The posi/posi and duck stance wars

[Hug Masso]

The YT algorithm just showed me this video today, where Lars, from the Justaride snowboard channel, just a few days ago with James Cherry, talks about what seems to be some drama created around the stances in the softboot carving comunity, as if they were opposed dogmas. I obviously share his view, but and another level this just goes to show how important it is to always be open minded and keep a positive attitude towards all things in life, even more so on our hobbies, and that social media makes it sometimes difficult to remain calm.
 

Luckily hardbooters have remained forcibly out of the show, don’t think many of us ride duck stance. 
 

 

Edited February 22 by Hug Masso
Error

[dhamann]

“Wars” is a bit strong. Maybe misunderstanding is more appropriate. Snowboarding is not a me vs you unless you ever competed against that White guy.

there also a thread previously active regarding this topic. 

[Jack M]

I think a lot of it comes from 2 things - in the mid/late 90s all of a sudden park was king.  Wide (stupid wide) stances, baggy pants, chain wallets, rails, jibbing, "switch" replaced "fakie", and if you couldn't ride switch half the time you were worthless and weak.  Duck obviously works better for that so it became cutting-edge and fashionable, and a way to distinguish yourself as "new school" apart from those lame old schoolers who came before.

Also, rental shops and instructors realized they no longer had to deal with determining whether a customer was regular or goofy and spinning a screwdriver if they simply sent people out the door with perfectly symmetrical boards and bindings.  It was a 1-2 punch that created massive peer pressure and power of suggestion and all but wiped out +/+.  I think a lot of people who ride duck do it for these reasons alone, not because it actually works better for anything but fakie - err, switch.  But now it does work better for them because their riding has been built around it from day one.  They are hobbled by it and unable or unwilling to try +/+.

IMHO as always.

[Hug Masso]

45 minutes ago, dhamann said:

“Wars” is a bit strong. Maybe misunderstanding is more appropriate. Snowboarding is not a me vs you unless you ever competed against that White guy.

there also a thread previously active regarding this topic. 

Sorry, I saw that video that is recent, and wanted to share. There is definitely no “wars” as such, just wanted to keep it amusing… 

[Hug Masso]

12 hours ago, Jack M said:

I think a lot of it comes from 2 things - in the 90s all of a sudden park was king.  Wide (stupid wide) stances, baggy pants, chain wallets, rails, jibbing, "switch" replaced "fakie", and if you couldn't ride switch half the time you were worthless and weak.  Duck obviously works better for that so it became cutting-edge and fashionable, and a way to distinguish yourself as "new school" apart from those lame old schoolers who came before.

Also, rental shops and instructors realized they no longer had to deal with determining whether a customer was regular or goofy and spinning a screwdriver if they simply sent people out the door with perfectly symmetrical boards and bindings.  It was a 1-2 punch that created massive peer pressure and power of suggestion and all but wiped out +/+.  I think a lot of people who ride duck do it for these reasons alone, not because it actually works better for anything but fakie - err, switch.  But now it does work better for them because their riding has been built around it from day one.  They are hobbled by it and unable or unwilling to try +/+.

IMHO as always.

Yes, well my first day on a snowboard was 24 years ago and they gave me a symetrical duck stance. Last week my brother-in-law started snowboarding for the first time, and they put him on a 0/+ stance according to his preferences (I told him to do the running in a corridor with his socks and come to an abrupt stop and see what was his dominant leg). That stance is quite common, and it works well for a start, making switch almost no postural difference if done at some moments, not for a long time. But yes, the +/+ works best no doubt for almost all riding, and the duck stance has no doubt hindered a lot of potential better riding for a lot of folks who go through their snowboarding life without questioning themselfes much, just kicking the tail and survive bare minimum dificult conditions or steep sections. 

[philw]

I don't remember there being a war when the world changed from +/+ to duck, so perhaps there doesn't need to be one now. Does anyone remember that time - how did it happen, how long did it take the ski school teachers to switch their dogmas, etc?

Perhaps things will become more balanced, or maybe it'll flip all the way back to where it started. One carve at a time, eh.

