Backside carving problem

[Skalpel]

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Hello

This is my first real year on my carving setup. Some say that my gear, specifically my board witch is a Goltes ProRace 180 with the radius of 15.7 meters isn’t suited for a beginner carver (8 years of soft boot boarding, thought). At first I thought wow, that was a lot of radius, but now, with a few full days on the mountain I got the hang of carving and am getting more and more confident. With this community’s help in the thread “Carving with a bigger radius” I've been able to make my turns way tighter then before and really enjoy the ride…<o></o>

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There is a problem though… My backside turns. I can really rail the frontside ones. I dive in to it, compress, tilt the board and all, but when I try it in the backsides, I always skid. I just cant get the edge to grip. Maybe if I move my weight really back, but then I’m out of control and that really isn’t the point. Any of you have ideas on what might I be doing wrong? <o></o>

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Just a quick word about my binding setup. Nothing to say about the binding angles. What might be important is the fact that I ride without heel lift and canting. I really like the idea from the extreme carving site, where they say, that the stance becomes normal when the board is flexed, so no canting needed. But today, after along hours of practicing the backside turns I was thinking… My board is 18.9 centimetres wide. That’s somewhat narrower than the EC boards. Could it be that what I need is lift and canting? <o></o>

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It’s really a frustrating problem. I cant get that much out of riding, because I can not link turns… So, any help whatsoever will be greatly appreciated.<o></o>

[dshack]

Your ideal lift/cant combo has to come from within. I guarantee you there are incredible carvers who ride with any combination of lift and cant you can think of. Most people I know on skinny boards have at least some heel lift, usually toe and heel. Try it out, see what it does for you. Carver's almanac (alpinecarving.com) has some good info.

I worked through my backside problem (I'm not incredible, but I can consistently carve them pretty low) with a few steps:

-Twist your hips into the turn as much as possible. Because of the mechanics of the human body, there's not really a way to over-rotate on a heelside turn. Your goal should be pelvis facing the nose.

-Can you touch your front boot cuff with your rear hand? If not, you're not twisted enough.

-At the same time, keep your shoulders upright (parallel to the slope).

[Chubz]

I have found that sometimes it matters where the bindings are mounted. The MADDs I have owned, I moved all the way forward, if I tried to move back at all, my heelsides would start to undulate. same thing on my Pogo Blitz, Itried moving th bindings back over the past few outings and toe side was no problem and heelside would undulate. I moved them forward again and heelside bronco bucking went away.

Who knows , it may just be how I ride.

That does seem like a big board, the other thing that helped me for heelside acouple years ago was the true commitment to the turn. What I mean by this is that toesides, it is more natural to fall/lean/initiate into the turn because if you fall, you fall to your belly and chest. That same method on heelside, if you fall, it is to your back , which is completely uncomfortable and painful so you may be a bit hesitant.

I know I dont use proper alipine terminology, but as I travel on my toe edge across the fall line, I transition to the heel edge while still moving across the fall line. It feels odd at first but that allows initial setting of the edge and it naturally wants to travel thru the arc as long as your body position and center of gravity are properly postioned.

Imagine you are connecting cresent moons, tip to tip.

If you initiate later, its too late for the board to engage and move thru the turn.

The other simple thing is to drive the rear hand towards your front knee/boot, dont flapping it out away from your body.

do you have any pics?

Mayba an SL board may help with breaking through that commitment. Additionally, I had my heelside epiphany on the steepest hill at our mountain.

[Neil Gendzwill]

First, please tell us whether you are turning on your toeside or your heelside, as people use the terms backside and frontside to mean the same thing depending on their background.

For reference, in my avatar I am making a toeside turn.

[Erik J]

If you are able to have someone shoot a small video of yourself, you might try that. You may think that you are performing certain motions, while in reality you're doing something else. Watching yourself ride may open up your persepctive of how you are actually riding. You can also compare your own videos with those of others.

[NateW]

Best tip I've had for heelside turns is to keep my trailing hand forward. Reach for the nose, keep it in front of your front knee, whatever. I'm not entirely sure what difference it really makes - obviously your hand has nothing to do with how the board interacts with the snow - but this simple tip has served me very well. I guess it just pulls the rest of my body into a better position.

Try it and see if it helps.

[David Glynn]

Good tips so far.

Best tip I've had for heelside turns is to keep my trailing hand forward. ...........obviously your hand has nothing to do with how the board interacts with the snow - but this simple tip has served me very well. I guess it just pulls the rest of my body into a better position.

Nate's last sentence nails it. What is happening here is that the body squares up to the boards direction of travel. The hand pulls the shoulders and hips over the board. But the hips are the key.The biggest thing is that you will then be stacked over your edge instead of having your hips and center of mass angled into the hill beyond your edge angle.

Another thing may be that your board is out in front of you as you initiate your heelside turn. The center of your stance heelside is about 4 to 5 inches back on the board compared to toeside. You need to be more up front on heelside initiation to compensate for this difference. Weight the board: front, then center, then back. You can think of getting your mass over your front foot ( but don't break at the hip ) OR bringing your feet ( board) under you as you initiate the heelside turn. It is easier to pull your feet under than moving your mass over the board, but either way it will accomplish the same thing.

