Snowboarding
Snowboarding: Tips on Balance, and Picking Your Lines
There’s an interesting article today in the Rocky Mountain News by Gavin Ehringer, who’s been covering the shredding beat for 15 years. In the article, he talks about the riding “style” a shredder brings to the mountain, and details the proper way to ride:
”In general, the ideal of snowboarding style is to keep the upper body as quiet as possible while letting the lower body do the work in the turns. One thing I often see riders do is bend too much from the waist. This, too, looks bad, and it’s a difficult posture to use in riding. A more correct and comfortable posture, one that’s stable and looks good, is bending from the knees and the ankles.”
I found this interesting because, frankly, I have never given any thought to how my posture looks while I fly down the mountain, or this might affect my performance. Regardless, it’s actually this second tidbit from the article that really got me thinking:
“The disciplines of board sports help with finding creative new lines and ways of looking at the mountain. Many snowboarders, including pros I’ve ridden with, just bomb a run down the fall line. They fail to consider all the possibilities a run has to offer. Surfers and skaters, on the other hand, often look at the big picture.
<snip>
Similarly, surfers look for certain “lines” down a slope besides the easy-to-read fall lines.”
This article made me realize that I myself am a “speed” guy. When Blue Mountain was dead empty a couple of weeks ago, for example, I spent the entire night speeding down every run; I didn’t want to turn, or experience the whole slope. Rather, I wanted to just go fast. Fast as I could safely ride. This article makes me wonder if I’m missing part of the snowboarding experience when I do that.
Discussion
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There is a place for both, I’m partial to an early morning blast down an empty slope. It helps clear the cobwebs! On the other hand I find it more fun to look for jumps or banks to slash or in fact anything else that looks like fun. You can often turn the most dull ‘commuter’ run into something fun
I was going to say pretty much what David has said.
I am always looking for the little bumps that can create some air, or the small stashes of powder at the edge of a run. Straight lining can be great, but turns are always way more fun!
You guys may already know this thru this being a cycling and boarding blog, but I found that experience in mountain biking also helps me to pick a line on the run…
Thanks for commenting on my article. When I started skateboarding as a kid, the “Dogtown” riders were revolutionizing skateboarding. They were extremely stylistic riders and it influenced the way I rode. Hell, the way everyone rode. Getting radical wasn’t enough; you had to make it look good, too. When you start to consider all the possibilities of the mountain, the wave, the skatepark, or the street, things just seem to open up. And I can’t emphasize enough, posture is what makes you look good or make you look like a kook!