If you want help with your setup, recommendations on equipment or feedback on your riding, start a thread on the forum at carversconnection.com.

The more effort you put into your thread, the more effort I will put into my reply.

Post pictures of your board and videos of you riding it.

Add specs on your gear and your body.

I want to know your stance width and your angles, your boot size and your inseam length.

I want to know where and what you ride.

Narrow, crowded runs on East Coast Hardback or wide open groomers of Grand Targhee?

Green circles or black diamonds?

What's your experience?

What are your goals?

I want to help, but let's do this right from now on.

The forum is a much better venue to discuss these things.

It's searchable and permanent.

We can share photos, videos and links.

Others can benefit from our discussions.

And you'll probably find that mine is not the only informed opinion out there.

Quick reminder.

As of this moment, there are only 21 boards remaining of the 30 free carvers that JCJ Anderson agreed to build for next season.

If you don't know who he is, look him up.

This man has an Olympic gold medal and he's been designing and building snowboards since the 90s.

These will be the only wide soft boot free carving boards available with titanol and rubber construction for next season.

And I promise you, they are a huge step up from whatever you're trying to carve now.

This is a whole other level.

If you've never ridden titanol rubber, you can't even conceive of what's possible on a real high performance carving board.

We've taken my favorite boards and toned them down for the intermediate and advanced carver who needs a slower ride which is more forgiving and easier on the body but no less grippy.

You want one.

You want to experience the G-forces and deep trenches that only titanol rubber and carbon can offer.

Available exclusively at carversconnection.com Hello again, trench diggers.

Welcome back to the boardroom.

This video is called Reflections on the Secret Series.

All of that part one of the Secret Series was written and filmed last year.

So I've had an entire season to reflect on what was said and to think about it in the context of your comments and in the context of more coaching experience.

I'd like to return to some of the things that were said there, make some clarifications and just add a few tips and tricks and maybe help you get more progress in your carving technique faster.

The first thing I want to address is the bow.

I talked about bowing at the hips and at the same time I said keep your spine stacked.

So there's a contradiction there.

Nobody actually pointed this out, but I noticed it right away, right?

So let me give you my perspective on these things.

First thing is from a style of perspective, I think stacked is better.

I think that upright torso is definitely better stylistically speaking.

However, when it gets rough, when it gets steep, icy, when we get those little death cookie ice balls, I'm bowing a lot.

I'm definitely pushing, I'm exaggerating that fore-aft motion as much as I can to keep my edge in the snow.

So for you guys, I would suggest add some bow, add some fore-aft motion.

But if it's easy for you, if you're on, you know, good green or blue slope, good corduroy, try and remove that for style.

But also, you know, take your own style.

My style is mine, your style is yours, no judgment.

Importantly, when you do bow, you must bow over the nose of the board, never to the side of the board.

And this also works in conjunction with a lot of the other movements we're going to talk about.

So we're going to take this discussion straight into the hip shift.

This I find, finding this year as I'm coaching more people, one of the most difficult things for people to really figure out is the hip shift.

So I'm seeing, like if you watched Martina's video, you can see that knee is pointing out, right?

We need to bring that knee in, turn the hips forward, tuck the tail, also the shoulders, also the back hand forward.

This is what we call the hip shift.

You want to get into this kind of position for carving.

A lot of people have trouble pulling that back knee forward.

Bringing focus to it certainly will help.

Driving, especially into heelside by dropping that back knee will help.

Just focus on that for a few turns when you can.

The other thing that's going to help a lot is the lifting in the back heel and the canting in the binding.

That's just, if you're tight, especially in the hips, that's going to help you bring that forward.

When I talked about in the part one, you know, being, you know, hands, shoulders basically facing the front of the board on heelside, I thought it was true, but as I'm watching more and more videos, I realize I'm not quite getting there.

So more important than finding your position straight over the front of your board is the twisting.

You know, the knee, the hip, the shoulders, the twisting is going to drive that board.

It's going to help it come around faster.

So you don't have to be all the way there, but you have to be applying tension in that direction on heelside.

Yeah, because remember, of course, the tighter you can turn, the faster you can come around, the less speed you're going to gain going straight down the fall line at the apex, right?

So tightening up your turn, pushing harder actually helps slow you down and bring you around faster.

So this is crucial.

Yeah, so again, the backhand, right?

The top three tips I'm telling almost everybody I'm coaching.

Shoulders level, backhand forward, hip shift, okay?

The backhand forward is basically part of that hip shift.

It's part of that whole rotation.

The shoulders level is something else that we control with the crunch and the obliques.

But these are the top three tips.

So if you're looking to improve your carving, focus on those three things first.

What else have I discovered this year?

One day I was out riding with a client and I forgot my string, but I wanted to work on the trade drill.

And so I just pulled the elastic out of my mitten and I gave that to him.

And that actually worked even better.

So instead of riding with a string, get a bungee cord, hopefully without the metal hooks, right?

A bungee cord or just some elastic.

You can find it at your outdoor retailer usually or any like craft store.

This is more beneficial because now you can still move your hands within a certain limitation for balance as you need to.

