Carving with duck or relaxed positive angles

[Xargo]

I guess this mainly relates to softboot carving even though I've tried duck stance with hardboots as well and that works too.

I know there are some duck stance riders here as well but most of course ride posi angles. My background is that I started snowboarding riding a noodly softboot setup with posi angles in the nineties. Later on my brother convinced me to try duck stance and I instantly liked it. Then I rode duck for more than 20 years (not that actively though) and now for the past two seasons I've been practicing EC with hardboots and alpine stance.

That said, my preferred setup is still duck stance with a softboot setup and finally I have wide enough carving board to match. I'd like to discuss duck vs. positive stance here in the context of relatively relaxed angles. I'm going to try the new Contra with relaxed positive angles at some point but at the moment I'm having a blast with duck stance. Here's a video from yesterday morning:

I guess the main reason why I like to ride duck is that I feel like I can pressure the edge with more precision that way because I can use my toes a lot better. Of course the tradeoff is that the fore/aft movement is more vague and it's way harder to get the hip alignment right. Another thing I'm looking forward to is learning to carve switch and hopefully at some point I can carve deep both ways.

I kinda wanted to comment the discussion on the 23/24 board porn thread but then thought it's better to have a separate thread, I started this one. I'm referring to this:

I've thought about the same thing, why do a lot of Asian riders ride such steep angles with softboots? There are exceptions though, like here:

Personally I ride +21/-21 and even with a 300mm waist board there's slight overhang. I can't straighten my legs as much as I would like when doing heelside carves but it's good enough now. Really, really pleased with the board.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Xargo

[BlueB]

Nice riding. 

Looking at your preferred upper body position and how you point your rear knee into direction of travel, you must be putting lots of torque on your back ankle. Forward angles should be more natural, like 30/15, or something. 

[Xargo]

1 hour ago, BlueB said:

Nice riding. 

Looking at your preferred upper body position and how you point your rear knee into direction of travel, you must be putting lots of torque on your back ankle. Forward angles should be more natural, like 30/15, or something. 

Thanks, yeah that's probably the case. However, I don't have any issues with my back leg. I charged pretty damn hard lately and only my front leg is sore. I put a lot of weight on the nose of the board on heelside turns and the back leg doesn't do much that much.

The whole pointing the rear knee into direction of travel comes from recent alpine riding. I didn't do that before trying hardboots and I couldn't handle heelside carves on steeper sections. Now with this strange hybrid technique it seems to work great. Of course with my +52/+45 EC setup, the heelside are much more powerful. In any case I'm super grateful about the advice the alpine snowboarding community has given me to get that powerful heelside working. Of course I'm still a bit concerned about that back ankle and I'll continue monitoring if it continues to feel good or not.

The problem with forward angles is that I would need to have at least around 24 for the back foot to prevent toe overhang but I'll try that out eventually. The feeling I'm getting with positive back angle is that I lose a lot of agility and ability to absorb shocks and bumps. Heelsides become a lot more powerful though.

Here's an older vid showing the difference with the hip rotation (or lack of) and not pointing the rear knee into direction of travel:

I guess that's more typical softboot riding technique but doesn't really allow to carve steeper sections (unless you go crazy fast and straight). Which is kind of what I wanted to discuss here. My claim is that you need that hip rotation into direction of the travel to carve those steeps (heelside) and that's what duck stance riders don't typically do.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Xargo

[BlueB]

Well, you said -21 +21, so rear could be +21? A bit of toe overhang is actually a good thing on softies... 

Careful with overuse of weird positions/twists. Accumulative injuries are a bitch. I actually started getting some rear hip/groin issues after few years of similar stance... 

As for the front foot doing more on the heel side, try this mental picture: STAND on the rear heel, drive the front knee into direction of turn and down to the snow. Also, over rotation, for the given angles, can lead to only front leg doing the work. 

But I'm talking too much, you are way better soft boot carver than me

[ShortcutToMoncton]

I think I’ve mentioned this before but I think there’s a real torque concern with the hip flexor in that motion as well. (Duck rear foot but pulling the hips forward facing.) I tore my rear (right) hip flexor on a bouncy heelside near the end of the first season I tried carving duck, and had no end of trouble with the rehab. Keep on top of those hip mobility stretches.

