Name: How to make Short Turns on a Snowboard
Uploaded: 2024-08-30T16:36:24.000Z
Duration: 12 min 2 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...

Gerund

Past simple

Now last week I received a comment on one of my videos from YouTube user Yawnz who said, Can you make a video that focuses on tight, short turns?

It feels like most videos on YouTube focus on wide turns, which are great for when the slopes are empty, but most of the time they aren't.

Short turns with a focus on speed control would be a great video.

Thanks for the comment, let's dive in and we'll make that video.

Awesome, so that's what we're trying to get.

For me to explain this, I'd encourage you to do the same as I am now.

Take your board off and just stand in the snow.

If you're not on the hill, you can do this at home, in your kitchen, in your living room, if you're skiving off work, do it in the office.

My hips are forward, my knees are bent, and I can feel my shins pushing into the front of the boot.

Now I'm going to start explaining the movements from the top of my body and work down right towards the board.

I'm going to start off, you can see my shoulders are pretty much in line with the board.

If you look at my front arm, so for me it's my left arm, if I let my arm hang, it's kind of hanging just here, just in front of my foot, but essentially over the toe edge of my board.

This is essential because it allows me to create the first bit of rotation I'm going to take into the turn.

I'm just going to open my arm up, open my shoulder up, out to the left.

As I do that, my knee and my hip and my front leg are going to follow.

I open the door, I open up my left knee, I open up my left hip.

What you should start to feel, even just by doing this, is that your front foot is now almost rocking around.

You should feel you're starting to apply pressure to the outside of the foot towards the heel.

Open the door, the knee, the hip rolls around.

I'm keeping this back leg, I haven't moved that at all yet.

My right knee, my back knee is still bent, I can still feel my shins pushing in the front of my boot, I'm still on the toe edge there.

So I open the door, roll the front knee around.

Now what this does, because my foot has rolled around like that, I've started to create this twist through the middle of the board, which is essential for making this quick, tight turn.

My board is twisted through the middle there.

What that means, what's going on down on the snow, is that the front edge of my heel edge is starting to grip in the snow there.

It wants to pull me into the turn, but I've still got pressure at the back edge of my board on the toe edge.

What that has done to my body position, is I've started to get my body position to fall inside the turn.

I've started to move my centre of mass, which is all up here, my shoulders, my body, my hips.

I've started to pull that across the board, all from this very small movement.

So that's going to start the turn, but now we need to release the pressure at the back of the board.

We need to get that back foot to match the front foot.

That comes just from rolling this knee and the hip back, just like that.

As I do that, my foot is going to roll flat, and therefore the board is going to roll flat onto the heel edge.

Obviously, on the slope, by this point, that will now have brought you round onto the heel edge.

I'm back again, my shoulders are in line with the board, but most importantly, now my hips, my centre of mass, have crossed back over behind the board.

Let me just run you through those movements again.

Start off thinking about opening the door.

Once we've got into that position, we just follow with the back foot, pull the knee and the hip back onto the heels.

That's going to be all the movements you need for a toe-to-heel turn.

It's really worth practising them at home or on the snow, without your board on, because to get that turn nice and small, these movements are going to have to happen quite quick.

Then when we go onto the snowboard, it's going to come a lot easier.

We'll quickly switch it round, and I'll run you through the heel to the toe-side turn next.

The main difference being that now my shoulders, my hips, are stacked vertically over my heels.

We've pulled the centre of mass, our upper body, across from our toe-edge position, round into the heel-edge position.

What we're going to think about is where we opened that door before.

Now to pull the board back round, we're simply going to close it.

Your arm comes across the board like that.

You can see I'm mimicking that movement with my lower body as well.

As my arm and my shoulder comes through, so do my knee and my hip.

Again, I've now started to create this twist.

My shoulders are starting to bring my body into the toe-edge position.

I'm starting to cross my weight over the board onto the toe-edge.

Again, I've created the twist along my board.

My front foot should now feel my shin starting to press on the front of my boots.

I can almost feel weight on the balls of my feet.

My back leg is locked back here on the heel-side position.

Again, it just becomes a case of releasing the pressure on the back foot.

That is going to mean pushing my knee, my hip, across the board.

In doing so, you'll see my foot and therefore my board releases the pressure, rolls flat, and then can come forward onto the toe-edge position.

Now my hip's forward, shoulders back in line with the board.

Once again, let's work through those movements.

Your front hip, if you're goofy, will be your right hip.

Then the back knee and the back hip follows, bringing you round into your toe-edge position.

Let's give those movements a good practice.

What I'll just do now, I'll get in a nice flat area.

I'm on a bit of a slope here, and we can practice doing them both together.

Now let's put those movements into practice on the board.

I'm starting to traverse across the slope, so it gives me time to check my posture.

When I'm ready to make the turn, I'm just going to think about opening that door.

Now for the next turn, I'm just going to close the deck over.

Now before we continue with those short turns, if you haven't already, please hit that like and that subscribe button.

It really helps me out, helps me to grow my channel.

We've got one short turn over here, we're traversing across, and we have one short turn over here.

What we want to do now is basically eliminate that traverse, and all of a sudden, we have short turns within a narrow corridor.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

How to make Short Turns on a Snowboard

weird

essential

eliminate

practice