For Philfell and Y'alls

[Rob Stevens]

As a "tech geek" (thanks for the tag, Bordy, you bastard ) what heelside position are you speaking of in your Race to the Cup thread?

In most of them it looks like the riders are getting a bit of counter-rotation on. The guy in the Burton suit, though, looks like CK in the Smooth Groove! Rotating all the way.

Is this just the moment in the picture? Did he finish with a counter move?

I like the "rotate to start and counter back in the apex" feel. It really stacks you up for the big pressure moment. This is a change for me, as I was a big rotation fan for a long time. Now counter-rotation is a big part of my ride.

Hard or soft, it works great for me.

Just a few years back, guys like Mattieu Bozzetto and his French team buddies were all over rotation, it seemed.

Whats the tech now? Do you promote a method, or throw them out to your athletes and see what sticks?

[philfell]

There is actually very little rotation at all. In just about all the pics Sean posted their bodies are more or less naturally in line with their binding angles. If you need to twist your body in unnatural positions it means you aren't getting the job done with your lower body, which is where your true power base is.

I made the post about noting the heelside position to hopfully help out the "face the nose" school of thought riders who say it's just a matter of personal preferance between riding while facing your nose, and riding while being naturally in line with your stance angles. Because it is not a preferance thing, it is biomechanics.

[Neil Gendzwill]

I dunno, Phil. Klug looks pretty rotated, his back hand is more forwards and his shoulders approaching square to the board. The others look like their upper bodies aren't rotated as much as their stance, and their back hand is trailing quite a bit. You can see this pretty clearly in the bottom photo of racer #20 posted by Sean. If that was a photo of me, I'd say I got knocked a little out of shape by something and was recovering but as they all look more or less the same I assume this is the technique they are shooting for.

[philfell]

There is no pic of Klug in that thread, Klug rides goofy. I beleive you are taking about the Ryan McDonald pic. And he looks pretty inline with his angles to me. Don't look at his hands, look at his hips and shoulder in relation to his board and bindings. If he was riding squared up to the nose of his board you would only see his right shoulder and not his chest at all, because his board is nearly parrell to the camera lens.

It's free advice on, in my opinion, the harder turn in snowboarding. Take it, or leave it, but if it were me I would try to ride with a similar technique as a world champion.

[Neil Gendzwill]

Sorry, got confused by Rob's comment that he looks like CK. The picture I'm talking about is of #5. I'm not trying to criticize, I'm just trying to understand. #5 is the way I try to ride, his shoulders are not square to the board as you correctly point out but they are rotated more forward than the other guys. #20 in the picture immediately below, it looks to me like his shoulders are almost lined up with his edges. His hips are more in line with his angles than his shoulders but his ass is hanging more off the side than #5.

I'm sure any one of these guys is going to hand me my head on the race course, so I'm just trying to understand what they are doing. It's a still shot of a dynamic position so I'm probably misleading myself here.

[skategoat]

Rotation, counter-rotation, push-pull, over-under...am I the only one who just doesn't get this stuff?

Here's how I ride:

Gain speed, unweight by standing tall, then weight and load the nose to initiate the turn. I let the board do the work until I'm ready to start another turn. I try to keep the upper body quiet and work the legs.

The only other thing I do is quick edge to edge turns where I basically throw my board back and forth under me. I think these are cross-throughs or cross-unders or whatever.

I think I fall into that group that learns intuitively and can't really translate technical instruction into execution. I'm the same way in golf. I just sort of figure it out by experimentation and just do what seems to work. Maybe that's why my golf scores are so inconsistent and why my riding style can be characterized as "Edge of Disaster".

[timinor]

Don't look at his hands, look at his hips...

...getting the job done with your lower body, which is where your true power base is.

I spent a half day training session with a "face the nose" school of thought coach. He chastised my position the whole time. The next day I watched Chris Klug and others of his ability in a race and none of them were in the "face the nose" position with both hands at the nose. They were riding just like those pictures. I kept looking for that coach. I wanted to see him in the finish area chastise the world's best riders because their "right hand was back."

He had two pieces of advice for me: Put a sticker on the tip of the board to remind me to keep my hands facing the nose and go in every hour to "re-hydrate." "Re-hydrate? I said, "My mom used to say, 'drink some water.' Did you learn that term in Coaches School?" The day was a waste of time and money.

I've never met Philfell but from what I read in this thread, his understanding of technique is on target.

[carvedog]

Rotation, counter-rotation, push-pull, over-under...am I the only one who just doesn't get this stuff?

Here's how I ride:

Gain speed, unweight by standing tall, then weight and load the nose to initiate the turn. I let the board do the work until I'm ready to start another turn. I try to keep the upper body quiet and work the legs.

The only other thing I do is quick edge to edge turns where I basically throw my board back and forth under me. I think these are cross-throughs or cross-unders or whatever.

I think I fall into that group that learns intuitively and can't really translate technical instruction into execution. I'm the same way in golf. I just sort of figure it out by experimentation and just do what seems to work. Maybe that's why my golf scores are so inconsistent and why my riding style can be characterized as "Edge of Disaster".

Standing tall is only one way to unweight the board. The "retraction" turn which you may be using for cross under can be called up unweighting or probably lots of other things.

I have been teaching for 13 years and Phil has been coaching for a while. No you are not the only one that doesn't get the terminology.

It is nice to have a variety of turns and unweighting techniques in your tool bag though. That you don't know the official terms is less important than you know how and when to use them.

[Rob Stevens]

These race shots are just moments in time and it's really hard to tell how the riders turns flow from one to the next, but for sure, riding in an aligned position, with lower body "steering" doing the job would be the perfect scenario.

This doesn't seem to reflect the reality of these shots, though.

Riding with your shoulders square to the nose apparently cannot be painted with the same brush as a bad thing. I see just about all the alpine riders in these pics and at events doing just that, but on their toeside... Really reaching up and forward with the back hand, creating a perpendicular board / shoulders position and allowing the riders upper body to be parallel with the slope.

This then seems to counter-rotate back to an aligned position on the heelside (the harder turn, but more from angulation concerns vs. rotational alignment). Counter-rotating through certain radius turns looks to be pretty effective at creating a minimum of movement as you're already set up for the next turn just through and out of the apex of the last.

I guess it all depends on the course. If it's mellow, your body position may never be challenged. If the conditions are steeper and / or icy, you might do whatever you have to with your alignment to keep the slab on line. This then leaves only those with the greatest amount of core strength (and riding skill) at the top of the heap. If you can keep lower body disturbances from making their way up to your arms and shoulders, you're not going to have to make a bunch of corrective moves.

Bear in mind that the preceding spray comes from a guy who rides around with no bindings, so I'll slide using all techniques at all times, just to keep from falling down. Likely, this constant sketchiness has created a state of confusion in my head where I can't tell good riding from bad... It's all survival to me now.