Video after two seasons of harboot practice

[skhil]

1 hour ago, Xargo said:

0:44 to 1:39 is steep enough and butt up is not that much of a problem in those turns (but still not nearly optimal).

It's still is a problem. You bend your knees more, but you sit down sideways not along your board. I think you should try to correct that problem. Watch the section of Ben's tutorial starting at 5:13. He is sitting down low but his butt doesn't hang to the side. That's what you need to practice. Do P&P but in really pronounced way. Sit down as deep as you can and make sure not to bend to the side. It's just an exercise to feel the whole range of movements. Normally you wouldn't sit this low but you still need to know how to do it right.

9 hours ago, Neil Gendzwill said:

Really. Before, say, learning to glide on edge with minimal inputs, or do a j turn?

EC is based on swiss carving technique and you are supposed to learn its basics before making a EC laid turn. Every tutorial will start with it anyways. The term swiss technique is long forgotten so when we say EC nowdays we do not mean only laid turns, we also include all the needed basics into it.

It's true that EC is not a silver bullet technique. But it's not inferior to any other technique. It has different goals in mind.

[nextcarve]

3 hours ago, Xargo said:

... and here's a vid from my first alpine season some two weeks after the first vid of this post. Here I try to practice P&P:

In this video one can see the main problem of most beginners in EC, a too late "push and pull". One should be low in the traverse already, before the edge change, meaning before topple from the heel to the toe edge. One should be in this position (like sitting on the back of your board):

The upper body and CM is still over the edge and not leaning towards the snow. In this position one tips over to the toe edge. Only then apply preasure by straighten your legs and push until your turn reaches the fall line (legs should not be completly streched out for shock absorbtion).

Here is a nice sequence of Jaques, showing the complete sequence of EC technique.

 

A good exercise is to traverse in the position I show in the upper image above, change the edge in this position and then push. Do not stand up before and keep your knees bent and your upper body upright.

Edited April 25, 2023 by nextcarve

[Jack M]

9 hours ago, skhil said:

I beg to differ. If one uses a good tutorial

Except practically nobody does that.  They go straight to step 6, diving for the snow.  This is how people end up spending 2 years bending over at the waist, reaching down, learning bad habits, and progressing slowly.

9 hours ago, skhil said:

(like ben's above)

That tutorial is questionable.  You're right that if one takes it slow and masters basics and early steps, they will be better prepared for the laid out turns.  But almost nobody does that.  You'll notice he doesn't begin to demonstrate laid out turns until the 8th segment of the video.  The problem is that the vast majority of people start there.

His "basic rotational carving turn" is a bit overdone.  You don't need to rotate that much, or really at all.  The issue is that in order to maintain alignment between shoulders, hips, and feet, it feels like you are rotating.  Because the tendency on heelside especially is to look and face straight down the hill.  That's bad.  You have to turn with the board.  So I think he's exaggerating it.

His "frontside laid turn" is all wrong.  He nearly sits down on the tail of the board, lifting the nose off the ground, and then reaches for the snow with his hands.  Just no.  But this video is 11 years old now.

I'll give one tip for making the EC heelside - the secret, IMO, is to reach forward with the leading hand, not to the side.

Disclaimer - yeah, pretty much any technique and equipment works on good snow.  If you have good conditions, do what's fun.

[Xargo]

9 minutes ago, nextcarve said:

In this video one can see the main problem of most beginners in EC and a too late "push and pull". One should be low in the traverse already, before the edge change, meaning before topple from the heel to the toe edge. One should be in this position (like sitting on the back of your board):

100% agreed. My problem when I started to practice P&P was that as I usually didn't have anyone to tape or comment my riding, I tried to see from the helmet camera if I'm doing things right and while that footage is better than nothing, it's easy to misinterpret what you see. Especially when you don't quite know what you should be doing/seeing. So at some point I thought my P&P is good enough and moved to next step too early. I really did try to go through all steps because I'm highly motivated to learn the technique but it's hard to judge yourself when you are ready for the next step.