One last note: try to really lock your edge angle in with strong ankles and feet while staying soft enough in the knees and hips to still be able to absorb terrain issues.

[queequeg]

I agree with everything that nate Nate and David said. I think getting the board up on edge quickly and focusing your hips and shoulders and eyes in the direction you want to aim your momentum is where it's at on heelsides. In my experience, once you nail your heelside technique, it will tend to out-power your toeside due to the proximity of your ankle to the heelside edge.

Cerebrally, something that helps me to visualize proper heelside technique is:

When you initiate your heelsides with greater emphasis/weight on your front foot and gradually shift the weight to center and back, instead of thinking about shifting your weight on the board, think about sliding (or driving) the board forward beneath you, and at the same time reach for the point you are driving the board forward towards with (what would be) your trailing hand.

Most of the people I see with poor heelside power or slippage are either looking down the fall line and not focusing their body into their momentum, or not getting the board high enough on edge.

[inkaholic]

Skalpel,

There have been a bunch of threads recently addressing this type of problem. WilliamBlake has provide many indepth posts on this topic. Search for those and I am certain that you will have the info to get you through this problem.

Yes, the info given here has been very good. Keep at it and your turns will come around ).

Ink

[Menno]

Could be you're contra-rotating.

Another possible problem: you're rotating (not contra-), but not in a fluid way.

When going from toeside to heelside, first let the rail "bite". Then you need to rotated in a nice fluid motion over the whole turn. You need to divide your rotation evenly.

Sudden change of balance may disturb the grip of the rail of the board.

At first try to keep the pressure relatively even over the whole arch. Pressure is a combination of how deep you bend, inclination and rotation.

[Neil Gendzwill]

Could be something even simpler - it's very common to bend over at the waist and not bend the knees on a heelside. Bend your knees, you might think you're doing it now but I'll lay odds if you're new to this that you're not bending them much.

[Skalpel]

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Thank you all for your answers. I’m shore that they’ll all be very useful on the slopes. Sadly I don’t have any photos or videos. All we have is a crappy camera that doesn’t work very well and we rarely take it to the mountain with us. I’ll definitely try adding some heel and toe lift. We’ll see if that does the trick.

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I’ve read stuff from the tech articles, carver’s almanac and such. I was more interested in tricks and tips that helped you. I can definitely touch my forward boot with my trailing hand. It could be that I’m not bending my knees enough or even letting the edge get the grip before I initiate turn… <o></o>

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[twelsch42]

I'm by no means an expert - but here's what helps me out. I have to start my heel-side carve when the board is nearly flat on the snow, and slowly bring my toe-side edge up into the air. I have to very gently ride into the carve.

I seem to get little to much angle to my board, to quickly and start to skid.

twelsch

[nils]

advice given on EC.com applies on wide flexier boards.... when u are on a narrow with high angles setup, lift and cant are almost mandatory!...

On EC boards riding flat is very usefull to fight edge skid especially backside, it helps ( with proper rotation) to ride on both feet too...but you have less angles so its not as uncomfy as it could seem on paper...downside with lower angles is that it puts lots of pressure on the bails laterally, and most of them tend to break after sometimes....

Nils

[joecarve]

Absolutely the best thing I was taught to get my heelsides to work was sticking my hip into the turn. Everything above applies, of course, but I couldn't get it at all until I learned to go hip first. Same motion as bumping a car door closed when you've got your hands full...shove that hip into the turn.

[carvedog]

Just a quick word about my binding setup. Nothing to say about the binding angles. What might be important is the fact that I ride without heel lift and canting. I really like the idea from the extreme carving site, where they say, that the stance becomes normal when the board is flexed, so no canting needed. But today, after along hours of practicing the backside turns I was thinking… My board is 18.9 centimetres wide. That’s somewhat narrower than the EC boards. Could it be that what I need is lift and canting?

I would look to technique first before looking at lift or cant. I have never liked either. Riding on 18 cm waist boards, with 65 degree angles and flat toe the board and have no problem railing heelside on 197 Burner, 188 Burner, 173 Burton FP and several others now retired. Without seeing you ride all of this is rampant internet speculation.

-Twist your hips into the turn as much as possible. Because of the mechanics of the human body, there's not really a way to over-rotate on a heelside turn. Your goal should be pelvis facing the nose.

It is actually quite easy to over rotate a heelside. Typically you will see the front leg start to straighten, back leg starting to bend ( too much), hips settling back over back leg. I would really avoid trying to have your pelvis face the nose unless you are running high angles, racing slalom and using cross under.

With proper technique, very little rotation is needed. .

-Can you touch your front boot cuff with your rear hand? If not, you're not twisted enough.

Not sure if you are still referring to body rotation. Reaching down the hill to the boot cuff ideally should be accomplished through spinal flexion, not rotation.

Just my opinions. We all have them don't we. YMMV.