 

[softbootsurfer]

We need or don't need to remember, Sims, Ski Cooper in Leadville, Thrasher and Transworld is where Duck came from, Skateboarders...I was there, I saw it happen

[TWM]

On 2/22/2024 at 11:55 AM, Jack M said:

I think a lot of it comes from 2 things - in the mid/late 90s all of a sudden park was king.  Wide (stupid wide) stances, baggy pants, chain wallets, rails, jibbing, "switch" replaced "fakie", and if you couldn't ride switch half the time you were worthless and weak.  Duck obviously works better for that so it became cutting-edge and fashionable, and a way to distinguish yourself as "new school" apart from those lame old schoolers who came before.

Also, rental shops and instructors realized they no longer had to deal with determining whether a customer was regular or goofy and spinning a screwdriver if they simply sent people out the door with perfectly symmetrical boards and bindings.  It was a 1-2 punch that created massive peer pressure and power of suggestion and all but wiped out +/+.  I think a lot of people who ride duck do it for these reasons alone, not because it actually works better for anything but fakie - err, switch.  But now it does work better for them because their riding has been built around it from day one.  They are hobbled by it and unable or unwilling to try +/+.

IMHO as always.

I raced for Nitro back then (it actually started in 1991 or so), and had a quiver of hip-dragging asyms (that kinda sucked in a race course) with riveted ski racing boots and then the Pyro twins, with a custom-widened 28” duck stance. Super stable for landing airs. Many of us did both, and it was fine. I’m glad to have come up riding a diversity of equipment and styles, including bad equipment on bad snow. It.s the forge of well rounded snowboarding.

Edited February 26 by TWM

[crackaddict]

Someone told me once (probably from this site, can't remember who it was) that the force behind the rapid change to duck stances and tiny boards was Burton Snowboards.  The story goes that by the late 90s they found they just couldn't be competitive in the race world so they made it uncool and promoted the Shawn White style riding instead, a market they could dominate.  Apparently, according to the rumour, this was around the same time they started adding the big whoop-di-doos into the BX courses so hard boot riders couldn't win anymore (ahem...  I'm thinking of Jasey-Jay Anderson, for example).

I was out of the scene for a while around that time and have no actual evidence of this conspiracy, these are unconfirmed rumours.  Any informed opinions out there?

All I know is that I when I stopped snowboarding so much around 1995 everybody was posi-posi and carving, and when I came back to the sport in 2006 I couldn't find any more stiff bindings on the shelves and the guy at the store was trying to sell me a 153cm rocker board, telling me it was built for speed.  I told him I wanted the biggest carving board they had and walked out with a 160 Burton Triumph.  That was my sixth and last Burton board.  It sucked.  The Asym Air from 1990 was way better at carving.  I checked the catalogue and indeed the Triumph was their carving model that season. 

The next season I found a used Coiler Pure Race 185 on the Bomber forum, sold my old Factory Prime and never looked back.  Well, until now.  So what the heck happened there?  Burton didn't accidentally "lose" the technology so should we assume it was intentional?

 

On 2/22/2024 at 9:54 AM, Hug Masso said:

James Cherry

Who's this guy?  Seems like a pompous jerk.

[TWM]

My sense is that it was a broader shift, of which Burton was part.

I always felt like X-Games was the catalyst — it kicked alpine to the curb, but, more importantly, brought massive infusions of corporate cash that focused snowboarding and snowboard designs around glorified gymnastics (freestyle) and the throngs of beginners who naturally followed.

I believe the first Winter X-Games was broadcast on ABC in 1997. 

X-Games defined the sport for the masses who were then, for two decades, sold cargo ships worth of crappy Chinese twin tips that, aside from graphics, were indistinguishable from one another and worthless for railing turns or riding powder without the abhorrent and still common rear-leg bias.

It was IMHO the dark age for snowboarding, at least in the US, that we’ve only recently begun to emerge from. 

(This is to be read this in a breathy old man voice punctuated by occasional mucus retching.)

 

 

Edited February 26 by TWM

[Hug Masso]

2 hours ago, crackaddict said:

Who's this guy?  Seems like a pompous jerk

The new enfant terrible in the snowboard scene, shacking it to its foundations. 