[kitejumping]

Nice turns in the video!  I ride 15, -15 duck stance as well.  On toesides pointing the back knee forward to me is about increasing ground clearance (so you don't knee out in the snow).  Similar to rock climbing how you have to point your knees to the side to keep your center of gravity close to the wall, the same applies to get your body lower on toesides without your knees touching the snow.  I don't ride super stiff boots or bindings, so it allows for more side to side play and rotation, probably more like surfing, vs the idea that you need super stiff boots and bindings.  I think if your body positioning is good and everything is in alignment you don't need a crazy stiff boot / binding softboot setup to carve aggressively (but you do need a stiff, wide board and very sharp edges). 

[Xargo]

Preventing injuries is a high priority so I appreciate all the advice/concern. I don't know why but for me it's the alpine stance that tends to cause issues. It's probably because of lack of technique but my back knee starts to give me trouble if I hardboot too much. Rubber band exercises help a lot. That's another reason why I want to ride both ways. The plan is to first hardboot couple of runs when the groomers are perfect and then switch to the duck setup with the same (AT) boots. I tried it already last season a bit and the AT setup with springs works well with the duck stance. I also had some issues late last season when I tried to charge hard with a duck setup after having spent pretty much all the season riding alpine stance and I just didn't have the muscles needed for the kind of duck riding I wanted to do. That's one of the reasons why I now build some muscles riding duck and then I can switch between the styles later when black diamonds open for some EC fun.

The reason why I would need more rear angle for the forward stance is that then the rear toes would point towards the waist which is narrower than the tail to which direction they are pointing now. Of course it would be the opposite for the heelside.

My favorite softboot bindings (Kaon-CX) have massive heel loop and there's too much overhang to use them with a duck stance even with a 300mm waist board so I'm really looking forward to testing those with positive angles. At the moment when I'm still learning the new board, I'll stick to duck since that's what I'm most comfortable with. Ride Insano boot test tomorrow morning. Should be quite a bit stiffer than the Salomon F4s I've been riding lately. It's nice -21°C outside now so I anticipate empty slopes.

8 minutes ago, kitejumping said:

Nice turns in the video!  I ride 15, -15 duck stance as well.  On toesides pointing the back knee forward to me is about increasing ground clearance (so you don't knee out in the snow).  Similar to rock climbing how you have to point your knees to the side to keep your center of gravity close to the wall, the same applies to get your body lower on toesides without your knees touching the snow.  I don't ride super stiff boots or bindings, so it allows for more side to side play and rotation, probably more like surfing, vs the idea that you need super stiff boots and bindings.  I think if your body positioning is good and everything is in alignment you don't need a crazy stiff boot / binding softboot setup to carve aggressively (but you do need a stiff, wide board and very sharp edges). 

Thanks! I agree about the binding/boot stiffness. That's one of the reasons why I first wanted to test how the board works with rather soft and beaten F4s and now it's time to try the Insanos which are probably my stiffest soft boots and then the duck hardboot setup after that (Atomic Hawx Ultra XTD 95). I anticipate I like the softest setup best but I like to experiment especially at this point.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Xargo

[Xargo]

Here's a vid from the last season where I experiment with the hardboot duck stance setup. 275mm waist Ride Timeless here since I didn't have this new Coiler yet at that point but I did have those Atomic Ultra XTD boots (so too much overhang here):

Pretty narrow and steep black diamond run (not open yet this season).

[ShortcutToMoncton]

You’ve probably seen this discussed before, but the Flow NX2 bindings have the very shortest front-to-back binding length I was able to find (back when I was trying to get the lowest possible angles on a 254mm board). The lack of a lower heelcup had a pretty solid affect on max board angulation based on my carpet & real-world testing a number of years ago. 

The one-piece straps are weird though. I still don’t love them, although the hard mesh ones on the higher Carbon version  fit me better. 

[crackaddict]

11 hours ago, Xargo said:

 

 

This is great riding but compare his heelside to his toeside turns, especially in the first sequence: The toesides are smoother with less chatter (almost none really) and he's staying longer on the toe edge too, kind of hopping out of the heelsides early before they're fully finished.  Hard to tell but the run looks like easy blue to me.

Your turns look great too @Xargo, but your toesides are also smoother than your heelsides.  This is especially noticeable near the top of the run where the slope is steeper.  (Find someone to film you next time out, with helmet cam and selfie stick video there is a lot of distortion which makes it harder to see the riders body position.)

Everybody can choose his or her preferred stance, there are no timers or judges in this sport of free carving so there's no official "right way".  My personal goal and aesthetic preference is to leave the thinnest track possible behind me, maximizing g-forces by minimizing snow displacement, controlling speed by finishing my turns.  On real steeps this is much easier to do with a posi/posi stance. 

