Musings on soft boot angles

[Deuxdiesel]

I was able to spend an entire weekend widgeting bindings on my Coiler BXFR (163x27), and found some pretty interesting things.  On my alpine/hardboot set ups, anything more than a 3 or 6 degree difference between the front foot (usually 48-51 degrees) causes lots of heel-side slipping and push out.  On "softies" (Ride A-10's with Ride Deadbolt boots) at 33/30F and 27/24R, there was a whole lotta forward hip projection and back leg stinkyness going on to keep the heel side carving smooth and strong even with the highbacks rotated as much as possible.  I've tried using Bomber power plates, DIY cants and older Burton wedges to eliminate some of the funkiness, to no avail- I'm back to flat bindings with the built in canted beds.  For fun and to alleviate some of my old-man back issues, I dropped the back foot down to 21 and was amazed at the transformation.  Full-on railed heel carving as always with no weird sensations or ugly awkwardness- it was total joy and Zen.  I'm a tip it and rip it rider, so finesse is not part of my lexicon, but I am curious as to how others have experienced this. What is your experience with this?

[Eastsiiiide]

I suspect this is about leverage and control vectors.  At a steeper angle on a wider board, especially without the rigidity of a hard boot, it's much harder to apply and precisely modulate force over short delta-t (and delta-d). The sensory/muscular feedback loop is weaker, slower and sloppier, with heelside being worse than toeside.  Angling the rear foot more perpendicular to the board aligns the dominant power system of your foot and leg, the toe to heel axis, with the thing you're trying to control, a big flat plane.  It's just like how you can't run sideways with anywhere near the speed and precision you can running forward, or how if you're trying to move a control surface on an airplane you'd want the servo arm perpendicular to the flap, not reaching out at an angle. A lower binding angle puts the toe and heel closer to the edges, which is where the leverage difference comes into play on the wider board. 

This is a big part of why I prefer hardboots and a narrow board--I don't like my feet to be sideways relative to the direction of high speed travel, on top of which my hips have zero splay (when I walk my toes point forward), so a big difference between front-rear binding angles feels really unnatural.  

But that's just my hot take on it, there are folks on here who have spent a lot more time thinking about this stuff than I have.  Charts and diagrams even.  

Looking at you @SunSurfer 

edit: And of course I will take any opportunity to plug @Beckmann AG's treatise on the subject, which is my main source material for thinking more rigorously about this stuff, as will be obvious once you read it:  https://beckmannag.com/hardboot-snowboarding/hardboot-binding-configuration

Edited March 14, 2023 by Eastsiiiide
plug!

[Xargo]

Couldn't agree more with what @Eastsiiiide wrote. In fact I was just going to post a video about my recent duckfoot carving but I think I'll just post it here to illustrate this very point you made. This is with 50 degrees angle difference between the boots. The reason for that is that these vintage Elfgen bindings I used have minimum angle setting of 25. These of course are "hardboots" (softer than stiff softboots though) but angles are very much softboot kinda angles, if "a bit" extreme:

 

Anyways, the edge control precision you get with low angles is just so addictive but the important bit for which I'm very grateful for the input of alpine riders is using the hip to control the heelside carve. Low binding angles and hip rotation combined is so much fun.