Carving.
I can ride a bit, even landed my first seven last season, but carving, man i can’t carve for…...
I get the general gist don’t get me wrong but as soon as the pitch gets at all steep (basically above green) the speed picks up and the heel edge don’t want to know….
The reason why i care is that i find it kinda fun (just picture nice carved turns down your favourite green run in the sun!) and secondly i’m gonna need to be pretty clever at it for my Canadian level 3 instructor exams!
What i was hoping was that people could share their little secret tips or tell me what they really focus on. Dynamic or normal carving….or both.
Either the carves I thought I have been doing are nothing like what carving should be or you somehow managed to avoid the basics and started pulling 720’s somehow. Somehow I think its probably the former. I was of the opinion that carving was essentially putting your whole edge into a turn without sliding the tail out at all, just holding a constant edge. I don’t seem to have a problem with this when there’s a bit of fresh on the surface or relatively softpack groomers.
I’m glad you started this thread. Firstly have you read the carving articles written by Paul Morgan? He is a CASI 3 instructor from Whistler, training for his level 4.
Carving article: https://www.boardworld.com.au/content/category/carving/
By what you’re saying, it sounds like you are having pressure control issues on your heel edge? Can you be a bit more specific about exactly whats’s happening? At level 3 training I was told to point my back knee outwards more, really pulling it out towards the tail of the board during heelside carves. It definately helped in making the board less chattery on heelside carves.
Personally I put most my focus into edging and pressure control when carving. As I set the edge at speed, my first thought is to get good angulation through my ankles. By doing that I am also loosening up my ankles which is essential for pressure control. With sufficient angulation and pressure control, that edge is going to be solid and cut like a knife.
As an extra note, I know how you are in regards to board maintenance haha. Don’t kid yourself, a properly tuned board is much easier to carve than one with no edges and wax. The board plays a part as well. If you get the chance demo a new board with mid (or more) stiffness.
I’m looking forward to snowslider’s response. He explains carving so well. Aidy, get back to us with more information and we will discuss this further.
Either the carves I thought I have been doing are nothing like what carving should be or you somehow managed to avoid the basics and started pulling 720’s somehow. Somehow I think its probably the former. I was of the opinion that carving was essentially putting your whole edge into a turn without sliding the tail out at all, just holding a constant edge. I don’t seem to have a problem with this when there’s a bit of fresh on the surface or relatively softpack groomers.
There are so many different levels of carving, and I know Aidy has more than just the basics. You need to be able to carve at a relatively high level to pass the level 2 examination (I remember tuning his snowboard for the exam a few seasons back, maybe that is suggesting something Aidy? tuned board hint hint). I can understand his frustration with progressing this carving to an even higher level. The riding material for level 3 is nothing short of hard and technical, and you have to do it consitently. Before I became involved with CASI, I always thought I could carve very well. As it turned out that wasn’t the case. I basically had to learn to snowboard all over again, but no doubt it has made me a much better rider.
Ha ha it’s always funny when you think you’re doing something right and then an expert watches, analyses, evaluates and tears down your technique to the point where you think you really knew nothing at all. I have been thinking towards the end of this year that doing the snowboarding instructor course and teaching on the mountain for a season would be a fun thing to do. I’m pretty much hating my job at the moment which removes one roadblack but I really don’t think the gf would go in for it. That and you get to a certain income and going backwards really doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. All the best with getting your level 3, sounds like a difficult task!
Thanks for the responces so far and also to Paul Morgan for the excellant article. I wish i was in close proximity to a ski hill now to try some of the suggestions out! Alas i’m a few thousand miles and about a month away…..Still a bit of visualisation and thought about things to be done usually helps quite a bit when the time comes.