11 minutes ago, skhil said:

It's still is a problem. You bend your knees more, but you sit down sideways not along your board. I think you should try to correct that problem. Watch the section of Ben's tutorial starting at 5:13. He is sitting down low but his butt doesn't hang to the side. That's what you need to practice. Do P&P but in really pronounced way. Sit down as deep as you can and make sure not to bend to the side. It's just an exercise to feel the whole range of movements. Normally you wouldn't sit this low but you still need to know how to do it right.

Agreed, I practiced this today. Slopes were too icy to practice laid down turns anyways and the best groomed steep slope had a race on it.

[Jack M]

Yeah, you do need to rotate on heelside to get your shoulders and head as low as your hips if EC is the goal.  Most of the time it's just not necessary, unless you're just going for style.  In my video, my pants graze the snow too.

I didn't know I was being filmed in that video.  It's obviously not a demonstration of EC.

Have fun storming the castle!

[pokkis]

Just my 0.02 cents here.

As said above, riders usually go too fast from Ben's step 1 to step 6. One just must practice every step so much that it comes automatically correctly. And i think at beginning it is good to over rote upper body. Then later it can be dropped to proper level, for me it helps to get better feel to turn and rhythm.

And another point is not to move steeper slope too early.

Unfortunately it is PIA to make same silly practice in same not-so-deep slope but that is easiest way to learn due then you can concentrate what you do and not control speed.
Push-pull is fun way of riding and it is no way related to any style, just another tool in box.

But we all want to learn everything in quick way. And euros are fun to do, once you feel it.

[nextcarve]

@Jack M I really like your smooth carving, seen in the video where you ride your new 185 Winterstick; just love it.

I can totally understand, that if one has reached such a high level in carving competence in a certain style, that it seems odd, when someone goes another route.

When I first saw a video of EC, I seriously thought this was too "extreme" . But I still was curious about, what all the fuzz was about. So I went to their Extreme Carving Sessions in Zinal multiple times to learn from the gurus and licked blood. It was fun and worth the effort. Nowadays I'm not so much into pure EC anymore, but I know it works and you can also apply the technique on imperfect slopes, if you avoid laydowns.

@Jack M  The following question is difficult for me to ask, because I don't want to criticise anyone, but I'm sincerely interested. So I ask it straight. Have you ever seriously tried to learn and work on the EC technique the way the Swoard guys propose?

[skhil]

12 minutes ago, Jack M said:

the tendency on heelside especially is to look and face straight down the hill.  That's bad.  You have to turn with the board.

Not really convincing. What's the physics behind it? Why is it bad?

15 minutes ago, Jack M said:

to reach forward with the leading hand, not to the side.

That's a good point.

15 minutes ago, Jack M said:

Disclaimer - yeah, pretty much any technique and equipment works on good snow.  If you have good conditions, do what's fun.

My point, you don't have to use harder tiring technique on a good snow. I don't live near the mount and I have maybe 20 days riding a year. To take most of it I need to ride 7-8 hours each day (on 6 or 7 consecutive days). EC is the most strength conserving technique I know, that makes it a good tool for me.

[Jack M]

1 hour ago, nextcarve said:

The following question is difficult for me to ask, because I don't want to criticise anyone, but I'm sincerely interested. So I ask it straight. Have you ever seriously tried to learn and work on the EC technique the way the Swoard guys propose?

Yeah I can do it. Sometimes on good conditions and steep slopes it just happens. There aren’t any heelside pics though. Next year!

I guess this is my most EC toeside pic.

1 hour ago, skhil said:

My point, you don't have to use harder tiring technique on a good snow

Does my technique look hard and tiring? I have perfected it to compliment my total lack of fitness! 

Edited April 25, 2023 by Jack M
pic

[Neil Gendzwill]

1 hour ago, skhil said:

EC is the most strength conserving technique I know, that makes it a good tool for me.

That just makes no sense to me.

