cool drill to prevent static riding

[CarvCanada]

At Mont-Sainte Anne this week, I met up randomly with a lvl 3 instructor who was riding an alpine board in order to get to lvl 4 (CASI requires it)

I had seen her from the chairlift, and saw that she was riding static. She was definately carving, but not rotating whatso-ever, going very fast and simply leaning like a pole maybe 15 degrees in her carves. She was doing something like "the norm", but she was an advanced rider.

So I tried to teach her how to be dynamic... slow and low! I used a cool drill that I guess I just started doing naturally to get great angulation straight out of your transitions, to get your shoulders always parallel to the horizontal plane of the world, and to get great rotation into your turns that stays throughout your turn until the next transition, and keeps you looking ahead of the carve.

I told her to bend at the knees quite a bit, and gave her a reference to neutral position as having your knees bent, and your upper body facing at an angle between the forward facing axis of her board, and her binding angles.

I told her and demonstrated how to ALWAYS have the outside arm parallel to the forward facing axis of the board, and to have the inside arm maybe 70 degrees to the inside of the turn, and to have both arms always level to the horizontal plane of the world, as if you are holding a tray that has glasses of champagne on top of it, and you cannot spill them!

The drill was that on transitions, just as you start letting off your angulation to get the board to let off on its tilt, you bring the inside hand to the meet forward facing axis of the board, CLAP with the outside hand, and then EXCHANGE.

So if you are a regular (not goofy) rider, in a heelside, you have your right arm facing straight out along the forward axis of the board, and your inside, left arm, at an angle of around 70 degrees to the inside of the turn.

At the transition, just as you start to release your angulation, your left hand come across and CLAPS with your right arms along the forward axis of the board, and while you are doing this, your board is coming around to toeside and then you bring your right arm to the inside of the turn, keeping your left arm with the forward facing axis.

Effectively you exchange forward facing arms, and if you keep both arms parallel to the horizontal plane as if you are holding a tray, this gives you a nice, dynamic cross-through transition.

She was still reaching leaning her upper body towards the snow on toeside, so to cure that I told her to do all of the above CLAPPING drill, but with her inside hand to reach for the sky. I demonstrated that and it cured it a bit.

From there, you can start teaching the fore and aft dynamic movement of driving your knees forward and down to initiate the turn, slipping them back to 50/50 weight at the apex of the turn, and finally to finish the turn at around 40F / 60R and push up to get into the transition, then to absorb the board with your knees as it comes around with its tilt into the next turn.

[dr. sandman]

Wow, were you reading my mind when I was posting "Carving Speed/Incline"?!?! Great drill, can't wait to try it.

Thanks!

[kipstar]

awesome stuff ;-)