Name: KNEE STEERING // Torsional Twist Explained
Uploaded: 2024-07-13T16:41:18.000Z
Duration: 10 min 34 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...

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In today's video, I want to explain to you what I believe to be the most important sequence of movements you need to learn if you want to snowboard with even some sense of control.

And if you want to attain true mastery over your snowboard, then you definitely need this.

I was using it in those turns there to create those short, tighter turns on this steeper slope, but it's something that I use to some degree in every single turn that I do.

I refer to it as knee steering, but it has a few other names.

You might have heard it called foot pedaling, but whatever you want to call it, it's the idea that you use each leg, so your ankle, knee, and hip joint of each leg independently to create torsional twists upon the snowboard.

Torsional twist is where your board twists like a ribbon through the middle, and when you do this to your board, you're effectively releasing pressure under one part of the board and keeping pressure under a different part.

And by doing this, you'll be able to really manipulate the size and the shape of your turns.

You'll be able to make really quick, snappy edge changes, and you're always going to be in control of your board, pushing it through the arc of the turn, and you're never going to be a passenger on your board just freewheeling.

I can explain that by showing you a turn in which I don't knee steer.

Some advice we often give to beginners is to tell them to stand up at the edge change.

This helps to cross your hips over the board, but it means that you're using both legs at the same time as you pass your center of mass from one edge to the other, and it would look like this.

On the heel edge, up and over, and then down onto the toes.

And whilst there wasn't really anything that wrong with that turn, it wasn't overly sluggish, there was a period as I rolled from my heels to my toes where the board was on a completely flat base.

When the board is on a completely flat base, it's just going to start turning into the full line and picking up speed.

When it's on a flat base, obviously, you're not achieving any grip at all.

You're basically out of control for a moment, and you're not going to be back in control until you get on your new edge.

If you imagine if you're riding something very steep, you don't want any moment at all, not even a fraction of a second spent just accelerating, picking up speed, and not in control.

If you're in a tight situation, so tight trees that are really rutted out, lots of people have ridden through them already, or moguls, say, you don't have the space to allow the board to just kind of flat base and point down the hill.

You need to very quickly get that board on a new edge, get it going into the next turn without ever losing any grip and having that moment when you're not in control.

This works because now when I change edge, I'm going to lead with this front knee and this front hip over the board.

It's almost like there's two edge changes happening.

There's an edge change happening over my front foot.

The front part of the board is going to go flat.

Whilst it's doing that, I'm holding my back knee, my back hip, my back ankle, so my back leg in place, which means the board keeps grip through the back end of the board as I'm rolling that front foot over.

By the time my front foot has rolled over and it starts to touch down on the toe edge, so I feel the shin of my front leg pressing into the front of the boot, the knee and the hip would have passed over the top of the board.

By the time I get grip at the top of the board right there, then I can just release the back foot and the back end of the whilst I've already got grip at the front of the board.

As my back knee and my back hip passes over the board, then I've got the full side cut of the board engaged, pushing me through the turn before I then repeat that sequence, front knee, back knee, again, from toes to heels.

Coming across, front knee, back knee, front knee, back knee.

You can really change the timing of the movement to quickly whip the board edge to edge like I did there.

In fact, I've got three other videos that use different analogies to explain this same movement.

The first one I made is really worth a watch.

I explain it using what I call the lever analogy, where you imagine you have a lever sticking out the top of each knee and you can push and pull those levers back and forth.

I've done one where I call it the open and closing the door analogy.

I've done one recently where I call it the flagpole drill, where you have an imaginary flagpole sticking out of the nose of the board.

As you move your front knee and hip back and forward, it passes your hand through that flag.

What I wanted to talk about in this video that's really, really important, that perhaps doesn't get such a mention in some of those other videos, is how your hips also really need to work over the board and it's not just the knees.

I'm going to do this by doing the one exercise that I always come to first when I start explaining this drill to people because it really isolates this knee steering movement.

You just start off in a heel edge side slip like this.

Both knees, both hips pull back over the board.

I'm just going to release this front knee, this front hip.

I'm just going to allow gravity to pull this front hip and pull this front knee over my front foot.

What's important is I keep this back knee and back hip in place.

When the board reaches the full line, which will happen quite quickly, then I can just pass the back knee and hip over the board.

You'll see that I start in my heel side position, obviously, with my hips stacked vertically over my heel edge.

Front knee, front hip, back knee, back hip.

Now, what's really important is as that's happened, obviously, my hips are now stacked vertically over my toe edge.

I realized in my original video where I just talked about the knees, people were pushing the knees forward, but the hips were getting stuck back behind the board and you're in this weaker position here.

It's really important that as the knees come through, your hips also pass over the board.

Now, from my toe edge side slip, front knee, front hip, back knee, back hip.

This drill really just allows you to isolate this movement.

I've talked about it in a few of my videos.

The reason it allows you to isolate this drill is because the turn I did earlier where I just stood up and crossed my hips over the board as one unit, it worked in that scenario because I was traversing and gripping across the slope.

The board had some direction to it, which meant it could just roll from one edge to the other.

If you cut out that traverse and if you just go in a side slip like this, I'm not going to do it, but if I did just stand up and try and pass my hips over onto the toe edge right now, I would catch an edge.

The only way to turn from this side slip position is just to release pressure under the front foot, hold it at the back, but it creates a pivot point in the middle of the board right there and allows you to make these short turns in a very narrow corridor.

Once you've got that, then add that traverse back in and you can now speed up the timing of the movement.

It's not going to be such a delay with front knee and then back knee, front knee, and then back knee.

As soon as you add this traverse in, it's going to be more like, and that's how I really like to think about it.

I said that I use this in all the turns I make and I really do.

Short skidded turns, like I was doing at the top, I might just dial back the edge angle a little bit to allow the board to skid a little bit more and I'll really emphasize the movement with the front knee.

I'll open up that front knee and use it to pull me around in the turn, but at the end there, when I was just rocking edge to edge and carving, the movement with the knees was more back and forward over the middle of the board and there was less of that rotation.

The timing in those two movements was different as well.

On those carve turns, on those quick edge changes, it was much more snappy, front, back, front, back.

It was almost imperceptible the difference between the top part of the side cut at the start of every turn and then as my back knee comes through, I work my pressure through the middle of the board and I have pressure through the aft of the board at the end of the turn.

In the shorter skidder turns at the top, there was a bit more of delay in the movement.

I really pulled that front knee over the board, made sure that top part of the board was really engaging and just delayed the back foot coming over so the back just actually washed out just a slight little bit to allow the board to skid and therefore come around on a tighter arc.

If you need more explanation, check out one of those three videos that I've linked down below.

Honestly, this movement just really unlocks good snowboarding.

If this just sounds completely foreign, definitely check out those other videos, re-watch this one.

If you can get this movement, honestly, you're going to be such a better rider.

You'll have so much control of your board.

It's something most snowboarders aren't doing.

As soon as you do it, it really, really makes you a better rider.

That's why I've made a fourth one right now and I'll probably make even more in the future because I'm a real preacher for this movement.

Thank you very much for watching and let me know any questions you have down below.

As always, I will see you in the next one.