[Jack M]

1 hour ago, skhil said:

Not really convincing. What's the physics behind it? Why is it bad?

The natural tendency in the second half of a heelside carve is for people to just look down the fall line.  That usually leads to the shoulders and hips opening up and aligning parallel to the edge of the board - i.e. facing downhill while the board is going across the hill.  This rotates your body backwards with respect to your binding angles.  It's simply a less balanced, less powerful posture.  Also it's harder to finish a carve if you're not looking where you want to go. 

[trailertrash]

1 hour ago, Jack M said:

Does my technique look hard and tiring? I have perfected it to compliment my total lack of fitness! 

I can vouch for his lack of fitness. The guy rides 95% on technique, it's actually quite impressive. I have seen him in the gym and he's lost he has no idea what to do. 

EC is a crutch. Just learn to ride right in the first place! 

[noschoolrider]

Eurocarve vs Extreme Carving - Jacques Rilliet (Swoard and extremecarving.com founder)

At the end of the 80's here in Europe, most riders were hardbooters. We could see in Snowboarding Transworld Magazine that it was the opposite in the USA : riders were all freestylers, there was no picture of any hardbooter (please correct me if I’m wrong).
One of the coolest trick to manage at that time was the Vitelli turn which was a totaly frontside laid out turn (invented by the French rider Serge Vitelli on a HOT Revolution). You were sure to find a picture of him or Jean Nerva or Peter Bauer or some other top Euro rider laying down a turn in any snowboarding magazine!

For Patrice and me, this goal kept up until now and became « Extremecarving » when we could link frontsides and backside laid out turns.

In fact we invented this name at the end of 2001 when we had to find a name for our website and kind of « discipline ». We wanted to translate the «extreme» angulation of the body on the slope (and not an «extreme danger» as sometimes suggested).

In the middle of the 90’s a friend of mine told me that there was a rebirth of hardbooting in the USA and that they called the Vitelli turn a «Eurocarve» because it was the euro riders that did it at first.

So as far as I know a Eurocarve is a laid out turn and EC is linked laid out turns.

Jacques

[Xargo]

15 hours ago, Jack M said:

The natural tendency in the second half of a heelside carve is for people to just look down the fall line.  That usually leads to the shoulders and hips opening up and aligning parallel to the edge of the board - i.e. facing downhill while the board is going across the hill.  This rotates your body backwards with respect to your binding angles.  It's simply a less balanced, less powerful posture.  Also it's harder to finish a carve if you're not looking where you want to go. 

Agreed, this happens a lot and it's easy to loose grip that way. However, isn't what you described here counter rotation? In EC the rider would be facing uphill if there was over rotation happening. What I see from the videos though is that at the end of the turn, EC riders are facing towards the nose of the board or slightly uphill.

[Jack M]

4 hours ago, Xargo said:

However, isn't what you described here counter rotation?

yes.

12 hours ago, noschoolrider said:

when we could link frontsides and backside laid out turns.

Ironically I see so many people unable to link them while maintaining speed.

[Neil Gendzwill]

49 minutes ago, Jack M said:

Ironically I see so many people unable to link them while maintaining speed.

Never seen them look graceful in person.  I've seen people do 1 or 2.  I've seen consecutive linked flops into the snow linked by slow traverses.

[b.free]

Guys, we all come to this sport for certain picture in mind. For a lot of people this picture is EC. Why are you so aggressively against it? Who cares if one wants to learn it? 

EC is an amazing carving style. EC was that picture in mind for me which brought me into HB. EC is not a trick as so many of you think, its a way of carving itself. 

 

[BlueB]

I think there's lot of confusion, not only in this thread, when people talk about "EC technique" in context other than fully laid over turns. In general riding, it boils down to how you change the edge and apply the pressure. The normal technical terms: cross-under, down-unweighting, cross-over, up-unweighting. With EC the emphasis is on the former 2, call it push-pull, extention-retraction, applying pressure in the first half of the turn, or whatever... A good rider can use them all and apply for situation, or desired outcome. 

