts to go through with this.

In my experience, they're great skiers, but have the unshakeable confidence of youth, and as a result don't leave much room for error. I got buzzed at Bachelor over the holidays by a ski team racer - he was going pretty much full-tilt and passed me (behind me) about 3 feet away. He probably felt that was a safe pass, but if things had gone a little differently, it would have been bad for me. "With great power, comes great responsibility." When you're one of the best riders on the hill by a wide margin, there's really no excuse for intentionally cutting things that close.