Edited February 26 by Hug Masso

[dhamann]

6 hours ago, crackaddict said:

Someone told me once (probably from this site, can't remember who it was) that the force behind the rapid change to duck stances and tiny boards was Burton Snowboards.  The story goes that by the late 90s they found they just couldn't be competitive in the race world so they made it uncool and promoted the Shawn White style riding instead, a market they could dominate.

this seems like that could be fabricated through the grapevine from what is said in 'dear rider'. could be deeper than what is said in the film too. Donna mentions something along the lines of the vision of sims vs the vision of burton. sims was naturally freestyle focused where burton mistakenly thought race was the direction snowboarding was going and then changed quickly to meet the needs of the market. she also says, to paraphrase, Tom was a great competitor in business, despite the clash. between the late 90's and White domination is a good ten years. i knew the (or one of?) team manager with White and gave him sh.t about the tight leather pants outfits, etc. and the reply was, it sells. that was '05 or '06.

the donna carpenter bomb hole podcast is worth a listen!

[Neil Gendzwill]

I think that shop owner just sold you what he had, James. In 2006 Burton still had the Custom and T6 which as I recall were both cambered. Nothing much over 160 though. 

[softbootsurfer]

I built our sons skateboard ramp in 88... He has been Duck since then, but he was following others, Burton guessed wrong and changed his tune...  

                                   

 https://www.snowboarder.com/transworld-snowboarding-archive/a-complete-history-of-the-snowboard-halfpipe

[Jack M]

9 hours ago, crackaddict said:

The story goes that by the late 90s they found they just couldn't be competitive in the race world so they made it uncool

The story I heard was quite the opposite.  The New England Burton rep once described it to me as follows.  In the 90s Burton was on the feet of the vast majority of racers.  There was little brand competition in racing then and Burton got sick of basically bankrolling the lifestyle and globetrotting of all these racers for little to no return on investment.

It's my impression that it wasn't really until after Burton exited alpine that we saw a lot more competition and innovation in race boards.  Kessler made its Olympic debut in 2002.

[b0ardski]

 when aasi separated from the oppression of pisa folks, it started going down hill sideways, but with 1 leg pointed backwards! My hip hurts every time I think about carving in duck.

There is a pervasive belief that you can't rock switch with  both feet pointing forward and whenever I encounter this mentality I say to them " go tell that park skier they can't go backwards with plastic boots"

[nextcarve]

Don't know anything about that war. Maybe because I startet to snowboard very late in 2007.

For me I use duck stance only at the urinal. But I'm a hardbooter, so how can I know.

[crackaddict]

8 hours ago, Hug Masso said:

10 hours ago, crackaddict said:

Who's this guy?  Seems like a pompous jerk

The new enfant terrible in the snowboard scene, shacking it to its foundations. 

Yeah, this guy needs to be cancelled before he gives away all our secrets!  Pretty soon everybody and his dog will be railing turns and we won't be cool or special anymore.  

We are the OG hard boot mafia are we not?  Maybe we can dig up some old footage of him riding duck or something...

And what's with that stupid shark fin???  Who does this guy think he is?

Edited February 26 by crackaddict

[Deuxdiesel]

35 minutes ago, b0ardski said:

 when aasi separated from the oppression of pisa folks, it started going down hill sideways, but with 1 leg pointed backwards! My hip hurts every time I think about carving in duck.

There is a pervasive belief that you can't rock switch with  both feet pointing forward and whenever I encounter this mentality I say to them " go tell that park skier they can't go backwards with plastic boots"

During my tenure on national and divisional PSIA snowboard staff (late 80's- mid 90's), we all rode alpine boards and hardboots because the softboot stuff was woefully inadequate for anything other than freestyle riding.  Soft bindings were weak and flimsy, boots were just a step up from Sorels and the proliferation of "pro" model freestyle junk boards was shocking.  I remember doing a clinic and exam at Telluride on a borrowed freestyle board with baseless bindings because my regular board was lost in transit.  I ended up riding wide and duck just so I could use my hips for support and lock out my legs because the equipment was so bad.  The equipment today, both hard and soft, is utterly amazing.  I rode my Volkl 168 GS yesterday for the first time in 8 years (maybe more) and was stunned at how "meh" is was.  We are living in great snowboard times now.  