Rotation/counter-rotation has another function, that is often neglected in conversation, even by national teaching schools: When the board is on edge, it actually changes the pressure along the edge's length. It's just another tool to use... or not. 

Edited April 26, 2023 by BlueB

[noschoolrider]

16 minutes ago, BlueB said:

In general riding, it boils down to how you change the edge and apply the pressure. The normal technical terms: cross-under, down-unweighting, cross-over, up-unweighting. With EC the emphasis is on the former 2, call it push-pull, extention-retraction, applying pressure in the first half of the turn, or whatever... A good rider can use them all and apply for situation, or desired outcome.

Yes, and also blend them (cross-through).

I'm not trying to hijack this thread, but for those that are new to this the following videos show some of the best of two different techniques:

Extreme carving featuring Patrice Fivat and Jacques Rilliet:

Sigi Grabner (Ride With Me):

 

[Xargo]

17 minutes ago, BlueB said:

It's just another tool to use... or not. 

This is the key point for me. I'm not planning to EC all the time but rather learn that tool so I can use it when I want to.

But in any case I'd like to give my massive thanks to alpine snowboarder communities (both here and locally in Finland) about promoting the technical aspects of riding. I'm not talking only about EC here.

As I briefly mentioned, my background comes from softboot carving where I didn't have anyone to teach me. I bought alpine gear because I was already riding and booting out with the widest carving board I could buy (275mm wide Ride Timeless). I wanted to order a 300+ wide Donek and continue with softboot setup but that would have been way more expensive than buying second hand alpine gear (exporting Donek to Finland is crazy expensive). So the motivation was always to go for extreme edge angles but I'm so glad I decided to do that with alpine setup and not because of the gear but because of the technically oriented analytical rider community.

I have learned so many useful techniques by reading these forums and discussing with other riders which I wouldn't have learned if I just went with a wider board and used the same technique than I was using earlier. In case someone is interested how my riding looked before going alpine, here's a vid with a nice view (my favorite weather, -25°C means empty slopes):

The funny thing is that this week I'm actually getting a wide carver I longed for three years ago but the brand has changed to Coiler. I'm so excited to ride that and no, I won't be doing EC with that as a primary means of riding. But I will be using a lot of what I've learned while practicing riding with alpine gear.

[Corey]

Also, many people compare those that are among the best at their chosen style with intermediate riders doing the style they don't like. This validates that it's hard to be really good at either skill, not that your favorite style is "better". 

That EC Stoked video 100% got me into hardboots! I can't do it, but they make it look so fluid and fun! 

[Colozeus]

I like turtles. 

Jesus, why does everyone on here get so bent out of shape over technique and EC vs Whatever vs This is how you should ride, blah blah. Shut your beautiful mouths, get off the keyboard and go ride, be happy. :-)

[BlueB]

3 hours ago, noschoolrider said:

Yes, and also blend them (cross-through).

Yes, of course! I have purposely skipped it, to keep it simple / contrasted. But yes, I feel that when I'm on my best, I mostly ride cross-through, when in that happy medium, I conversely switch in "over" or "under", as required. 

You posted great video examples. 

Edited April 26, 2023 by BlueB

[loopback]

2 hours ago, Colozeus said:

I like turtles. 

Jesus, why does everyone on here get so bent out of shape over technique and EC vs Whatever vs This is how you should ride, blah blah. Shut your beautiful mouths, get off the keyboard and go ride, be happy.

this is usually the problem come this time of year....go ride is not an option for more of us each week

the technique arguments are always tiresome, they all take incredible dedication to master and look impressive when done by an expert under ideal conditions/equipment

[Neil Gendzwill]

3 hours ago, Colozeus said:

I like turtles. 

Jesus, why does everyone on here get so bent out of shape over technique and EC vs Whatever vs This is how you should ride, blah blah. Shut your beautiful mouths, get off the keyboard and go ride, be happy.

It’s a discussion forum, we discuss stuff.