Turns on steeper slopes

A snowHead

Hi all, just a quick question, is it better to have a bit of speed up before initiating the turn, resulting in getting through the fall line quicker. Im talking blacks and steep reds here. Or is there a better approach. Just back from a few days in alps and all went well but struggled a bit on the steeper bits. Just to add were well cut up at times.
Ta

A snowHead

The best advice I was every given was "open the door then dive through it". No, it doesn't need speed - but decisive change onto the uphill (shortly to become downhill) leg. Open the door with the downhill hand - then keep that hand up till ready to turn again. Somebody will be along to explain properly but that was what I always told myself, faced with a steep turn. "Open the door and dive through it". Possibly absolutely the wrong way to think about it, but it helped me.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Cheers, sounds right. Im kind of getting through the door and onto new edge but end up sliding down slope on edge before managing to slow down enough to go across for next turn.
Hope that makes sense..

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Well, thinking about it is probably a good way to get better at it.

I think it's easier to learn to turn on mellow slopes. Maybe spend more time turning a lot on easy slopes would help? You should be able to do both big and small radius turns, with more and less braking as needed.

You don't need much speed to initiate a turn. It's partly a perspective thing though; a good snowboarder is nearly always in one turn or the other. Instead of thinking of "initiating a turn", maybe think about "making a transition" from one edge to the other. The transition may be quick, but the turns are what you're doing almost all the time.

If you're in steeper terrain then the classic advice is "finish your turns", which means... make complete, rounded turns. That allows you to scrub off as much (or as little) speed as you want, before making a transition to the other edge. What novices sometimes do is sideslip, crank the board around in a rush, then sideslip the other side. That's survival, not turning.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Sorry - I'm an idiot - and a skier! Had failed to notice this is in the snowboard part of the forum. So just ignore me. But the advice from @phil_w to "finish your turn" is no doubt good for everybody.

When I joined a class of skiers rather better than I was, and said to the instructor I hoped I could keep up, he told me that the problem I'd find would be not to pick up too much speed! He did a series of beautifully controlled, slow, short turns down a red slope and told me to stay close behind him. I saw what he meant!!

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Best not to turn. Just send it.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

Assuming you're not talking about carving down the steeper stuff. Apologies if I'm teaching Granny to suck eggs here. With the caveat I'm not an instructor...
Back to basics:
Firstly you have to commit to the turn. No half measures, therefore exaggerate your body movements.
Understand that it is the front of the board that is important for turning. Get your weight over the front of the board (on your leading leg) as you initiate the turn. (Maybe slide the board behind you a bit just before the turn)
Think of the lower part of your front leg as a joystick. So when you initiate the turn with your shoulders do so with your joystick too. These two steps will mean the board does most of the work for you and will turn much quicker.
As you go through the turn your fore/aft weight needs to transfer from the front of the board to a more central distribution, also your left/right weight needs to go to the outside of the turn to keep the edge engaged.

Finish each turn as @phil_w, says.

If you turn with your rear leg you'll be out of control on the steeps, if you turn with the front of the board you should be much more in control.

Once you've sussed that, you can experiment with the vertical body positioning (rise and fall) and pressure through the turn. But you'll need a better boarder than me to fully explain all that!

After all it is free

I've spent quite some time skiing with snowboarders and although I'm not a snowboard instructor have often been able to diagnose issues by comparing what's happening with what I would expect from a skier. Most recently just a few weeks ago I was working with a mate to try and improve his short turns. Some of what we learned would seem to apply here, so I'll try and translate into board-speak.

His particular issue was that his heal-edge turn was much less in control than his toe edge, so we tried to work out why, and how to address it. He's a very experienced and competent boarder but was clearly extending more energy, with less control, on one turn than the other.

It was immediately evident that the heel-edge turn was skidding a lot more, was a much quicker rotation across the fall line and was gripping much less. It seemed that the skiing term 'rushing the turn' was appropriate here as well, he was basically flicking the board from one orientation to the other without letting its new uphill edge really engage and carve round, so once set in the new direction it did not have enough edge angle to let it continue to turn itself further uphill and needed to skid sideways in order to scrub off some speed.