So a bit more detail, its on the heel edge carve, with the main problem being pressure control I think. One of two things happen, either i’m mid calve and i get the feeling like my board is going to slide out if i continue to hold the carved line i’m taking, if i go for it non the less then usually i have snow spraying into my face within a second or two as i slide along the slope on my backside! The other problem is being two straight in the legs and hense having no travel to absorb bumps towards the end of the turn when the pressure builds. Its on this second point that i have a quiery. So on the toe edge i understand that if you bend your kneed you get a) more effective pressure control and b)greater angulation and hense edge hold. But on the heel edge it seems to me that the more you bend your knees the more you flattening the board and hense reducing edge grip. Is the secret to just start super low and gradually extend the knee joint? As you can see i have some issues on what the heck i should be doing to really work my board on heel edge carved turns.
On the equipment front, jez you know me too well, my burton seven has seen some action and i don’t mean from an edge file or tuning guy!
Still i’ve tried on differnet boards and i’m not to flash on any of them…..my remeady is to purchase a park pickle, which may sound daft but i’m hoping the magna traction and asymetrical design help out a bunch with edge grip…..I was also thinking of getting a wide version (not so sure of this…) with the thinking being that it will eliminate all traces of toe or heel overhand and hense let me really give her while carving…..
Ha ha it’s always funny when you think you’re doing something right and then an expert watches, analyses, evaluates and tears down your technique to the point where you think you really knew nothing at all. I have been thinking towards the end of this year that doing the snowboarding instructor course and teaching on the mountain for a season would be a fun thing to do. I’m pretty much hating my job at the moment which removes one roadblack but I really don’t think the gf would go in for it. That and you get to a certain income and going backwards really doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. All the best with getting your level 3, sounds like a difficult task!
To be honest nthnbeachesguy you may well be very good at carving but just doing it very casually without really thinking about it. If so you should give it another go and challenge yourself, perhaps try increasing the angle of the slope progressively and see how you get on. Carving when done well is a pretty dynamic thing and in the right conditions can be really fun. Also when you carve have you experimented with doing both up and down unweighted carving? sorry for the technical speil! Down unweighted carves can be done with a pretty small turn radius and high turn frequency and when done well you really feel like your working your board big time.
I wish I had the time to get into this right now… but I’ll be back.
Ive got to go start work on rewiring my house.
Aidy, it would also be worth looking at these articles:
I’m going to have a good think about what you’re asking and I will get back to you soon.
James, looking forward to your reply also.
Well thanks for lending me your brains on this one. I hope during the aussie summer, the northern hemisphere shredders will still be able to chew over stuff on this forum. As i’m sure when i get on the snow again and give all these suggestions a go i’ll have other quieries that will arise. Can’t wait to get my new stick and have a go though. I’ve read all the articles you highlight above R26 and the idea of where the pivot point is during sliding and steered turns is interesting. I get most of it, but one thing that has always confused me is what the back leg/foot is doing. People talk about twisting the disks, ie rotating the feet in the same direction. People also mention cowboy style knees and you mentioned in your previous post how you try and point your back foot towards the tail (this makes some sense in my mind) but that would imply to me more rotation of the front and back foot in opposite directions. If you think about having say a wooden metre stick glued to the toes of your ugg boots and your lying on your back, (bear with me!) well if you twist your feet in opposite directions (outwards) you form a nice arc with the metre stick. If however you twist them the same way, you create a bit of a dirty shape with the metre stick that most closely resembles an arc but facing the other way. Now think about the metre stick being your snowboard. Anyways hope that made some sense…...
Look forward to hearing whether you think me nuts or insightful.
Twisting the discs is for steering, pointing the knee out mid-carve is for pressure control and stance. Depending on what turn you are trying to achieve you can do one or the other, or both. Personally for most carved turns I never think about twisting the discs for anything more than the initiation phase of the turn. For high speed carving I concentrate more on edging and pressure control, so yeah the back foot pulls outwards, definately helps with chattering/slipping on the heelside carve. I think you need to break it down to two different types of carved turns so you can apply different techniques. I would approach long-radius and short-radius carved turns differently. The long-radius are big, high speed carves; a lot more force is going through the snowboard because of the high velocity. You don’t need to focus as much on twisting the discs, steering for the turn can be achieved so quickly, only for fraction of the time of the whole carve, so a lot more focus should be put on pressure control. Short-radius is slower, so doesn’t have as much force going through the snowboard; pressure control isn’t as important, but steering becomes crucial as we need to turn the board quickly and consistently. Here my focus would be on steering, so yeah twisting the discs etc.. Thoughts?
