Drills for alpine carving

Contributed by tom. January 2005.

One of the main comments that I get on my snowboarding technique is that I'm "C-shaping" -- bending at the waist instead of standing tall. Now that I've have about 20 times on the board, it's time to get rid of bad habits before they really stick! The helpful carvers on the BomberOnline forums gave me a number of suggestions on how to work on addressing this problem.

To see the recommendations from folks on BomberOnline, click here.

MOVIE

Following are some pictures of what happened, and a video that Lisa shot so that I could see what I was doing...

I tried two things, mainly: lifting the inside arm way high while reaching down to the boots with the outside hand, and keeping my arms in front of me as if holding a tray of drinks. I found the latter ("tray") exercise more helpful -- and I will go back to the first one once my position is straighter, I think it'll be good for getting my knees more bent.

"Holding the tray"

Next is a sequence of a heel-side turn using the "tray" technique. Looking at them I think that I need to concentrate on two more things -- looking in the direction that the turn will happen, and keeping my eyes higher. I think that I'm still looking at the snow and that's causing me to hunche some...

Decent angulation, inside arm is up, I think I should get my torso turned a bit more

Even better angulation, hip almost touching snow, is the outside hand trailing a bit too far back?

Pretty straight back

The board is bending, back still fairly straight

I had my share of wipeouts, pretty spectacular in today's conditions -- last night's 3 inches of snow, groomed this morning.

Wipeout!

Thanks again to everyone who offered suggestions. I'm off to practice more tomorrow, it's feeling great!