So to one of your questions, no, you do not want to try and "get through the fall line quicker". Just like with skiing, this will reduce your control and the action you use to do it may well also cause an over-rotation where your body ends up pointing more uphill then the board, which unweights the front of the board and will case the rear to skid round and downwards, effectively starting to do a 'falling leaf'. (Sorry, I digress).

Like with skiing, the key seems to be to get your weight nicely downhill before the turn initiation, legs bent, hips quite low, shoulders pointing downhill, use the hips to start a rotation, get the new edge engaged a long way before the fall line, extend the legs to get a good angle and allow the board to come across the fall using its own edge shape as well as some steering input. This allows you to continue turning uphill until you've slowed to the desired speed for the next turn. The speed of rotation is the thing - let it happen, do not rush it, you will remain much more in control through the turn and expend much less energy.

So there's a lot of 'how' I haven't tried to address, cos I'm not a boarder and don't really know first-hand; but what we worked through started to show some benefits for my mate, although it also highlighted that he needs a new board, so he demoed one and will do so with a couple more before buying a new one when he's out again in a couple of weeks. His board was twisting quite a lot, particularly on the heel edge transition, so he didn't have a nice long flat curved surface to carve on, the demo board had much higher torsional rigidity so allowed him much better to work on thie smoother, more carvy, more controlled turn.

Dunno if this helps - snowboarders, and particularly if there's any instructors here, please feel free to point out where my explanation or assumptions are flawed!

Point it down the hill, avoid/roll with the bumps and trust in your ability to handle the speed.
Big wide turns arent really what you need on steep slopes, you end up picking up massive speed on one edge, then trying to switch to another wide angle on the other edge is much trickier and inevitably leads to chatter and feeling ot of control.
Better to pick your spot, embrace the speed and send it Laughing

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Watch Malcom moore he has some great tips for this tight turns .

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In answer to your question - yes and no: Its good to have some speed when doing a turn in order to get across the fall line quickly, but if you are pointing that speed down the hill then you can get very fast which makes closing out the turn more difficult - a good compromise is to have some speed going into the turn put point that speed across rather than down the mountain:

When learning - start off going across the hill, then do your 1st turn and end up going back across the hill the other way... it may take a little time to get back under control - once you feel ready you can do your next turn and head back across the other way - As you get better you can make the traverse bits shorter. Eventually you can get to a point where you are using your turns to control your speed.

In this way you cross over the fall line early on in the turn and can then be scrubbing speed as you go around it.

(But also, as @jimdonut says, jump on youtube and watch everything by Malcolm Moore)

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I'd suggest body position (like anything in snowboarding isn't!) but I'd suspect you're either putting too much weight on the back leg and the rear of the board is breaking grip and washing out, or you're overweighting the whole edge itself by leaning too far back up the hill.

Try to make sure you're keeping your hips and shoulders in line with the board, and try to rotate your feet outwards in your boots. It helps push your knees to line up with your feet and if you're off centre with your weight, it emphasises the sensation and you can correct it easily. Try it every few turns until you're more confident that your mass is staying centred but it's a useful thing to do anytime. And as always, keep those legs nice and soft to absorb the chop and bumps.

@Richard_Sideways, Old Ski Instructor adage, applies equally to boarders IME:
"It's the weight, too far back. It's _always_ the weight, too far back."

You know it makes sense.

Ahh - As with trying turning it off and back on again, when it stops working I'll stop suggesting it...

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

There's a huge crossover between boarding and skiing. But I found you have to be much more dynamic on the board.

A snowHead

Thanks all for replies, it's probably just a weight in wrong place at wrong time and timing type of thing. Ill be getting a lesson or 2 next season to iron it out. Don't have a major issue with reds that are venturing into blackish territory, just the reds that are blackish and upwards of that Laughing

A snowHead

Just to add an instructors point of view to the above posts:

The first thing is to realise sliding / skidding / smearing (what ever you want to call it) is not a bad thing, especially when you are on slopes at the edge of your comfort zone steepness wise.

