I've been riding for a few years now and only ever took lessons for the first 3 days of my riding so no doubt there is a lot I can improve upon and plenty of bad habits I've made along the way.

I'm pretty sure that with a lot of my riding being on a shorter/softer/forgiving board for quite some time has made me pretty lazy and my technique has suffered considerably from it.

This is the first video I've ever had taken of my riding and I had it taken purely so I can get some feedback from it so feel free to throw up as much feedback as you want and be as harsh as you want to be as I'm open to anything which will help me improve my riding. Obviously anyone else feel free to throw up videos in this thread and hopefully we can all learn from eachother and become better riders resulting in better days on the mountains



Cheers,
Michael.

Cheers, but no doubt too relaxed can't be a good thing. I can definitely see that my upper body hardly changes/moved at all when changing direction so I'm sure there is some room for improvement there. Not to mention I can see that I'm just sliding the back of the board around a lot when transitioning from toe/heel and not holding much in the way of an edge. Just have to see what some more experienced people on here have to say about it all before I start jumping to conclusions.

Hey Michael,

You are certainly comfortable and solid on your board. As an instructor, the first thing I look at is your stance. Your stance is the most important thing to get right, as it has the biggest affect on your riding as a whole. If you correct your stance, you will find the performance of your riding will improve significantly. For that reason, let's concentrate on your stance first.

You are counter rotated when you are riding straight, and most noticeably during and after a toeside turn (this is common). Counter rotation means your upper body is out of alignment with your snowboard. Your upper body is sending mixed signals to your lower body, and in turn your snowboard. Have a look at the video; when you are riding straight, your back hand is trailing out in front of you (off to the toeside of the board), your upper body is open and facing down the hill. Now look at the video during and after a toeside turn; you will be able to see it more here. Your upper body completely opens up and turns in the opposite direction of your snowboard. Look at the images below to get a better idea of what counter rotation looks like.



When you ride straight or turn, your upper body and lower body should be aligned and stacked directly over your snowboard. When you are aligned over your snowboard, you are in a much more stable and responsive position. This will help steering, edging, and pressure control, which in turn will enable you to increase the performance of your riding.

As an exercise, try riding with your back hand holding the side of your jacket, just near your bottom. Keep your front shoulder pointing towards the nose of your board and the direction of travel. Try to be aware of keeping your upper body aligned with your snowboard. Keep thinking about your back hand. Keep your upper body strong.

I'll let this idea sit with you before we move on to other ways of improving performance. When you fix your stance, your riding will improve significantly, and the performance will naturally increase. If you have any question at all, or if you want to share more footage, please don't hesitate to do so.

Michael, check out the tutorial on straight runs (watch the video too). There are some good points in there which can be applied to your riding.

Straight Runs

Thanks a lot for the quick feedback, having watched the video again after reading the above post I can clearly see exactly what you are talking about and it's very evident that it's something that i'll have to work on and think more consciously about next time I'm riding. I forgot I had another short video of a cornice drop I took overseas and looking at that I can see exactly the same counter rotation in my stance both before and after the drop. video link here

hell.. even looking at my avatar I can see the same counter rotation in my stance so it's definitely a bad habit I've picked up.

Once again thanks for the feedback

No problem Michael. Feel free to post more videos and ask questions.

I'll be down in the snow again in 3 weeks for the corporate games on the 1st of August which involves a downhill run through gates so I'll do my best to find someone to grab a video of that so I can post it up. I've got a day of riding beforehand so I'll definitely try out the technique you suggested of holding the back/side of my jacket in order to counteract the counter rotation we're seeing in the original video and start to train my upper body to be aligned with the direction of my board. Obviously it's not something that I'll be able to fix overnight but at least its something that I'm aware of now and can look to correct.

first i would say to find some rhythm in your riding. Time your turns equally and start to get a grasp on what your next move is before you make it. This will go well with Riders comment about the counter rotating. I know that when im not ready for a turn and then it just happens I tend to counter rotate as well. So know the timing and know the body position, look two turns ahead if you can. Even with this race you mentioned the gates are an even distance apart so you will have to time the turns then. Also once you get riders pocket holding down try to let go and hold your hand as if you are steering an outboard boat motor. On the heels the hand goes mildly forward and on the toes it goes mildly back only make sure you stay aligned when doing this exercise. You also really need to focus on your posture! When your back is hunched over you are not using your muscles as you should and also when you do lean back make sure you are keeping your lower abdominal tight. Keep your pelvis tilted (like your humping) and your lower stomach tucked in allowing proper alignment of the spine which in turn lets your muscles fire properly. To help myself i often try to flex my muscle i use to hold in pee without flexing my abs. If your abs flex you are trying to hard. Let me know what you think of all this and if needed I can explain more for you!

