Name: WALK OVER THE BOARD - Simple Snowboarding Tips
Uploaded: 2024-12-21T16:42:23.000Z
Duration: 10 min 42 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...

Adverbs of degree

I'm getting back into teaching a lot of people.

One thing that I found myself talking about a lot recently with people of all abilities, whether they're beginners or advanced, is how to properly use the feet when changing edge and steering a snowboard.

I'm a little bit Michael Jackson today with my one white glove.

The reason for that is I'm going to be using my hand here in a moment to demonstrate how the foot rolls from heel, like that, through flat onto the toes.

We all know that when you're on the heels, your foot is like that.

Your toes are lifted up to the top of the boots.

Then as you roll across, your foot goes through flat onto the toes, or more specifically, it's actually the balls of your feet.

You don't want to really come right up onto your tiptoes, but you rest on the balls of your feet.

Every edge change, heel through flat onto the balls of your feet, back through flat onto the heels.

That's understood, but what's a little bit more misunderstood is the movements we should actually make over the top of our foot to properly roll it and to properly change from one edge to another.

The reason that I've been thinking about this quite a lot is because one of my clients, one of my guests who I was teaching, was telling me about the gas pedal analogy, which is an analogy that's often used when teaching beginners how to turn.

The idea is that when you're on your heels, you're lifting your feet off the gas.

You're not pushing down, and when you want to make a turn, you push down on the gas and that brings you onto the toe edge.

When you want to come from toes to heels, you lift off the gas and that brings you back round onto your heels.

It's a sound analogy and it can help beginners get the movements, but it can also lead to some problems as well.

What I've had some of my guests doing recently is, well, let me show you, is this.

It's not going to look much different, but they're coming across on the toe side and then they push their toes down like this to try and get the board onto the toe edge.

It doesn't quite come round and they end up kicking the back end of the board around like that.

The reason that the gas pedal analogy is slightly problematic is because when you go from heels to toes, the ankle joint, this joint down here, we're trying to close that gap.

If you push your toes away, you're going to open that gap there.

When I come round from my heel edge to my toe edge, watch my front knee, watch my shin, it's going to come down closer to the top of my boot.

If, when you make that turn, you push your toes away from you, you're going to open up that joint, it flattens the board, and more importantly, you're not crossing your center of mass over the board.

That is the most important thing that has to happen at every single edge change.

You need to pass your upper body over the board, you need to cross your center of mass over the board, and actually just pushing the board away from you like that starts the board sliding off in that direction and your upper body stays back here and it doesn't help you get over the top.

Let me just make a few turns and I'll explain a slightly better way that we should think about using our feet in every turn, in every edge change.

Right now, I am, of course, as always, filming this on the Insta360 X4 camera.

I've got the 114-centimeter selfie stick, which is the perfect length to get my whole body in and film back at me, and I shoot in me mode.

I'm coming back onto the piste because I don't want to scratch up.

As I was saying, I shoot in me mode, which means that the camera just shoots back at me.

I don't have to do any key framing, anything like that.

If you're interested in this camera, you can get it on the link down below.

I do get a little bit of permission for that, so thank you very much for that.

Right now, if you're watching this video shortly after I posted it, Insta360 do have extended holiday sales.

If you use my link or my code down below, you'll get an extra 15% off and a free snow bundle.

That's out of the way, let's get back to this tutorial.

I'm just going to get out of my bindings for a second.

The way that I really like to explain this is simply like you're walking.

I have touched upon this in a previous video, but I think this analogy makes a lot of sense.

When I'm walking forward, my heel is down like that.

As I step forward, my foot flattens, and then I come forward onto the balls of my feet.

The exact same thing happens in every edge change from the heels to the toes.

We want to be on our heels, we want the foot to be flat, and then we want to come forward onto the balls of your feet.

Now, when you're walking, you don't think put the heel down and push your toes away from you.

Actually, you don't really think about making any movements with your foot.

Your foot naturally rolls from heel through flat onto the balls of your feet simply because you pass your center of mass, you pass your body, your knee, and your hip and your upper body over the top of your foot.

That is exactly what I want you to think about when you're making every edge change from heels to toes.

When you go from toes to heels, it's like you're walking backwards, which I know isn't something we do as much, but same idea.

If I was to take a step backwards, balls of my feet, foot goes flat, and as I pass my center of mass, as I pass my body over the top of my foot, I'm now on my heels.

When we're snowboarding, you just pass your knee, pass your hip, pass your center of mass over your foot, and just roll it nice and easily round onto your heel.

That means we're still getting that movement.

The foot is still rolling from heel through flat onto the balls of your feet and back through flat onto the heels, but you're not actively pushing your toes down to get onto the toe edge, and you're not actively pressing your heel down to get onto the heel edge.

Your edge change will actually happen quicker and more efficiently if you try to hold back on those movements.

I want you to try and really keep the board on your heel for as long as possible as you're crossing your upper body over the board.

As you're moving your center of mass over the board, try and stay on your heel edge until you get to a point where it's absolutely impossible for your foot not to roll across.

That means you will actually get a quicker edge change, and your foot will really quickly roll heels through flat onto the balls of your feet.

Again, when you go from toes to heels, pass your center of mass over the top.

You bring your knee, your hip, sorry, over the top of the board, and then you can't help but push down into that heel as your body crosses over the board, and then you'll get a really quick, rapid edge change.

I'm going to get my board back on, and we'll do a few of those.

A really simple idea, and this applies for everything from really beginner basic turns, to carving, to riding steeps, moguls, whatever you want.

I'll even demonstrate to start with in a beginner turn.

We're just skidding, going across the slope, hold my heel, my left heel, push down like that.

As my body crosses over the top, my foot can't help but just realize I haven't properly clicked in to my binding.

Coming around, I'm now on the balls of my feet.

My body simply passes over the top, and my feet just roll.

The movement is really passive with your feet.

It's much more because we're passing a center of mass over the top that it happens.

I'm struggling a little bit to navigate through these icy sections at the end of the day and perform some good turns.

Foot just rolls over the board, toes through flat onto heels, heels through flat onto toes.

Now, I'm obviously focusing a little bit more on the front foot here.

It's the front foot that brings you into every single turn that you do, but the back foot is just following right after and making the exact same kind of rolling over movements as the front foot.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

WALK OVER THE BOARD - Simple Snowboarding Tips

struggle

properly

slightly

demonstrate