The next is that you need to be doing equal braking on both edges.
It is very common to see riders edging very hard on their toes and whizzing across in a carved traverse and then turn onto their heels and do a massive sideslip. So they are doing 80% or even 100% of the braking on the heelside.
So if you are sliding more on the heelside than toeside, the solution is to learn to scrub more speed on the toeside before you try and grip more on the heels. This can daunting as you need to slide down the steep slope more blindsided. Only once you have balanced your turns should you work on trying to get more grip and performance.

To initiate the turn you need to commit weight to the front foot as suggested above but then the initiation should happen by flattening the front foot, not by a movement of the hips or shoulders as suggested. The steeper the slope, the further from flat the front foot is, so the bigger the range of movement needed in this movement. The more you commit weight to the front foot and pedal quicker / harder then the quicker the board will turn and then you will have less excess speed to manage, so to answer the initial question this is what will influence the turn size / speed rather than how fast or slow you are travelling to start with. Once the turn is happening you do then need to move the weight aftwards to get grip and prevent overrotation and washing out.

A bit of momentum will help with balance but as soon as you go too fast it is psychologically hard to commit to move forward into the next turn and so worth slowing down lots at the end of each turn so you commit to the correct movements into the next turn.

Hope that helps.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@snowrider, Good stuff. I'll file this away and see how it works when my mate's out again in a couple of weeks.

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Here's advice from a 30 season carver (umpf, that's long).

The key is proper technique, practice on flatter slopes, then gradually go steeper

Watch this excellent series of instruction video's. They key is to master up to carved turns, video 4.

https://www.frozen-backside.de/forum/

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

To me a turn isn't fundamentally affected by slope steepness. Its the same technique, same mechanics

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Summarized
1. Ride the rail for the full 100% of your turn, until you change sides
2. No scraping or side slipping, makes you loose control; watch your trail, must be a pencil line
3. Deep in your knees mid turn, extend at the end
4. Rotate gradually during the turn; hand and shoulder position like on a motorcycle
5. Avoid counter rotation at all cost
6. Body vertical, on mountain side rail at end of the turn
7. Switch side by extending legs, and letting yourself falling into the turn
8. Your body is now almost horizontal towards the valley, the valley rail in the snow
9. Yes, this commitment feels scary the first few times
10. Only then, make the turn from hillside to valley side

Once you are confident doing this, you can ride any slope, even the steepest.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

This video shows the technique.

Obviously this is an example by riders far better than most. Video shot at the 22nd yearly extremecarving event, in the famous black "Saint Barthelemy" piste in Zinal.

Enjoy!

http://youtube.com/v/wJwCDeM9_60?si=NmKcw3O7xwlgg4DS

After all it is free

@Onnem, In the early days of carving (skis) I recall one instructor, Ali Ross, was of a similar mind, believing that carving was the be-all and end-all of skiing, and that you could do it everywhere on everything all the time.

Most other instructors didn't agree and stuck with the tools in the toolbox idea, i.e. there are lots of ways of doing it, some more and some less appropriate for any given situation, the skill being to master them all and to know which tool to pick out of the box and when.

Turns are sometimes spilt into two basic types, which BASI rather confusingly call short and long, but in the Swiss system they're known as skidded and carved turns. The name is a clue. In ski racing we can see this aptly demonstrated, with Downhill being nearly all pure carved turns and Slalom being nearly all skidded ones.

The same is true for boarding, we have long, fast carving turns riding the edge of the board where the turn radius can be varied only by more or less angle/pressure to bend it to make a sharper turn; then we have generally shorter turns where we're rotating the board, making it turn more sharply than its natural turn radius. The second of these is inherently skidded, not carved. Even if you maintain a good angle through the turn and keep the edge engaged the front and rear are being forced, by the rider, to move slightly across the snow even while still gripping, the front edge being rotated inside the natural line and the rear edge outside of it.

