RobRidesSquaw

Most likely they would let it go like Phil said...rubbing is racing

The best way to stay in shape is really to cross-train with another sport as it is both fun and challenging. Basketball works well because it combines quick bursts of cardio (sprints) with power (jumping) and endurance. However, serious athlets will lift weights and train specific muscles in addition to working on cardiovascular endurance. In a nutshell a lifting program should look like this for a snowboarder: over the summer you should be focusing on building solid muscle by performing high reps of low weight (or even just bodyweight). Squats, deadlifts, lunges, etc... Be sure you are balancing yourself and not doing to many quadricep excercises with to few hamstrings (asking for a knee injury). As the season gets closer switch into more plyometric based excercises, but continue with your bodyweight lifts from the summer, just not as intense. Remember plyometrics are very dangerous and can really harm your body if done wrong or without adequate strength to start with.

As far as soft boot vs. hard boot goes...if you can ride soft boots, they are infinitely easier to jump with as they are far more forgiving on rough landings, also jumping in a carving set up is sketchy to say the least unless you are mort. I rode both set ups for years and finally last year I committed to just soft boots but continued to race GS and SL, just on my softies. My turning was way way better than it had been on my hard boots and my results were a lot better too. This is not to say that carving on soft boots is better, but if you get comfortable on one board or type of board you will become a better overall rider which is what sbx is all about get into the park bro, park jumps are much easier to learn on and are more comparable to boardercross course jumps. if you can safely do so, make runs through the park without stopping, hit a jump, make a couple turns, hit another jump, jump over a rail or something (dont hit it), carve on the side of a jump like a big bank turn, and so on

go jumping, learn how to compress jumps or pop off of them, learn how to keep your body and arms in control while in the air, and learn how to land smoothly. another training method we use a lot is to take your gates and set them up on off piece bumpy runs, or just go makes turns on these types of slopes. boardercross is all about being able to push yourself and keep your board under your feet no matter the terrain or situation.

I don't think USASA pays any attention to how far apart gates are set...last year at northstar it was all about whoever had a great tuck and had the longest board. I think the biggest challenge going from USASA to USSA is in both cross and alpine events is that you need to know how to ride in USSA events. A lot of the people at Nationals could not race down Howelson hill without totally losing control, nor could they ride a course like the one they had in Idaho last weekend. The biggest assumption people here are making is that people at nationals are really competitive enough to want to go to the next level. A lot of the kids there I have met the last few years don't care at all about improving or competing in a serious event, they just like telling people they made it to nationals...

Good Job Garret, sick getting on the podium...

.7 base and 3 side is all I have ridden for the past few years on all of my boards and I love it, but it is mostly preference. Your kid couldnt start turns because a 1.5 base bevel is huge, the lower the base bevel the more aggressive, so a .5 is more aggressive than a .7 because it takes less to get it on edge but it becomes easier to catch an edge. The higher the base bevel the more the board has to roll to get on edge. For the side, the higher the edge the more aggressive but a 3 can be way to aggressive if you cannot finnesse the board at all. I would try .7 and 2 at first and then tweak it from there...

Here is what I do for a weekly split for weightlifting and training: Saturday and Sunday are off Monday- Upper Body Max Effort,this is a lot of barbell and dumbell rows, various presses (bench, military, incline), a lot of accessory work to keep my body balanced, and then a lot of situps and core work Tuesday- Lower Body Max Effort, Cleans (do not do these unless you have a coach or know what you are doing because they are totally based on form), Squats are awsome if you do them right, if you do them wrong you will get hurt so if you are going to do them make sure you keep you back straight and dont let your knees go in front of your feet. Other than squats I do deadlifts, stiff legged deads, lunges, calf raises, Side bends for obliques, Plyometrics, if you are just starting out, stay away from these like Phil said, but once you have a foundation, mix some box jumps and scissor jumps in between squat sets Wednesday-Core work, situps, plank, side bends, various variations on crunches and stuff like that plus yoga or pilotes to stay flexible and injury free (hopefully!) Thursday, Repetative effort Upper Body, I do a lot of push ups, pull ups, and bodyweight rows for high rep sets Friday is lower body repetative effort, so a lot of bodyweight lunges and squats along with 1 leg squats on a bosu, also uses leg curls with a band for high reps. I also run every day, switching off between three miles at a steady pace on one day and then hill sprinting and lateral drills and stuff like that the other day... Keep in mind that you need to work your way up from where you are and that these workouts should not last very long. If you are lifting weights for more than an hour it becomes very hard to focus and put all of your energy into what you are doing. When you are starting, I would reccomend staying away from weights and just working on bodyweight excercises-wall sits, push ups, pull ups, bodyweight squats, etc... And dont kill yourself because you still have to snowboard and race and you want your body to be fresh for that, so eat right and work out right and you will be money in the races...

Anybody have the results to saturdays King of the Mountain in Park City? Thanks, Rob

Get the graphite, but make sure if you are hotscrapping with it (renew zoom graphite) that you get it all out because it will clog up your boards poars if you leave it in there. Another reason not to add fluoro would be it costs a lot and that it is not good for you base, if you race with it, hotscrape it out of your base asap afterwords. The more you wax with hydrocarbon the faster your board will get. The all temperature dominator hydrocarbon with graphite is amazing and it is very very hard which is good for cold but also seems to do great in warm conditions

the beast tools are by far the best I have ever used...definitely go for them if you can

Hey, I need to get a new slalom board this year. My old one is getting pretty short. I have been riding a 153 Volkl and have been riding it for like 5 years now, went from my GS to my SL board. I love it, I am very comfortable with it and everything. But it is a 53 and I am 5'7" and 150 pounds so it is a little small. Are the new volkls pretty much the same? Or is there a different board that is similar to the old volkls? Sweet thanks, Rob