The best steep turns I've seen with a duck stance are down-unweighted, extremecarve style short and medium radius.  Looks awesome but it's not the same kind of smooth high speed, high g-force turns that I'm addicted to.

[Xargo]

15 hours ago, ShortcutToMoncton said:

You’ve probably seen this discussed before, but the Flow NX2 bindings have the very shortest front-to-back binding length I was able to find (back when I was trying to get the lowest possible angles on a 254mm board). The lack of a lower heelcup had a pretty solid affect on max board angulation based on my carpet & real-world testing a number of years ago. 

The one-piece straps are weird though. I still don’t love them, although the hard mesh ones on the higher Carbon version  fit me better. 

I didn't actually consider Flows since I don't like the back entry system. However, it looks like they now offer the same hybrid strap that I love about Kaon-CX so I definitely have to see if I can demo some Flows somewhere. I already have Flow Freeballers I got dirt cheap from some sale but I don't like the baseplate. Way too thick, feels like riding on stilts (that's what I dislike about hardboots as well) and NX2 seems to have same kind of thickness. That said, the Fenix Plus Hybrid might be what I'm looking for. So thanks for the tip!

11 hours ago, crackaddict said:

This is great riding but compare his heelside to his toeside turns, especially in the first sequence: The toesides are smoother with less chatter (almost none really) and he's staying longer on the toe edge too, kind of hopping out of the heelsides early before they're fully finished.  Hard to tell but the run looks like easy blue to me.

Your turns look great too @Xargo, but your toesides are also smoother than your heelsides.  This is especially noticeable near the top of the run where the slope is steeper.  (Find someone to film you next time out, with helmet cam and selfie stick video there is a lot of distortion which makes it harder to see the riders body position.)

Everybody can choose his or her preferred stance, there are no timers or judges in this sport of free carving so there's no official "right way".  My personal goal and aesthetic preference is to leave the thinnest track possible behind me, maximizing g-forces by minimizing snow displacement, controlling speed by finishing my turns.  On real steeps this is much easier to do with a posi/posi stance. 

The best steep turns I've seen with a duck stance are down-unweighted, extremecarve style short and medium radius.  Looks awesome but it's not the same kind of smooth high speed, high g-force turns that I'm addicted to.

The problem is that all my friends live 800km away from where I stay for the winter season. Should find some local friends I guess.

That top section is a bit tricky for heelsides since the slope is tilted to the left as can be seen here (showing some of my tracks as well):

The second steeper section is actually considerably steeper than this. Though the grooming of that part is always a bit rougher than this first steeper section.

The great thing about this board is that it tracks really really well even if the surface is a bit rough. I don't know what qualifies as a pencil line but these are good enough for me (this is a screenshot from one of the runs of that vid above).

But I do agree that our goals are different. I want to get as close to the slope as discussed earlier on the EC thread and don't care about the speed really. Max g-forces are fun but that pretty much happens anyways if you carve steeps with a 16m scr board. I try to minimize the snow displacement of my board but not my body. Anyways, I love any kind of deep carving and looking forward to seeing more of that browsing this forum.

Today I tried the Ride Insanos. The surface was pretty hard and I have to say the added stiffness really helped to control the carve a lot. However, as my legs were already pretty tired when I started, I had massive comfort issues at first. Somehow it started to feel better after riding about an hour though. Looks like I'll be switching between different boots depending on the conditions and mood.

I also noticed that Japanese duck carver guy just released a new vid showing the "mirror" carving concept and it also illustrates really well the difference between the toeside and heelside. As mentioned earlier, duck stance definitely hinders the heelside power but with correct hip rotation, it's still doable much better than people usually think:

I think he would benefit a lot from a bigger sidecut board. Considering he's riding pretty normal production board, I think the riding is pretty stellar. Motivates me to learn that switch carving. At the moment I'm feeling too lazy though.

[Xargo]

Here's a sample from a black diamond slope today. Only got two runs as racers were building a course and I asked if I can ride the slope while they were building and they said yes. This is the second run as I rode the first run without a stick:

The steep part of the slope first starts 24° steep (where they were putting the latest ports) and then progresses to 27° and the steepest part is 29° measured with this app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.nixgame.bubblelevel&hl=en_US

I'm riding Salomon F4.0's and Quantums now. Really happy with the setup. There's a lot of lateral flex but with duck stance that translates to easier movements towards the tip and tail while edge to edge the setup is pretty stiff. Wouldn't try to ride this interface with positive angles.

Relaxed positive angle tests still to come.