I'm back in Zermatt with the Matterhorn in the background and up here on the glacier today we have awesome conditions on the piste so I thought why don't we talk about starting to carve a little bit harder and in this video I'm going to talk about things that you might hear other people mentioning or other people talking about in videos but you don't necessarily know what they mean things like driving the board through the turn how to bend the board into reverse camber to tighten up the arc of the turn how to load it up and then have it rebound you into the next one in this video I'm going to talk about all of that and more when you're carving you're pushing against the board it might not look like it but even in this most basic of set it and forget it style carving I'm still pushing against the board and that's because my center of mass is here on the inside of the turn which means that as I come through the arc of the board and that is what makes it grip in the snow and pull you around the arc of the turn just like this and the more that you can push against your board the more you'll be able to bend it into reverse camber and it's by bending your board into reverse camber that it allows you to create carve turns with a tight arc that really whip you round but in order to be able to bend the board into reverse camber first you need a high edge angle so let me show you so this is my board on a toe side carve and if you look down here you can see there's a little gap underneath the board but when you're pressing against it push and flatten that gap down and it's this movement here that starts to bend the board into reverse camber but the higher an edge angle you have the more you open up this here and the more room you have to really push against the board and bend it into reverse camber and in order to do that in order to create a high edge angle you really need to rock your center of mass far onto the inside of the turn and to do that you need to have some speed too slow and you can't lean in that much but too fast you'll then exert so much pressure against your board that it will be difficult to hold it in its track and you'll skid out so speed is your friend but only up to a point now I'm going to talk about riding with an open body position with your shoulders more turned open facing in the direction that you're going I'm riding like this allows you to get into a really strong position and create higher edge angles you do this by being able to pull your hips further onto the inside of the turn and as you do this it's also going to help you drive more pressure and drive the board through the turn with the back leg which I'll get on to in a minute now I've made a video on riding with an open body position but for this video I just want you to think about two things and that is when you're on your heel side open up your shoulders so your front arm should be out here and think about dipping your back arm almost down towards the board so you're going to grab Indy as you dip this arm down that's what's going to kind of pull your hips onto the inside of the turn and it's also going to make your toes want to lift up and create those high edge angles so backhand dipping down towards the board like that now let's spin around onto the toe side so once again open up that body position facing more in the direction you're going and to really thrust those hips onto the inside of the turn here I want you to think about with your front hand dipping that arm down towards the heel edge of the board it's that kind of movement there and it's really common when you see people trying to carve it's cool to touch the snow with your hand but often this leads to people breaking at the waist and trying to do that when in fact we want the opposite thing to happen we want the hips to come forward onto the inside of the turn there and to really help you achieve that you're really going to just dip that front arm down kind of like as though you want to touch the high back of your front binding that position right there first practice these movements with some slow speed carving to get the hang of it and on the toe side you should feel that as your hips nudge into the turn it's as though your front arm is reaching down and trying to grab the top of your high back on your front foot on your heel side it's gonna feel like you're trying to grab Indy and in fact you can actually do a heel side carve whilst grabbing Indy which is basically an exaggeration of this movement now the equivalent toe side drill is fun to do where you reach down and grab melon so that is front hand between the bindings on your back edge but to get down that low you need to actually pull the hips back across the board and in that exercise the high edge angle is just made by a big lateral movement so leaning into the slope whereas we're looking to angulate the hips onto the inside of the turn and create the edge angle that way because it's a much stronger position so fun exercise but it doesn't necessarily translate to what we're trying to do here and by opening up that body position it really allows you to drive that back knee into the middle of the board and it's the middle of the board that we're really trying to bend let me just kind of pull this around see if you can see my knee tucked in there that comes really naturally as soon as you open up this body position see it on my low edge there that knee tucked in and when you get that when you get that right you have the sensation that you're really driving the board through the turn but it's driven from your back leg it's not kicking the back leg out but instead it's using the back leg to find more grip and more power through the turn by engaging the back end of the board and then when you change edge you're gonna release that pressure that you've been building throughout the turn and the board will snap back to its natural shape and this is the rebound that people talk about that you can get at the end of a turn it's the board snapping back into its original shape and it's a great feeling it's like the reward at the end of each turn you worked throughout the turn and the harder you worked the more pop you're gonna get to drive you into the next one but it isn't all back foot throughout the whole arc of the turn at the end part yeah sure you're really driving the board through the turn with the back foot but at the edge change that's where you still want to torsion Lee twist the board and drive your front knee front hip over the board to land your weight on that part of the board there so you engage that top part of the side cut because that top quarter of the turn there that top of the turn that's where you want to have your weight at the front of the board so that really pulls you into the arc of the turn and when that front foot has passed over and the front of the board and you've engaged that edge then the board has kind of set you on a track and from there you can then release the back foot feel the back foot pressing in through the board and from there that's when you can really start to drive the board through the turn from that back foot this is for and off movement in play the basic theory is that you can work your weight from nose to tail throughout the turn start of the turn nose middle of the turn weight through the tail now that's a good starting point to think about this weight shift but you can really play with it and see how the board reacts in these turns I'm shifting my weight towards the back end pretty quickly after the edge change and no this isn't going to look like a massive movement on top of the board I'm still pretty stacked over the board and you can't see a massive change it's more just how much pressure I'm applying through each foot so there you have an introduction to aggressive carving you need some speed so you can put your center of mass onto the inside of the turn and balance it there you want to create a high edge angle that's going to allow you to push against the board and bend it into reverse camber and the more you can push that board into reverse camber the tighter you're going to be able to carve so that's how it works and the things like opening up your shoulders dipping your shoulder down towards the board and really pushing through that back leg they're optional you know there's other ways you can very very effective in helping you achieve aggressive carving now before I wrap this up I'm just going to very quickly go over some of the frequently asked questions I always get when talking about this subject so everyone always asks my stance angles and in this video I'm riding plus 18 minus 9 so I'm slightly turned forward compared to a duck stance but I'm nowhere near to the posi posi angles that some riders like to ride when I'm riding my park board I minus 12 on my back foot so that's much closer to that equal duck stance and I was actually going to talk now a bit more about whether you should go full positive and this footage you can see in the background is with me riding full positive so here I've got plus 27 on the front and plus 6 on the back and this is something I've only really started to dabble with but I've come across a video it's this one that I'm putting up here right now in that top corner and this I really covers this subject so if you're interested in posi posi angles then check out Lars from the just a ride channel he really has a wealth of knowledge that I think you'll find pretty interesting