My main thought is that i can’t wait to get on my board and try this out!
The idea of toning down the twisting forces, especially the back foot twisting action goes quite well with what my boss told me last year (he doesn’t ride much but hes a level 4 i think) and he thinks that edging is by far the most important skill with driving the board round with the lower joints in the leg being much less important. I’ve often thought it weird that people talk about really driving the board round for carved turns, as the board has a certain radius and your only going to deflect the camber of the board so much and then the line the board follows is set, you can’t make it smaller without the board sliding out.
Sorry this isn’t my most lucid post ever.
What i’ve really been trying to sort out in my mind is the role of the back foot and leg while tuning a snowboard, carved or steered.
Now from what i’ve understood from my training is that your supposed to twist both legs (all joints) in the direction you want the board to go. i’ve never really been happy with this without particularly being able to say why. Bear with me however as i have a go.
Front leg: ok i agree with the front leg twisting with all the joints going the same way.
Back leg: what i see the back leg as doing is,
1) trying to steer the back half of the board along the arc you want the board to go in.
2) trying to keep relatively even pressure along the edge.
For 2) I think the best way to do this is by turning the foot and knee towards the tail of the board. Basically a cowboy style stance.
For 1) Well this is a bit tricky but i think that rotation of the hip in its socket as well as turning the waist and upper body should be the main method of steering the back section of the board.
Ok so thats my little lecture over, pheew! I’m not that clever at carving as i say and i don’t pretend to be an authority on it. I do like to understand what i’m trying to do on my snowboard and try and view it in a technical way. Feel free to agree, disagree, ridicule (points for wit), whatever you see fit.
hey Aidy and hello to everyone else chatting here
Interesting discussion here as always on boardworld. I think the problem or the interesting thing for that matter with this issue is how different stances are, how new snowboarding is and how a lot of the sb instructor industry is run by ex skiers.
Anyway nough ranting but there are lots of factors which go into making a great heel edge turn but some of e I think the main issue is that if you have a duck stance i.e. positive angle on the front foot and negative angle on the back as opposed to a double positive angles is the way you use your back knee. When on your heel edge twisting both knees forwards will really help intiate the turn as it creates more edge pressure on the front of the board and decreases it on the back foot. This is great for controlled powerful sliding turns and intiating a carve but not for holding a carve. If you had double positive angles twisting the back knee forwards would put more pressure on the back edge and a lot of the instructors running the programs ride like that.
I’m sidetracking but double positives are not a bad thing at all there are definitely disadvantges to riding duck stance. You can’t turn as quick riding duck as you have to rock your whole body weight more from side to side to change edge angle whereas with double positive angles you can move your weight from side to side quicker by just twisting with both knees, plus you have more movement to the back pf the board as you can easily just drop the back knee. This is why it surprises me why more riders who consider themselves pure powder riders and don’t have much interest in freestyle don’t ride positive angles as it does help for freeriding. Look at Terje for ultimate proof but also look at racers of slalom or boardercross. Still you don’t have any of the freedom you have with a duck stance where you have a much stronger landing position, more control of your body position, obviously switch is tons easier and generaly more freedom, it just depends what you like.
Back to the carving… haha, so Aidy I believe your intuition was right, pushing out your back knee steadily and progressively throughout the turn. Without seeing you ride it is hard to really pinpoint what you are doing. Is this problem on down-unweighted turns or up-unweighted turns? It’s technical talk but no one is going to be carving down much more than a green run without some pressure control throught their turns. Yeah perhaps in an ideal situation with perfectly groomed runs, no undulations it is possible but why would you avoid using your legs dynamically, that is like removing the suspension from a Ferrari.
Some tips I can suggest which I found helpful:
-make sure your back is straight as possible on your heel edge, roll back your shoulders so you can feel your weight going straight down your spine and aimging at your heel edge as opposed to hunching up and your arms reaching forwards putting your weight over your toes.
