Back seat riding

[dingbat]

My head hurts:freak3:

Dinger, did i look in the back seat yesterday??

I didn't see you arrive, but when you left, you were definitely in the front seat, right behind the steering wheel.

Keep in mind, the board you are talking about is a free carve model. If you can get in the back seat on purpose, keep the board under control, and make it do something that you like, what the hell is wrong with that? I get on the tail of my VSR all the time. It works on that board, and it's fun.

[Beckmann AG]

I've been playing around with toe lift on ski bindings, and finding out for myself how lifting the toe brings my weight forward. So in Bobby's case, his rear ankle might be several mm higher than the front ankle. Would a spacer under the front binding, cause the same effect that is found with ski bindings?

For starters, you really should address heel height inside the boot before you do so outside the boot, as that will isolate the pressure distribution under your foot from the effects of forward lean and/or more 'immediate' boot tongue contact. Otherwise, you will be affecting several variables at once.

As to the original question, that would depend somewhat on how Bobby is defining 'the back seat'. Is this perceptual or actual? Is it that he feels he needs to load the rear leg in order to make an effective turn? Is he never engaging the board under the front foot in any part of the turn? Or something else?

The answer to that would dictate what to do next.

I know in my own case, I have a leg length difference, and I shim up my front binding. Tuned with aluminum flashing. The internal ramp is greater in my rear boot(6.7) than in my front(5) as well. And I use something like 2.7 degrees of toe lift, and 4.1 heel lift as set by the binding.

Deviating from this arrangement will distinctly affect how the board performs, and how much effort I need to expend to achieve that performance.

Relative binding height will have an effect, but this is not necessarily due to the height of each ankle. More likely, how does the height of each foot affect the general location of the rider's CM with regard to the running length of the board.

If you lower your heel too much in a ski boot, you will find that your hamstrings, lower back, and popliteal region of your knee will become tight/irritated. And skiing with a low heel feels really unnerving. Too much, by the way, need only be a matter of a millimeter or two.

Riding with unequal binding 'stack' may feel odd, but not necessarily in such an obvious way. Rather, it may affect timing from one edge to the other more than anything else. And issues of timing can be written off to all sorts of things.

[BobD]

Thanks for the detailed reply Eric, and yes, lower back ache with too much toe lift on ski bindings.