But the elastic pulls them back together and reminds you to keep those arms, you know, slightly wider than shoulder distance.

What else?

Patience, patience, patience.

Okay, this I talked about a little bit in the secrets video, but I think I didn't stress it enough.

I talked about at the apex of your turn when you're facing down the fall line.

You want to be maximally compressed, maximally rotated, maximally... what's the other one?

Maximally forward, right?

But what I didn't stress enough is from that moment when you find that position in the apex, to just hold it through the rest of the turn.

The idea is to spread out that edge pressure, right?

So you don't get these sharp spikes.

So you don't want to be doing too much movement in that, let's say, even 50, 60 degrees past the apex.

You mostly want to be holding it.

I also talked about, you know, adding a little extra rotation or a little extra kick, you know, to finish your turns.

And it's like, well, how does that make sense if you're maximally compressed, rotated, and forward at the apex?

And then you're adding more right as you finish your turn.

So what I'm going to say now is find that position at the apex and hold it.

Hold the patience.

Just feel the edge pressure.

You know, smooth it out.

Keep that edge in the snow until you start to face back across the fall line and you start losing speed, okay?

And that's when you want to stand up.

You want to stand up, decompress, bring your weight back, start to un-rotate right at the end.

Right as you come into the transition.

And with just the right amount of energy, momentum, and speed to bring your body across your board into the next turn.

So that's a delicate balance.

It's difficult to do.

Practice, practice, practice, of course.

But the point is find that patience.

Find that position at the apex and just hold it.

From there, you almost want to be balancing on your edge with just small micro adjustments to hold that edge in the snow.

Which brings me to my next point, which is that I think it's important to think about sometimes following your board.

Find that balance.

Find the position at the apex.

Be patient and just see where your board goes.

Ride it out.

Let it tell you where it wants to turn.

Don't be forcing it.

Now, when I grew up, I was riding out east on super, you know, green runs, but super icy terrain.

And I was a small kid.

The boards were way too big for me.

And the balance was actually a super important aspect of my carving.

I would kick the board up and just sort of wait, wait, wait for it to come around in the icy terrain.

You don't want to be pushing too hard.

The boards were not capable.

They were not as forgiving.

Well, not even close to as forgiving as the next generation Titanal rubber boards.

But yeah, the point is I would just get up there.

I would pretty much balance on my edge.

I wasn't really touching the snow very much.

Just balancing and letting the board ride out, taking its own course.

Now I have much more skill.

I have much better boards.

Now I'm pushing.

I'm bouncing a little bit for sure.

But I know where that limit is.

But for you, especially on green runs, kick it up.

Find that balance and patience and just wait.

Let the board do what it's meant to do.

Some micro adjustment is necessary.

You definitely want to dictate at some point where your turns are going to go.

But, you know, take a few turns, a few laps.

Just focus on the balance and the patience and see where your board wants to go.

And feel the feeling of that g-force produced as your board just brings you around.

What else here?

Yeah, slow it down.

Okay, this is what I'm telling a lot of people.

Our aim, if you want to carve like me, pencil line carving up unweighted turns, your aim is to control your speed through turn shape.

So I have a lot of clients and we'll go do the first lap and they're just ripping open turn shapes.

And I'm like, that's way too much speed for your equipment.

Like you're just, you already in the first two turns, you have too much speed to bring that speed under control again with one turn.

So I'm constantly telling people as I'm coaching them, slow it down, slow it down, control your speed on every turn.

Okay, now I have some of the best boards in the world here.

These boards are super stiff for a guy of my weight, which is about 155, 160 pounds.

So what that means is I can skip a turn.

Okay, if there are people or some weird terrain or a brown spot, I can just go straight down, I can gain a lot of speed and I can get it back under control with one turn with this equipment.

But if you're riding a production board, you need to control your speed on every turn or you're going to have to scrub snow to slow down and then regain control.

But in general, I see a lot of guys who are carving just going way too fast.

And hey, if that's what you'd like to do, awesome, do it.

But once in a while, just try to slow it down.

Try to finish every turn and control your speed.

That to me is the best feeling and that's what I love.

And that's what I'm trying to get you guys to do.

Oh yeah, and carve every turn.

So I grew up riding, I started in 1987, 1986 out east in Quebec.

And at that time, there were few to no snowboarders on the hill.

And the rules were at some of these mountains in Quebec, no jumping.

Can you believe it?

No jumping.

And not kidding you, because I was one of the only snowboarders on the hill, the ski patrollers would lie in wait knowing my favorite jumps and cut my ticket if I took one.

So, you know, I was pretty much forced to learn to carve.

That was the only fun thing to do back then, there was no powder.

And so I made it one of my early goals to try to carve every turn down the entire run.

No scrubbing, no speed checks, but just carves.

Controlling my speed through turn shape on every turn all the way down.

I like to imagine, I mean this is theoretical, it would never actually happen, but I want to put in the perfect track down each run.

You could drop a marble in my track and it would just fall on my track down the whole run.

So, yeah, I would think about that as well.