-Concentrate on your feet not just your body as a whole. Pull up your toes as hard as you can to push your heel edge into the snow, roll your front foot in you boot to put more pressure on to the front edge.
-Increase your highback angle always helps go and do a few laps in the pipe and you’ll notice the diffence. For that matter go and ride loads of pipe anyway it will help out your carving endlessly.
-Make sure you finish your toe edge turn properly if you think of 0degrees as being right angle to the fall line, don’t stop your turn at +20 degrees go to 0 degrees or idealy - angle to the fall line so you are riding back up the hill. The less pressure your board is on when you commence the turn the deeper you can set the turn and the stronger will be the lock in to the carve. Don’t believe me, then try straightlining the board down the hill then going in to a good carve it will be 20 times harder. So try and get into the carve while you are still going across the hill not staring to slide down it. CASI talks about this a lot, saying that a better a rider is the earlier in the cirlce of the turn they will intiate and apply pressure.
-When you get in the carve using your steering to get the board onto edge but do not twist the board to is already locked into a carve, if you start sliding then try to get in a carve it will be a tough time but if you put the board into a carve going exactly the same direction as your direction of momentum there will be no pressure against the carve so once again you can lock into the carve. I like the idea of slicing a tomato, if you push at an angle or straight down you will rip the skin but if you go at right angles to the tomato you will get a clean cut.
-In thinking of the idea of starting a turn early I like the exercise called sponsor turns where you try and show the base of the board to the sponsors sitting at the top of the hill. This exercise really forces you to get the board on edge early by committing to the turn early and powerfuly.
Okay well thats enough thinking and geeking out on snowboarding for tonight. I’ve definitely rambled on a lot but I’m too tired to go through and edit it up a lot. I hope it is of some help but let me know if you have any questions. cheers
Will
Certain things about snowboarding are more important than others.
To me learning to carve my turns was a very instrumental part of my level of riding. Once I learned to carve, I really felt that my riding had reached a higher level. Then I learned to switch carve, and I was so excited that I felt like I had learned to snowboard all over again.
For some that element may be the first 360, a sense of accomplishment and arrival. for me it was the carved turn.
I took some notes of things I wanted to address in this post and I will go in order of the topics that arose.
First off Aidy mentioned types of carves and he mentioned dynamic carves, which wasnt mentioned again. There was talk about weighting and unweighting and this is an element to consider throughout the turns. All movements of the knees either contribute to weighting (adding weight down on the board) or unweighting (lifting up off the board and reducing the pressure or weight pressed down on the board). But back to dynamics…
What makes a turn more dynamic is the degree that the rider is leaned over throughout the turn.
A turn can be dynamic and not be a carved, it can be a skidded turn.
This is a very dynamic turn
This turn is dynamic but much less dynamic than the above picture.
The term angulation comes to mind. Dynamics refers to the angulation of the rider to the snow.
(angulation is often used to talk about the angle of the BOARD to the snow, but in a dynamic turn the RIDER is angulated.
again, a skidded turn can be dynamic, but in order to fully “lay out” a turn (eurocarve) is will likely be a carved turn where the board is LOCKED onto the edge and not slipping or skidding at all.
Freestyle riding has ignored the importance of turning. You can excel as a freestyle snowboarder (hence 720’s before carved turns) before you learn to carve. But knowing how to control the board on the snow’s surface, and not just through the air makes you a more competent and safe, full-rounded snowboarder. (all mountain rider, which should be the goal of every snowboarder)
I have heard from some that “you would be surprised how many top-name pros cant even make a decent carved turn”
There is more I want to share.
I’m currently at work and I will get back to this very soon.
It was mentioned “sliding out on your heel edge”
I think this can easily be a confusing statement.
Is the rider sliding out, and losing the edge hold from the carve, turning it into a skidded turn, or is the whole heel edge slipping out entirely and the rider fall onto thier butt?
I have thoughts about each.