JVB, nice point... if there is going to be no alpine racing in the Lake Placid WC, what is the race to the cup series going to be racing for this year? only FIS points? Anyways, it seems like some people here really are trying to make this official complaint happen and the best thing to do would be to help them out in any way you can. Cool Cool, later

Did neptune built the course? If so, chances are it was a dumb feature and was a dangerous course in general. If not, I hope they start to tone these things down a little. I love to ride the harder courses, they are a lot of fun but sometimes they are just insane. Make them challenging but not death.

i'll be there racing you in all three events...see you out here in a couple weeks chuck, talk to mort, he always has room at his place...

that really sucks about Jayson, he was so pumped up that he had made it and was going to race in the olympics. His style is to go for it and it has its ups and downs i guess. Lucky for Graham he was already in torino, if not he probably wouldn't have been able to compete.

This is Jamie Pierre...

If you are racing on the USASA level, i wouldn't bother with most of the stuff said here so far. You need to learn how to brush your board well, because brushing is where you speed comes from, a poorly brushed base sucks. I don't think it is possible to scrape to much off unless you are using a metal scraper, but if you are racing the next day you might want to leave a little for training and then re-scrape and brush while your waiting to go. Get a sharp scraper, a scraper sharpener, a brass brush, a horsehair brush, and a nylon brush, and a fiber pad. the fiber pad is pretty much what is on the back of sink sponges. I get them at the local hardware store, or I think swix sells them too. Also use the fiberpad after brushing with a metal brush because metal causes your p-tex hairs to stick up, and the pad pushes them back down creating less friction. Hot boxes and grinds are a great thing and help but hotboxes can also be very harmful to your base if you build them wrong. I wouldn't bother with it, just leave your board in a warm room. Get a grind at the begining of the season, ask for the grind that can cover the most conditions. I use a bbq brush made by holmokl ever few weeks to remove an oxidized layer of my base, essentially deepening the grind. I would not mess around with that until you are comfortable with the three brushes mentioned above, and also if you use a bbq you need to follow up with stiff steel and then soft steel. You can get a stiff steel structuring brush that will do the same thing a bbq to a lesser extent, but you will need to follow up with the soft steel. A great place to get brushes is http://www.ski-racing.com/ which sells the beast tuning system brushes, they kick ass.

They won't take out a boardercross rider to make place for an alpine rider for the olympics this year. All the sbx riders have podiumed, none of the alpine riders have. It sucks that we can only bring 16 but thats the way it is, and it seems to me that Jewell got the spot and Klug should put up with it. But I don't know fis rules and I don't know what the situation really is.

i'll be at sugar bowl from thursday to saturday at the x games qualifier. But sunday and monday i'll be riding at squaw probably. I will be riding hard boots at least one of those days. Maybe I'll be able to make it out to alpine but if I can't have a good time out there.

what kind of courses are you going to be running. If you are going to do USASA you could use hardboots on a bx board like an Atomic Dreamraider but if you plan on racing the Grand Prix and bigger races like that hard boots are not as good as softies because of the jumps. Unless you are more comfortable jumping on hard boots. I wouldn't ride a race board in a boardercross because I find them to be kinda scary to jump with but again it is a preference thing. Phil is right about the lines. You can run a course as many times as you can and still get your ass kicked if you dont spend any time spotting where you should be and where you can pass and so on...

Dont ever use that citric base cleaner stuff, it drys your base out, instead just hotscrape with a soft hydrocarbon wax or base prep (dominator makes a great baseprep wax). Wax it on and then scrape it almost immediately, make sure you scrape all of it off and then brush and keep brushing till everything is gone. Then let your board sit a little before waxing whatever wax you are gonna use for riding with. When you are sharpening edges, use a diamond stone (moonflex makes killer stones) at a 70 degree angle or so on your base and side edges. Try to find a fine grit for polishing and a gritter stone for taking out big burs and gauges in your edges. If you google it you could probably find a picture explanation of how to use a diamond stone on your edges. If you want to reset your side edge bevels you really need to get a guide. I know my coach does it without a guide and his edges are super variable from tune to tune. Don't do your base bevel without getting a basegrind at the same time, so you should have a shop do that. One more thing, remember that graphite wax is great for old snow but it is horrible for new snow (powder or manmade) so it is best to have a block of both dominator zooms for different snow conditions. -Rob also, never wax fluoronated wax unless you are racing in conditions that require fluoros. Flurocarbons eat away at your p-tex and are harmful to your base if left on, so if you do wax them for a race hotscrape them off asap. Don't ever use them for a ride around wax, they may be faster but overtime they will slow you down a lot. THe more hydrocarbon you wax the faster your board will go so stick to that stuff.

For our home bench we got a couple of wood clamps and stuck some cork in the middle of them so it is only cork that is touching the base and topsheet. THe we attached them to the bench we a hinge so they can fold down. It works great, i was just out there a second ago working on someones board and they work awsome. Put those right up to a couple of 4x4s with some rubber attached to the top to make them grippy and alright for the skis and you have a killer workcenter for cheaper than you would pay for a clamp. If not that then the best vice/clamp that i have used is the FK snowboard one, it is super sick.

Though somebody here might want to know, i was just on the USSA website, and the SBX grand prix is now a Nor Am and is taking place in snow summit, CA on December 16. See you there -Rob

be careful at mammoth, i was just there this past weekend, and there are a lot of chocolate chips waiting to snag an edge or rip your base. For rock boards i use my Rossi Myth for soft boots, and will use my old gs board for hardboots, its an old Renn Tiger.