What are you learning this season? 2020

[bigwavedave]

There's so many different little things and you can really only focus on one or two at a time.  

One thing that I discovered, maybe in the past few years, not sure if I learned it somewhere, but it's the feeling or sensation that I'm feeding the board into the turn. Sort of like feeding a dollar bill into a vending machine, you start and then it takes off. When I do it, it seems to smooth out the whole turn. 

That, combined with the old weighting and un-weighting, ie, coming down with some weight to initiate decambering the board as you feed it into the turn.

***edit***

went for a ride after writing this and paid attention to what I was doing while "feeding" the board into the turn. Seems it may be the same thing Jack described as pressuring the forward cuff going into a turn.

Also when riding steeps--angulate, getting low and reaching for the board with the outside hand. 

 

[pow4ever]

Be more playful with the terrain:  Go after untracked freshie, little jump here and there, knoll/off camber type of trial used to bother the heck out of me.  Now it's "fun"
tinker more but with purpose:  I tend to not touch my setting at all.  One board (up to 4 or 5" of snow) a carving board will do surprisingly well
Touch snow less:  it's addicting and hard crutch to get rid off.  It was a great indicator on how low one get but it's not as important once we progress pass that point.
Smoothness/relax/speed control is the new "low"/"high" measurement for me
Mental fortitude:  I got hurt because I thought a skier was getting too close to me...
General fitness:  top to bottom riding is more fun than taking ~10-15 turns and had to rest/catch my breath.
Be more consistent rider:  i sometime ride well; and sometime not so much.

[SunSurfer]

5 hours ago, GeoffV said:

After over 30 years in hardboots apparently my back is protesting now and given out on me. I have developed some bad habits this season sitting in the back coming out of the apex all due to lower back paine. I am focused on relaxing my body, looking where I go, letting the board initiative and not tossing my body into a turn. I am trying to stay balanced and not trying to sit in the back. If I feel myself doing it I go back to basics, touch the front boot stay centered and keep my rear arm from flailing behind me.

With the low back pain and getting older it's definitely time for body maintenance work. I see you're using TD3 step ins already. In particular work on making sure your hamstring muscles are sufficiently loose to allow you to tilt your pelvis forward when you bend at the waist and relieve the strain on your lower back. I can recommend the stretch I wrote about in Dan's recent thread on his back pain from personal experience of the same problems. I use the stretch most days. I am 61 and have had tight hamstrings, low back pain and a bout of lumbar disc prolapse, confirmed on MRI, nerve root compression. Doing the stretches makes bouts of back pain rare and short. Not doing it, a week off work 2 years ago, opioids and muscle relaxant meds before things settled.

 

Edited February 21, 2020 by SunSurfer

[javajive]

Steering. MCC in the morning called for some assertiveness to negotiate the pitch and width of some of the runs. But MCC in the afternoon led to an unexpected journey into a cloud chamber of spiralling ruts. I miss it already. 

[Corey]

7 hours ago, javajive said:

But MCC in the afternoon led to an unexpected journey into a cloud chamber of spiralling ruts. I miss it already. 

Haha, so true! No sideslippers to fill in all those ruts over the day. 

[AcousticBoarder]

I am specifically working on not counter rotating for heel side turns. Focussing on simply bringing my hip straight over the board and falling into the heel side carve. I know it's not just the equipment, but I've made strides with the Kessler 168 this season! 

Thanks @Pat Donnelly for sending me this drill! 

 

Edited February 29, 2020 by AcousticBoarder

[Technick]

Working on my EC turns, getting pretty good and smooth, toe side still need a bit of work but I'm close! Wide black runs are a pure pleasure, can't get enough of it! At 44 I'm not getting younger, I really need to stretch, everyday if possible. Front leg is working harder than the other one so I need to keep doing some weight training to balance it out. I had a stiff left tight for a couple of month but found a good way to releive that with a massage gun, works wonders! I'm also helping others try hard boot carving, I have a couple of boot sizes, from 25 to 28 and some older boards that I can use for a demo day with someone. A collegue of mine just got his first hard boot setup and will try ot together next week... I'm always opened to give some tips to friendly beginners and intermidiate carvers. It's been a good season so far, life is good!

