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Stance Rotation


Chouinard

Stance Rotation   

16 members have voted

  1. 1. My shoulders are square to…

    • The nose of board
      4
    • The direction of my boots
      3
    • Somewhere between the two choices
      9


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It really depends on the conditions, but...

Standing on the side of a NorAm race course is a great way to observe good technique, which is what I did over the past couple of days. Stuff I've been told before, but seeing it with rider after rider on a challenging course makes an imprint. A good reminder, since it's easy to be lazy when riding "hero" conditions. I think it's good to learn and practice solid technique, and then you can stray as you will from there when conditions permit.

These are a few observations, things I was reminded of that helped me, maybe it will help you:

Shoulders and hips facing direction of feet. A stable stance. I used to ride with a 16" wide stance and gradually widened it to 19.5-20".

Keep your front hand out over the nose of the board. It helps keep you from over rotating and helps to keep weight on both feet. A lot of racers look a bit like big wave surfers to me–wide stance, bending knees, hips and ankles to get low, arms stretched out fore & aft. It's a very stable stance. 

From that position use both feet to focus pressure into your heels or toes in your turns to get a very solid edge. For me, angulating the upper body seems to follow automatically just to keep from falling over while balancing on heels or toes. I don't give a thought to pressuring boot cuffs, driving knees or hips, etc.

I practiced this all morning yesterday on some very firm Spirit Mt "surface groom" where "trenches" are ½" deep barely penetrating the ridges of the cord. Good technique may not be necessary, but is rewarded with smooth powerful turns leaving pencil line tracks.

My toe side turns felt more solid than they have all winter. 

 

 

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6 hours ago, bigwavedave said:

Shoulders and hips facing direction of feet.

I expected this to be the top response AND it was the basis of my question to Nevin after watching the  videos he posted.  I makes sense to square yourself with the binding angles than the nose which would limit further additional reactional rotation.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. With such limited amount of time on quality slopes time spent on discovery here leaves more time to quality ride there.

Edited by Chouinard
Typo
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