Thanks shaner, bit hard to plan too far ahead on turns down front valley at perisher since it's full of unpredictable riders who like to change direction at the drop of a hat so in order to hold consistent turns the whole way down when it's busy out there would result in at least one collision. Will definitely take the feedback on board though as I recall when riding in whistler through the trees it would take a lot of forward thinking in order to get through some sections in order to maintain enough momentum to get through so I'll look to adapt this to all my riding.

My core definitely needs more work thats for sure. Shortly after this video I grabbed a bit of an edge and had a nice stack which has aggravated the cartilage in my ribs again (4th time now) so the feedback on my posture is duly noted and appreciated. obviously sitting in a desk job has done nothing positive for it so I'll have to focus on it a lot more.

Cheers again for the feedback guys, has really got me pumped to get back out there and progress my riding.

wow crazy busy there eh! I guess what i'm going to say is something to aim for but i realise that some resort at some days of the year don't make it easy.
I think rider and shaner have both given you more than enough to think about at this point and I concur with there comments although shaners was good till he mentioned humping and i didn't catch a great deal after that, i think dry spell is the term...

Anyways, I do think this forum provides a great resource for people who want to work on their riding, park or free riding and it'd be good to see more people posting videos.

When people do post videos I would encourage people to try and get filmed on what they perceive as challenging terrain. You may feel or think your riding looks ugly but its the best way to get good clear focused help from the experienced instructors at your desposal on this forum. Also if you try and do linked rythmical and symetrical turns that makes it easier to get focused analysis.

Yeah it was pretty crazy there, school holidays, poor snow and high winds up the top meant that majority of the people were on front valley.

Yeah looking back I really should have got myself filmed the day before as the conditions were far better and there was a lot more open than just front valley but too late for that now so i'll just work on getting it done next time. Was also riding there as everyone i was down with was there and i kind of ditched them the day before to ride with another mate over on blue cow so couldn't ditch them for a 2nd day in a row hahaha

As mentioned beforehand I'll get more video and it'd be good to see more people post in here with videos of themselves. I'll be writing down the feedback from here and taking it up with me next time so I can work on it bit by bit.

Some great comments from the instructors! All the pointers made are things that I need to work on too (when I finally get to some snow!). Boardworld is an awesome way to progress your boarding!!

I guess I'm a bit late on this. good points made by the other instructors. have you gone back on the hill yet finney?

Not yet unfortunately will be heading back next weekend. Can't exactly afford to head down there every weekend whilst saving to go back to Canada.

Just waiting for a mate to find out what video he was able to grab on the weekend. Should hopefully have it sorted some time in the next week or so.

Work has been crazy here for the past 3 weeks so completely forgot to print out the notes from here to take down with me but from what i remembered from the thread i did apply a bit of it to my riding..

From Jeremy - the straight runs point. I was paying far more attention to this and as a result felt far more stable when the base was flat on the ground as in the past I'd always felt a touch unstable when this was the case. More and more I did it the more comfortable I became with being on the board with the base flat.

From Shaner - the outboard motor reference was great, have spent a bit of time on boats in the past so it stuck in my head when you mentioned it and I was being far more conscious of this and it felt like it made a huge difference and stopped a considerable amount of counter rotation. Definitely felt my front shoulder in a better position than before but ideally need to see some videos to know for sure.

Have got one photo from the run at the corporate games but unfortunately it's on my heel edge so doesn't show any counter-rotation. Mate thinks he got some footage of the end of my run from down the bottom so hopefully I'll have that soon.

Mate finally got a video up