[TWM]

1 hour ago, Deuxdiesel said:

The equipment today, both hard and soft, is utterly amazing.  I rode my Volkl 168 GS yesterday for the first time in 8 years (maybe more) and was stunned at how "meh" is was.  We are living in great snowboard times now.  

I had the same quality of equipment revelation a few weeks ago on my Gen two Furberg.

It came after bombing out of a long steep section of powder bumps and trees - where it's so floaty and utterly effortless to maneuver - and exiting at speed onto a groomer and a fast, long radius heel rail linking to tired-legged 30 or 40 mph run-wide rails down to the lift.

Everything is so dialed that I just forget the equipment is even there.  

I remarked to my riding partner at the bottom of the brilliance of a board could be so maneuverable off-piste and also so hyper stable at speed on rail (thanks 18m radius sidecut), and I remarked about how well sorted was my boot and binding interface - minimalist, functional, strong, light, comfortable.

We've been riding together since the mid-1980s; it was a fun moment to reflect on the chair about how far things had come. With half-century in the rearview, we high-five after each day shredding that we're still able to get after it so hard.

 

 

Edited February 26 by TWM

[softbootsurfer]

Take All the Snowboards ever made, less than 1% represents Alpine Racing equipment...it was never a war...it was over from the minute the Skateboarders took over...all the "Instructors" were Instructed, Thrasher, Transworld sealed the Deal...last couple of years? actually the Movement to SB Carving has been pretty dramatic...still probably less than 10% Equipment wise? All the more reason to give Fin and Jack a shout out and a big Thanks for keeping a Focus on the Alpine side through this Forum...

the 1st edition set the Edge in the Fall of 87...It was going to be Tricks and Air, patterned after Skateboarding...

 

 

[pow4ever]

most ppl don't like their cheese move lol.

It's like fashion/weather.  i am just going to focus to play in the snow and let other ppl worry about dogma

[leeho730]

Fortunately, some snowboarders started to become aware of “boot out” “toe/heel drag” as they started to get their boards more on the edge, particularly among Japanese and Korean softboot carving focused snowboarders. 
 

I tell them, the only reason we have +/+ stance is so that we don’t get toe/heel drag and they took a great interest in reducing boot out.

I see more and more kids start to think laid out carving turns are cool, last year I saw a group of them going to intermediate slope to get lessons in carving. And the instructor was good, too. Almost want me to chase a dream of opening my own alpine board rental shop and get back to instructing…

 

TL;DR:I recon it’s more of misunderstanding than “war”…

Edited February 27 by leeho730

[Jack M]

8 hours ago, leeho730 said:

I tell them, the only reason we have +/+ stance is so that we don’t get toe/heel drag

Not only.  +/+ is a more powerful and balanced stance in hardboots because we need to be able to move and pressure the board lengthwise.  You don't see anyone riding flatter or +/0 stances in world cup racing for this reason.

[andy scheen]

I think this is a great and very interesting conversation. Im not entirely certain why but it seems to have pushed some buttons and is a topic people want to debate and discuss and I'm enjoying hearing all the different opinions.

I really like what Lars and James are doing. Their popularity and number of views/ followers seems to confirm that they have found a need  information for that isn't represented very well in other sources.

I'd like to add that a duck stance isn't just about freestyle and riding switch. There are a lot of other advanced riding techniques where this stance can have positive results (pun intentional).

I also think Lars is 100% correct that ++ isn't a great setup for a beginner. At the school I teach at (and I have to assume most others) we just don't get any snowboard students much beyond the beginner/intermediate stage and even intermediate level students are pretty rare. Advanced students that are ready to start carving and experimenting with different stances/equipment are extremely rare. It's less about AASI/ski school dogma and more about what works for 99% of our guests 99% of the time. Its not that we avoid teaching advanced carving with ++ or hard boots or alpine equipment but more like it just never comes up.