Name: A STRONGER SAFER HEELSIDE
Uploaded: 2025-03-29T12:39:53.000Z
Duration: 9 min 1 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...

A stronger but also safer heel-side position, that's what this video is all about, and what do I mean by that?

Adverbs of manner

Stronger, and then you can get more performance out the board, safer is in that you're going to be much more aware of who's coming down the piece, you can see better out of your peripheral vision, and hopefully that's going to stop any skiers from blamming right into the side of you.

You know that sound, that horrible skidding sound that is synonymous with snowboarders?

They feel like it's an out-of-control missile aimed right at their backs.

Well, thankfully, that stereotype of snowboarders is changing.

You're engaging the sidecut of your boards and controlling your speed by making these beautiful S-turns back and forth across the hill.

It's what skiers have been doing for decades.

It's what they spend hours practicing, and it's what they test themselves with in competition in the form of slalom.

The simple art of turning is a gorgeous thing, but now that snowboarders are doing it more and more, well, the skiers hate it, and they wish we would go back to skidding down the sides of the slopes.

We're cutting them up, and unfortunately, that means more crashes and more collisions.

Okay, so this statement isn't really backed up by any empirical evidence, merely my own observations, and I'm not here to try and stoke the ever-popular skier versus snowboarder fire.

Look, my best mate is a skier, and I'm there to cool him down whenever he needs it, but no, back to all seriousness.

If you want to start riding like this, cutting nice carves back and forth across the mountain, then despite it being the downhill rider's right-of-way, the last thing you want is to get slammed right into your back.

I've been riding for, well, rather a long time now, and I've never once been crashed into or crashed into anyone else, so in today's video, I'm going to show you what I do to ensure that this never happens, and also how this isn't a hack or a trick, but it's simply the byproduct of riding in a stronger position.

This problem starts when you're a beginner.

You learn to heel-edge side-slip like this, shoulders dead in line with the board, and this position is great for finding your balance and learning to skid the board, but it's a terrible position for actually getting the board to grip and pull you around through the turn.

It can be done, as you can see, but the thing I hate about this position is how I can barely see back up the mountain when I'm on my heel-edge.

My peripheral vision is completely blocked.

Sure, I can turn my head more, and this will start to give you an image more consistent with a level one or two instructor.

This is how you will often see them riding down the mountain, and they're not doing anything wrong.

They're just demonstrating how that method of riding that they've taught you as a beginner from your very first steps on a board can then be translated to riding across the entire mountain, and it can.

It introduces all the fundamentals you need, and it doesn't introduce any extra movements that can be difficult for a beginner to implement into their riding.

At the same time, it's not going to be the strongest position that you can get yourself into, and it definitely isn't the safest, because as much as you might try to look over that lead shoulder, this closed off, more in line with the board position will always limit your peripheral vision whilst you're on the heel-edge.

Speaking of peripheral vision, make sure you have a set of goggles that allows for a wide field of view.

I'm using the Outdoor Master Pulse Goggles that you can buy using my discount code down below.

They're a low-budget solution with an old-school cylindrical lens that fits really well with my helmet.

Outdoor Master are a sponsor of this channel, and they support me, and they help me with what I'm doing here, but despite that, I can honestly say that this model, the Pulse Goggles, they do everything that I need from a goggle.

I've been wearing them all season long, and well, if they work for me, I'm sure they can work for you.

Now, let's get on to the technical information for riding in a stronger and safer heel-side position.

It's time to start bringing in some rotation, and that rotation starts from the edge change.

As you turn the board from toes to heels, you can pull your front knee out and around to steer the board onto the heel side.

You can do this more effectively by opening up your hips.

What you can imagine is like someone has grabbed a hold of your spine.

Right here, starting at the end of a toe-side turn, someone's grabbed my spine, and they're just going to twist it and rotate it out round in the direction that I want to turn.

This will drop your weight onto the inside of the turn and will help you steer the board through the arc of the turn.

A byproduct of this rotation with your hips is that your shoulder line becomes more open, meaning that it's easier to turn your head and see back up the slope and see anyone who might be coming down this side trying to overtake you.

You can see them clearly now out of your peripheral vision.

Right now, I can see I've got the skier just over my shoulder over here.

When I come around onto my toes, I can easily glance back like that.

It's usually when you're making these big sweeping turns back and forth across the piece, someone's trying to get past you, these collisions tend to happen.

I don't need to look over my shoulder every single turn, but just from this position again, I can just see where he is out of the corner of my eye.

As you start changing to these more open turns, now I don't really need to worry because I'm staying within a narrow corridor.

Plenty of space on the slope if anyone wants to get past me.

If someone's crashing into you here, well, you can see it here after the edge change, again here after this one, and I'm using it in the powder right here before chucking up a load of snow.

Man, it's been a while since I've had any of that.

You can see me using it once more again here.

And when I open up and slightly rotate my hips in the direction that I want to travel, it drops them further onto the inside of the turn, and it's like your board then catches you and pulls you through the turn.

I've been trying to understand the exact physical process that makes this work, something to do with your centripetal and centrifugal forces, and I wasn't able to explain it all that well, but trust me when I tell you that it just works.

All these clips have been filmed in my usual plus 15 minus 12 duck stance, but here you can see how that in a posi posi stance, where my hips are already naturally more open and forward facing, due to my plus 33 plus 18 binding angles, the effect is only exaggerated.

This doesn't mean it's better here, it's just a different style of riding that allows for a more open position.

But as I mentioned, you can for sure still open them up in a duck stance too, as this clip shows where I'm really exaggerating it somewhat.

And once you start doing it, you won't want to go back, and you wonder why you ever tried to always keep your shoulders dead in line with the board when you were on the heel side.

Contrasting it to this, my more in line with the board demo from earlier, you can see that the change really isn't that much, so I'm not talking about drastic changes to your riding here, but it definitely can make a big, big difference.

Oh yeah, it's weird, I don't actually like riding like that, because it's only such a small difference, but in doing those demos, holding my shoulders in line and not rotating the hips, I literally couldn't see anyone coming around.

I just really wanted to just turn like that, and then yeah, from this position, I mean not only does it feel much stronger, and it makes the heel side turn easier, but oh, I didn't feel safe, didn't feel nice doing that, didn't like that.

You can use this movement a lot in carving to really drive the board through the turn, but if you don't have sufficient edge angle, too much rotation can lead to the back end washing out and skidding.

That's the whole reason we don't teach this to beginners, because they don't yet have the board up on its edge and gripping in the snow.

But once you do, and once you develop that edge hold, just start trying to add a small amount of this rotation.

You can often just think about looking back up the slope, and by leading with your head, your hips will automatically open up and pull you into this stronger and also safer heel side position.

I've had a bit of time off due to having knee bursitis, which sucks.

I've still got it, but I'm trying to figure out a workaround, and I'll be back with more videos soon.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

A STRONGER SAFER HEELSIDE

weird

grab

practice

exaggerate