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So just what are you supposed to do with your knees, anyway? Back when many
of us were still learning how to snowboard, there emerged possibly the first
really identifiable style that pretty much everyone thought looked cool.
People like Craig Kelly and Keith "Duckboy" Wallace were riding around with
their knees jammed together, and yeah, it looked really cool! But now with
the advent of skinny symmetrical race boards and steeper stances, the school
of carving has changed, and riding around with your knees stuck together
is not necessarily the key to riding the sweet spot of your board.First,
we need to define the modern carving stance to see how the knees fit in the
picture. The first step in achieving the modern carving stance is to square
the shoulders and hips to the direction of board travel, and maintain this
alignment at all times throughout each carve. When this is working, the torso
and hips are facing the nose of the board. The hands are no longer leading
and trailing, but are back to left and right, and they stay that way. It
is obvious that the surfers and skaters among us will have to adjust their
body and hand alignment, but the skiers have a less obvious task.
A cross-over skier will have to make the conscious effort to look in the
direction of the carve, rather than always down the hill. As carves progress
around the curve, we are actually looking across the trail at the beginning
and end of each carve. This is also a much safer way to ride, in addition
to its benefit to carving. Maintaining proper alignment of the head with
the board is crucial to maintaining this stance, since the body is built
to follow the head. If you make each carve looking all the while down the
mountain, the torso willup, cease to be aligned with the board, and
the rest of the stance will fall to pieces.
The hands are equally important. Mechanically, the body wants to conserve
rotational momentum. This means, as the board and lower body rotate right,
the upper body rotates left, and the would-be leading hand typically comes
across the nose of the board when executing a heel side turn. By keeping
the hands on their own sides of the board, and by looking in the direction
of the carve, we can prevent this counter-rotation from happening. The result
is greater stability, and consistent edge pressure. The board and body are
unified as one solid unit. With the counter-rotation, the upper and lower
body separate, and the body position over the edge changes, compromising
edge pressure. By resisting the separation, we can maintain our body position
over the edge, and sustain better edge hold.
The second step in achieving this stance is to keep the shoulders level to
the slope of the hill. This helps keep more body mass closer to the edge,
thus increasing edge hold. A good way to think about doing this is to keep
the hands both at an equal distance from the surface of the snow at all times.
This will help keep the shoulders level to the slope of the hill. When we
tilt our shoulders in to the turn, we are taking more body mass away from
the edge, reducing edge grip. With a forward facing posture and by keeping
the shoulders level to the hill, we can keep more body mass closer to the
edge at all levels of angulation.
Now, the knees. "What's so wrong about riding with my knees together? It
looks good, and it feels good!" you might reason. Sure, it does feel good,
but it's only a quick fix. By sticking the knees together, they become a
single point in the structure of your body. By doing this, you are forcing
your center of gravity to find the center of your board. Since the knees
are one point, your center of gravity finds its most comfortable position
directly over this point. This point is also right in the middle of your
stance, which is where the board was designed to carve best. This is why
carving with the knees together feels good. Now, carving the sweet spot is
what we are trying to achieve, but with our knees stuck together, we are
actually making it more difficult to maintain this position when we encounter
high speeds or variable terrain (i.e. ice, ruts, bumps etc.).
Here's why: with the knees together, there is a triangle formed with your
board and your lower legs. Since your legs are not elastic, that triangle
doesn't really want to change shape. When you initiate a turn, in order to
maintain that forward facing, level shoulders stance, the angulation occurs
mainly from the waist down. Therefore, it is the duty of the knees to get
underneath you, to the inside of the turn, in order to hold you up. As we
attain higher speeds, we logically require a lower center of mass in each
turn. When the knees are stuck together, they can only move in to the turn
by a limited amount. After your knees stop moving in, your upper body gets
"tripped" as it tries to move further to the inside to compensate for the
limited range of knee motion. Also, with the knees forced together, the hips
tend to face strictly in the direction of the binding angle, leading to the
deterioration of the forward facing stance. You end up breaking at the waist
and tilting your shoulders down and into the turn. This results in a higher
center of mass, further away from the board, a combination which produces
the minimum edge pressure.
The remedy is to allow the knees to remain comfortably separated while carving,
and even to force them apart while carving aggressively. This is facilitated
with the new toe and heel lift system, as the typical cant tends to push
the knees together. When carving at high speed on steeper or variable terrain,
we want our center of mass to be moving smoothly and quietly along a consistent
path for maximal stability. This means maintaining a quiet upper body and
making the turn initiation from the waist down, primarily with the knees.
On a toe side carve, this translates to a slight outward movement of the
rear knee, towards the inside of the turn. On a heel side carve, the turn
initiation becomes a slight outward and forward movement of the front knee,
towards the inside of the turn. This helps get the center of mass forward
on the board at the beginning of the turn to engage the nose into the carve,
and to ensure that the entire edge is utilized, not just the tail. By keeping
the knees apart, they are allowed to bend naturally and function optimally
for shock-absorption, thus upholding the level and stability of the center
of mass. Riding with the knees apart is structurally more sound, as the center
of mass is supported by two independent members which afford greater stability
and range of motion. With the knees together, they become a single point
with limited motion, above which, the center of mass precariously teeters.
The combination of separated knees, forward facing body alignment, shoulders
level to the hill will all help achieve a more stable center of mass, closer
to the edge. The less the center of mass is jostled about, and the closer
it stays to the edge, the better you will be able to maintain high speed,
consistent carves on a variety of carving terrain. Riding with the knees
stuck together is a fun way to quickly find the sweet spot, but once you
know where it is, you are ready to step up to the next level. Riding with
the knees apart allows you to carve the sweet spot consistently, with stability
and confidence.
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