If the tail of the board is slipping and not gripping to the snow, making a skidded turn rather than a carve…..
I would begin by looking at body alignment.
A lot of the conversation above about how the back leg and the knee move or rotate all plays an important role here.
First off, if the upper body is rotated to face forward, this greatly puts the rider at a disadvantage. It weighs the front of the board more than the tail (know that less weight on the tail would contribute to the tail slipping out).
There should be more weight to the front of the board during the initiation (beginning) of the turn, and the tail should have more weight than the nose by the end of the tail. This is often done with knee and hip movements that help distribute the weight.
But as for upper body alignment, there will need to be (in a rider with a duck stance) also a sideways upper body alignment. Many riders dont feel comfortable committing to the upper body alignment that is needed when using a duck stance.
there are many differences in how the body needs to move when in a duck stance vs stance with both positive angles.
I shouldnt get too into that for now…
But if you are using a duck stance, try to reduce it a little to 21 on the front and -9 or -6 on that back foot.
When people say to “push the back knee out” this can be interpreted many different ways… Which way is “out” anyway? Does that mean toward the toe edge? or rotating it toward the tail? I think what most mean is toward the tail. Here is my suggestion. dont focus so much on the knee (and how the board bends and all that, which doesnt make much of a connection [not a convincingly effective body movement] to me at all). but think about rotating the weight in your boot to the outside of your foot. Your knee will move in that direction, but you know you have the right movement when you can feel the weight on your foot transferring to the outer edge of your foot. This is a movement that is done throughout the turn and at the end of the turn to weight the tail of the board so that it doesnt slip.
Another thing not mentioned that I feel really helped when I was learning, is a still board and binding set up with the forward lean adjusted on the bindings to help lock in my boot to the binding and allow for immediate response in the board when my leg moved. With today’s loose and soft set ups the body needs to move a little differently,(usually this means larger body movements) and a stiffer board is much easier to carve than a soft board.
So, on to the other potential problem of the whole heel edge slipping out and you end up sitting on the snow….
This could happen for various reasons.
Do you have a lot of heel overhang?
I wear a size 9 and I should never have a problem of overhang, but I have learned that when the board sinks into the snow an inch or more, and the board is at a high angle to the snow…. the HEEL CUP of the binding can come in contact with the snow and drag causing you to fall… basically it pulls the edge off the snow and then you fall.
If you place the board on flat ground, it will seem like a crazy angle that is needed to have the heelcup contact the snow, but sink the edge into the snow an inch or more, and you will see it is not much of an angle at all.
How can you tell if this is the problem? when you fall look at the line that you made in the snow with your turn just before you fell. Can you tell if the heelcup hit the snow right behind your line that the edge made?
If it is not your heel or heelcup.
it may be a dull edge? it may be that your body is too angulated (too dynamic) for the forces in the turn at that point. The body doesnt need to be as angulated as you may think…. the board should be more angulated though.
Hmmm what’s next…
Knee movement throughout the turn should progressively extend.
Look at the TURN PHASES article on this website
https://www.boardworld.com.au/content/category/turn-phases/
In the initiation phase, weight should be a little more to the nose, then during the execution phase weight should be centered and then during the completion phase weight should be a little more toward the tail. This is true for a carved turn. This is an added element and doesnt HAVE to happen, but it will make your turns more effective, allow for a greater large radius carved turn. Both legs dont do te same thing at the same time in carved turns.
I mean, sure you can ride forward and simply tip the board onto it’s edge and it will make a carved turn, but to control the board, rather than having the board control you, you should be in control and putting something into the board telling it what to do and when to do it.
But as for leg extension, the rider will find themselves extending their knees throughout the turn until near the end of the completion phase, when JUST before the preparation of the next turn, the knees will bend and absorb the energy of that turn to proceed into the next one.
This introduces the different types of turns, traditionally called cross-under, cross-over and cross-through.
Maybe I’ll let someone else get into that if the need is there.
I hope this helps and does not confuse.
This concludes my thoughts for now.
Anyone have videos of their riding that we can look at and comment??