Name: FLAG POLE DRILL (improve timing, posture, and edge change)
Uploaded: 2024-07-13T16:38:51.000Z
Duration: 13 min 30 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I'm calling this one, the flagpole drill.

Adverbs of degree

And in today's video, I'm going to give you a drill that is incredibly easy to follow and it can do wonders for your riding.

It promotes riding with a stacked posture.

This just means that my body joints are properly positioned or stacked over the appropriate part of the snowboard.

And by doing this, you'll be better balanced on top of your board and better positioned to make movements that will have an immediate effect on your snowboard.

Whether this is making a quick edge change or making adjustments to react to changing snow conditions, riding with this stacked posture is a really good starting point for aggressive all-mountain riding.

It will ensure that you get the correct timing of the body movements necessary to perform an edge change.

Before doing any of that, it will really highlight any bad habits within your riding, like that, counter-rotation.

So all you need to do is imagine that you have a flagpole sticking up out from the nose of your board.

And with this flagpole, what you need to visualize is that when you're on your toe side, your hand remains this side of the flagpole.

And when you make an edge change and you change onto your heel side, your hand remains on this side of the flagpole.

And to get it right, to get this drill performed correctly, you need to follow two simple rules.

The first rule is that your hand passes over the flag as the board rolls onto its new edge.

So as you make the edge change, that is when your hand passes over the flagpole.

It's not hand and arm over the flagpole and then edge change.

And it's not edge change and then hand and arm over the flagpole.

But it passes over the top or through the flag exactly as you make the edge change.

Now, the second rule, which if you follow this, should actually make the first rule happen quite naturally, is to make sure you don't actually move your upper body.

So you don't twist your shoulders or your torso.

Now, this might sound weird because we're visualizing a movement with the upper body and you're watching me pass the hand back and forward over the flag like this.

But if you can see what is happening, that movement happens because of what I'm doing with my front leg.

I turn in my front knee and hip and by doing that movement, that rotates my upper body and pulls it over the flag.

When I go from toes to heels, I open that knee and hip back up and that's what pulls my hand over the flag.

So when you're here on your toe side, your hips should be pushed forward.

You should feel your shin pressing into the front of the boot and then you just open up that knee, pull that hip back to cross your hand over the flag and reverse that movement to get you back round onto the toe side.

Okay, so visualize this flag and picture your hand passing over it or knocking through it every time you make the edge change and ensure that movement happens because of what you're doing with your lower body.

So take a look at it working, that hand passing over the now imaginary flag and because I'm following those rules, one, timing the passing of my hand over the flag with the edge change and two, initiating the edge change with all the joints of the front leg, the ankle, the knee and the hip.

It means that I cross my center of mass over the board in sync with the edge change.

Now this ensures my body weight is always aligned or stacked over my effective edge which then means that I will achieve grip when snowboarding and of course, because this movement is led by the front leg, it has an immediate effect upon the board rather than the delayed reaction that would happen from initiating the turn with the upper body.

So my front hand passes through the flag at the same time my front knee and hip passes over the board which is kind of the point of this drill.

Not just to get your weight properly stacked in the right place when you're on your edge, sorry, but to have your center of mass crossing over the board in time with the edge change which will allow for a smooth edge change and it will allow you to properly set your board on its edge at the start of your next turn.

Now guys, if you want to buy yourself a little flag to attach to the front of your board, don't forget to check out my affiliate link down below.

But on a serious note, if you're wondering, I do have a link for this Insta360 camera that I'm filming with and I'll put a link to this product down below that you can click on if you do so desire.

Now, let's come on to some of the common mistakes that people often have when trying to perform this drill.

Now the first problem you might encounter is that your hand actually moves back and forward over the flags multiple times throughout the turn rather than the intended one time at each edge change.

Or you might even find that your hand actually passes in the wrong direction over the flag at the edge change like I'm doing now.

Now if you're having any of those problems, you'll likely be counter-rotating which is exactly what I'm doing now.

And that means twisting your upper body against your lower body.

It does throw the board round and it can make a quick edge change but the problem is it almost always leads to skidding which we don't want.

And almost more importantly, it means you lose the benefits of that stacked posture we talked about earlier.

By counter-rotating and being twisted like this, you're going to be off balance and your body won't be properly aligned so that your joints can make effective movements that have an immediate response upon the board.

So let me show you that and counter-rotate a turn.