[st_lupo]

I think I learned to relax a lot more, and I learned that being "mindful" when riding isn't the same as being analytical when riding.  Analysis is for the chair up; doing post-mortems and developing a strategy for the next run.  Being mindful while riding is picking a line/arc, listening to the board, and letting reflexes react to the conditions; it's minimalistic and avoids the distraction of overthinking. 

Winter has been crap this year so my first day on the snow wasn't until Feb. 28th.  Since it was so late in the season I was really anxious about getting back into the swing of things.  On the first two runs I was super concentrated and focused on angulating the board just right, shifting my weight just right, being super aggressive on my transitions and tried carving perfect semicircles while keeping my speed in check.  Weeeelll that just sucked.  Some turns were good(for the first day of the season) but everything was infuriatingly inconsistent, "forced",  and not fun.  By the third run I was pissed, but had this intuition that I should throw away my mental checklist, and just try to ride so that it feels right?   *Click* by the end of the third run my knees were scraping the snow consistently, my heel-side hip was scraping the snow consistently and I was "locked-in" (well maybe at 75% to 80% of where I was at the end of the previous season, anyway run three was the best start of a season that I have ever had). 

 

[johnasmo]

Learning that spring hiking season isn't just for splitboards.  Putting one foot in front of the other long enough and you can still lug your heavy alpine gear to the top of a closed resort if you're desperate for a carving run. 

Prior to the abrupt start of hiking season, I was working on a few things -- flexing into my boot cuffs more, keeping a straighter back when scrunching down, more hip rotation on heel sides, keeping shoulders level to angulate more... 

When you see yourself in a video, it's often what you're not doing that jumps out at you.

[RCrobar]

Cool Thread, interesting to read.

This past season I have worked to develop a better understanding of how different amounts of upper body rotation can be best used with different turn shapes, this combined with the concept that the turn starts at the moment the rotation stops.  

Most of this effort has been focused during softboot Free Riding in powder, Feb 2020 was a good snow month! 

When making ')' shaped turns in powder a much smaller rotation has proven to be really effective, more of an X and / position rather than a larger + and - rotation.

Focusing on smaller abbreviated rotations helped me to be more efficient when driving straight down a fall line of chopped up crud, harbor chop, chunder and/or perfect powder in varied Free Riding terrain characterized by gullies and banks.鿰

Cheers

Rob

Edited March 21, 2020 by RCrobar

[johnasmo]

Rob, at first I thought there was something missing from your bindings or that they might be freeballers, but looking closer I guess I can see the hibacks hiding under the straps.

Speaking of Flow bindings... Did you know that Flow is owned by Nidecker Group?  The quite giant of snowboarding.  In addition to Flow, they have Jones Snowboards, Yes Snowboards, Rome SDS, Bataleon, Lobster and Switchback, and Now Bindings.  I've always liked Nidecker since my first Megalight 163XL board in 2008.  I have a 2010 with over 3,000,000 vertical feet on it, 169 days, all with Flow bindings.  Just picked up a 2020 161L for 1/2 price from a shop in Utah.  WooHoo!  Not many Nidecker branded models make it stateside.

Sorry for going off topic.  Oh wait.  I can save it... "This season I'm learning once again to appreciate the Nidecker Brothers and their commitment to the sport of snowboarding."

[RCrobar]

Hi Johnasmo

I did know that Nidecker acquired Flow, but didn't know about the other companies!  I had a hard time with Flows at first, but am glad I stuck with them. I love the Flows in powder, supportive and mobile at the same time.  I have a fair bit of issues with feet freezing, I find that the straps when not done up too tightly have lots of support and the don't cut the circulation off to the Fred Flintstone feet!  

The 20-21 Flows have a different type of strap, not sure if it is to bring down the cost or is a performance improvement?  I too am working on learning more about gear this and EVERY other season:)

Cheers

Rob