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One question I get a lot down in the comments is how to ride those skinny, narrow cat tracks where they're quite flat and there's not too much room to make a turn.
But my favourite comment that really sums it up is this one from Ruby who says, "Paths, my absolute nemesis." Thanks for dropping that comment down below.
And as a thank you, my clothing sponsor Yuki Threads are going to send you a voucher so you can buy some cool stuff.
Alrighty, let's get going.
So we're about to get onto a skinny flat.
And first, I'm going to show you the method that I normally use where I simply kind of rock my weight gently from edge to edge.
So my hips are over the heels.
Now they're over my toes.
Now they're over my heels.
And now they're over my toes.
So you can see it's just a small movement of me rocking my weight between my toe and my heel edge position.
And as I do this, my feet roll from their toes, through flat onto their heels, back through flat onto their toes.
And this really works well.
It keeps you in a narrow corridor.
But as you can see, even without much of a gradient, we're already picking up quite a bit of speed.
So what you can do to slow yourself down, but still stay within a narrow path, is to throw in a little speed check.
So you can kick the back foot out like that.
So that was a heel side speed check, which I'll do if I'm already on the heel side.
So I'm on my heels and I just rotate my lower body against my upper body.
And then I can pull it back to normal to slow myself down.
Or if I was already a little bit on the toe side, let me just show you, I could kick out the foot like that.
And it's a really effective way just to skid the board and slow yourself down.
Now, being able to do this, being able to rock from edge to edge, requires you to have pretty good edge control.
And learning to carve on some easy green slopes is really good practice for this.
And if you're not quite at that level yet, and if you find that you can't just gradually rock from edge to edge, then you might need to try and do something else.
So I'm just going to come to a stop here.
So I just used that speed check to come to a stop.
And now I'm going to show you another method that you can use.
So now I'm going to turn the board, but I'm going to keep the board without too much edge angle, so that when I turn it, I just introduce quite a bit of skid as well.
You can see the board's not gripping.
It's skidding each time I come around to the heels or onto the toes.
And that is just going to keep me going nice and slow.
But the unfortunate news is that this is also kind of tricky.
And you can see that to do this, I'm knee steering.
So left knee, right knee, left knee, right knee, left knee, right knee, back and forth across the board.
Because by using my legs independently, it kind of pedals my feet.
A little bit of ice there.
It kind of pedals my feet, front foot, back foot, front foot, back foot.
And ideally, you started to learn this movement when you started learning snowboarding in the folding leaf exercise, one of the first exercises you should have done.
But I do find this is a skill that a lot of quite competent snowboarders don't have.
They tend to just use the back leg, the back foot.
So you really need to make sure to be able to do this, and keep pressure over your front foot, and use your front knee and your front hip as a lever over the board to roll it from one edge to another.
So we've got a bit more gradient here.
I can just demo that a little bit better now.
Just making these small turns, using that skid there and there, just to slow myself down.
Front foot followed by the back foot.
One, two, one, two.
Okay, now I know that sometimes these paths are kind of unavoidable, and maybe you came here hoping for some sort of magic pill that you could just take, and suddenly those paths are going to be super easy.
But to use either of those methods, you need to have quite a solid sort of foundation of good technique.
So before you get out on the mountain and start, you know, exploring the runs and get stuck on a slope like that, spend a little bit of time on the learner slopes, and just get the fundamentals down.
I'll link a load of videos down below that will help with riding flats, with that method of just crossing the hips back and forward.
Some carving videos, which will just help get your weight in the right place there.
And I'll also put some other videos that are going to explain this knee steering movement.
And these movements aren't just good for riding flats.
If you can get these movements, they're really going to improve your overall riding and make you a much, much better rider.
So they're never nice, but with a bit of technique, you can make them quite easy.
Thank you for watching.
If you've got some questions, drop them in the comments below.
I've got a few more of these vouchers to give away to my favorite questions that I'll end up making videos for.
Thanks, and I'll see you in the next one.