My hand just passed in the wrong direction over the flag and it's clearly on the wrong side of the flag.

And what this means is my body is twisted, it's straightening out my front leg and it's putting a lot of my weight on my back foot.

Now that's going to make my next edge change kind of difficult and I'm going to have to then kick out that back foot and counter-rotate once again.

So if you find that happening, slow things down, start off in a traverse with the hand on the correct side of the flag.

Get that movement correct with that front knee and that front hip passing over the board there.

Hand is now on the correct side of the flag and then you can slowly do that movement again.

And then once you kind of get the coordination of it, then you can start to speed things up, okay?

But don't take those bad habits, that counter-rotation into your riding.

Now the second common mistake is that you may be passing your hand over the flag correctly, but you're getting that hand from the heel to the toe side position by breaking at the waist and bending over here.

And yes, that will still allow you to pass the hand over the board when you make the edge change, but by breaking at the waist here, it puts you in a weak position where you're sending your weight back behind the board rather than down over the edge, which means you're going to be struggling for grip.

So remember rule number two, the movement doesn't come from the upper body, it doesn't come from any twisting or bending over movements like this, but it comes from the lower body, that knee and the hip.

Toes to heels, open that knee, pull the hip backwards.

Heels to toes, as I rotate that knee back in, watch my hip pass over the top of the board like that, ensuring that I maintain this stacked posture with my center of mass, with my weight properly, I can't speak, aligned down over my toe edge.

Now the beauty of this drill is that once you get the coordination of those lower body movements that allow for your hand to pass through the flag at the edge change, you can simply sit into those movements for some big, lazy carves, or you can speed the timing of those movements up to create shorter, tighter turns, ideal for steeper slopes.

But in both those turns, the same two rules apply.

Your hand passes through the flag at the edge change and that movement is led by the movements you're making with your lower body.

Now before we continue, one quick thing I want to mention.

So for the purpose of this drill, I've placed the flag right here, directly over the nose of my board in the middle of the board.

And that will imply that my shoulder line is exactly in line with the board.

When I'm on the toe edge, I'm around here.

When I'm on the heel edge, I'm over here.

Whereas in reality, a slightly stronger posture is to have your shoulder line adjacent to the angle of the front foot.

So my front foot is turned out 18 degrees, which also means my shoulders should be turned about 18 degrees, which in reality means the flag, rather than being right there on the center, should actually be turned out just a little bit over here.

Now for the purpose of getting the drill and for visualizing it, and when I start with this drill with most people, we just think about the flag being in the middle, and then once you start to get it, then you can make those small adjustments and imagine the flag over here.

But this would be my heel edge position and this would be my toe edge position.

You can see my body is slightly open in the direction that I'll be traveling.

And by doing this, by making that adjustment, this will also allow this drill to work for those of you who like to ride with a much more open stance.

Say your front foot's turned out to 27 degrees, then your flag is going to be much more over here and you're not going to need to kind of focus on really kind of bringing those shoulders around as in line with the board, but you can still get the timing of this front hand passing over the flag at the right point.

So, now although this drill has mostly been focused on getting that stacked posture and that movement that leads you into the turn, that makes the edge change, which is this front knee and hip opening up, the thing that actually kind of brings your hand back towards the flag before you start to lead with that front leg is actually the back knee and the back hip following.

So, getting this kind of proper one, two, knee steering movement.

You can see as my back knee, my back hip passes through, this would be me coming through the end of a heelside turn, that brings my hand back over the flag.

Then my front knee and hip passes over the board and watch now as my back knee and hip follows, that starts to draw my hand closer to the flag.

So, basically my hand is always moving throughout the turn and it's led by these movements that I'm doing with the lower body.

Okay, now I've got a bunch of videos that I'll post down below that explain these lower body movements in a bit more detail, but sometimes just visualizing this flag, visualizing your hand passing over it can be enough for you to kind of get these movements done correctly.

Pass that hand over the flag throughout the turn and then feel that front arm slowly being drawn back towards the flag throughout the turn.

Experiment with different turn sizes and shapes and if you can keep this analogy of the hand passing through the flagpole going, then you should really start to feel the benefits not only of maintaining effective posture and balance throughout your riding, but the benefits of you properly using your lower body, your lower knees and hips over the board to get a real immediate response.

I appreciate you sticking around until the end and I will see you in the next one.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

FLAG POLE DRILL (improve timing, posture, and edge change)

stick

struggle

incredibly

bunch