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Hardboots and duck stance?!


kjl

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On Saturday I saw a hardbooter sorta chunking it through the bumps and moguls and trees. His board was short and soft looking, but I don't know what it was.

He looked really weird, though, and when I happened to catch up with him later in the lift line I saw he was riding with a duck stance! And not like a freeriding 12/-6 kind of stance, but really ducked - it looked like 30/-25(!!). I couldn't even figure out how his bindings worked for the first couple seconds because my brain couldn't parse which direction his back binding was facing when he had the boot out in the lift line.

Has anybody else ever heard of such a thing? Very weird.

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Weird haha, I saw that too.. 2 weeks ago, my brother went to buy his first alpine board, a Oxygen Kr-49 and it came with some old burton bindings .The bindings were in duck stance. The funny part is that since the bindings are 3D, the owner actually drilled a hole through the board to make the rear binding fit :smashfrea .. We asked him why the bindings were like that and he answered, "It gives you better stability in the snowpark". I didnt ask him why he bought that instead of a freestyle snowboard... Oh and he also used ski boots :rolleyes: .Anyways, except for the big hole, the board was in pretty good shape.:lol: -Jules

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I'm not kidding! Front foot was set at what would be a pretty high angle for softboots, so like ~30 degrees, and the back foot was pretty much identical the wrong direction (looked like -30, but I'll be "generous" and say -25 degrees).

He had a little old-school Craig Kelly style going on (back knee tucked into the front knee... well, sort of, as much as possible with the foot pointing the wrong way) and a soft, directional board (rounded square tail like a Donek Axis). It really did look like his knee was about to snap into a million pieces.

Didn't recognize the bindings - looked like an intec cable except the cable was attached to the bindings, not the boots.

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he must have been setup by a struggling orthopedic :D i ride duck on softboots, but on hardboots?? i don't think technique wise it can be done, not well anyway since you dont use your feet and ankles the same as you do in softboots. and if he was tucking his back knee, sounds like one bump away from a 2-piece leg. but to each their own, maybe someday he'll see the light and realize how awesome it is to carve, with forward angles on hardboots.

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#1 Never underestimate how screwy people's bodies can be. There are a lot of very strange issues with hips, knees and ankles out there. There are some people that could definitely do this.

#2 Never underestimate how stupid people can be.

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maybe he was born horribly pigeon-toed

Wow, if this was the case, his knees must really hurt.:)

Sorry, Dave, I could not resist.

I have a buddy who is so duck footed that he could easily ride like that. I am pigeon toed and ride with my bindings parallel - any split in angles would hurt my knees.

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sounds to me like he was doin ok, no?

Yeah, he was doing fine. He wasn't breaking any speed records - he was doing that old-school kind of freeriding - dunno how to describe it except that I have a friend who rides that way - he is ~45 and learned to ride maybe 15-20 years ago, still rides a floppy noodle of the board, massive blast-shield Oakleys, maybe a hint of dayglo, tucks that back knee in to really bend that board, and just makes little controlled turns down any terrain, feeding the dollar (nose->tail, nose->tail, nose->tail) on every turn, seeking trees out at all costs. More power to him and this duck-footed hardbooter though - they got the love for sure, sure as we got the love for digging trenches at a billion mph.

darnit I meant duck footed. pigeon toed is when they point IN, huh

Heh, anybody know what year the War of 1812 was fought, or what the phone number for 911 is? :p Yeah, duck footed people ride in duck stance ;)

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darnit I meant duck footed. pigeon toed is when they point IN, huh

sheesh. youd think with as much as I post I could learn to do it more accurately.

I was just messin' with you.

In actuality, I would expect you to make the most mistakes BECAUSE of your high post count. (you know, the law of averages thing)

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