Oh, and the video may be impressive, but pure carving it most certainly is not. Go to 1:05, watch the turn, see the massive amount of rotation the rider is putting into the board to transition from one turn to the next. The overhead shots from 1:03 also show a significant amount of snow being kicked up, a sure sign that the edge is being skidded.

Another tell-tale is the lack of a constant radius. A pure carve makes a nice S shape, those ones are half way to being a Z. What they're actually doing is a short turn into a long turn, a skidded edge and direction change followed by a grippy long carved turn across the piste, then back to another short skidded turn at the other side.

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Maybe I'm on my own, but that video is not snowboarding that I'm interested in.
Laying down on the slope to show how amazing a carver you are Laughing

might as well get a monoski

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http://youtube.com/v/qvxN9HZLDng?si=qnYaDPAv0G6OR01t

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Just curious, if a boarder was carving like the dude in the video on a normal piste on a normal day, would lots of other skiiers be getting peed off with him/her????

You know it makes sense.

@Rje66, skiers would think they've just fallen over, and tut and tsk accordingly.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Yes like others not a fan of the riding in the extreme carving video, no rhythm or flow, just a lot of poorly linked single turns.
The Malcolm Moore video is decent, but I wish it was filmed by an exterior camera person, the extreme fish eye effect on his camera distorts everything so much it does not give a clear image of the movements or slope.

But fundamentally it is understanding there are two types of turns, with different movements, so it not just a case of practising on easy slopes and then trying to do the same on steep slopes.
In a carve turn both feet tilt simultaneously and the board just moves in the roll axis.
In a steered turn the front foot tilts before the back foot and this causes the board to rotate in the yaw axis as well as rolling. Varying the timing of these movements allows you to make a wide range of turn shapes and sizes.

A snowHead

A snowHead

The topic opener asks what is best technique for turns on steeper slopes.

The instructions on the "frozen backside" are the best tutorial I know of.

By coincidence, I just got this video in my feed. One of the best displays of perfect technique I have seen in a long time.
The nice thing, it is shot by someone alongside at the same speed.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Pk47ms86K/

If you dislike carved turns, then you should not ask what is the best technique for turns on steep slopes.
I think 80% of people use wrong technique. Counter rotation is the ultimate technique errors. And very hard to un-learn once you are used to doing this.

Hochentlastung (don't know the term in English) is best for hero snow. Tiefentlastung is still carving, but is better suited for difficult snow and faster turns

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Just to update this I downloaded the current snowboard manual from the BASI members' area and it's changed quite a lot since the 2012 version that @phil_w linked to earlier. Different emphasis and early on it talks about three elements of turns - skidded, grippy and carved - rather than talking about two basic types, recognising that most of the time it's a blend of those three elements in some or other degree.

It does still talk, in the 'steeps' section, about rotation turns vs carved turns, so the essence of the 'two turn types' is still there. I'll copy the relevant section, as it's really a complete answer to the OP's original question:

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Flowing turns is apparently the name for the technique I recommend.
You change rail, and "dive" into the turn (vertical to horizontal position), before you make the turn itself.

Also make sure, to "evently spread" your rotation over the whole turn.
Hand and shoulder position like driving an motorcycle through the turn.

Takes some commitment the first few times, because it feels like falling into a ravine.

Again, watch this video, especially the first 40%. This guy does it with perfection.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Pk47ms86K/

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Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

OP here, I think my main problem is going from toe side to heel. Once I'm through the turn I'm not getting enough edge grip and I'm either leaning too far back and end up on my back bottom sliding down till I get grip again or I stay upright and don't have enough grip and slide down on edge till I regain grip and can go across piste enough to turn onto toe side and once on toe side sll is good till next turn onto heels. I've seen some videos where the highbacks can be adjusted forward but the rental ones didn't have this. I think I just need to keep weight central and lift up the toes once I'm on heels.....

After all it is free

Back botton???? Bum .....

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@Rje66, Just a couple of points from the manual that may be relevant. It's beyond my level though, so I can't really comment on how this may apply to what you're finding.

Help!!

Turns on steeper slopes

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