By standing up, it becomes easier to pass your hips across the board and change edge.

It makes it easier to move between your toe and heel edge positions.

But today, I want to run you through two quick drills that will help you understand when you should be using these vertical movements, not only to help you change edge, but how you can use them to help you find grip, build pressure under your board, and then release it too.

There's different ways to time this movement, but today I'm going to talk about it in a really usable way that will really help you ride well on all groomed pieces of any gradient.

Drill one is to come to a stop and then edge hop.

Practice this on both edges.

To come to a stop, you'll need to center your weight in the middle of the board and lean into the slope.

To make it easier, you should naturally sink down into a more balanced position.

That is a down movement that we're going to come back to.

Then for the hop, you'll extend up to make the jump and that is going to be the up movement.

What you'll find is that in order to make the jump easily, you'll need to have the board come to a complete stop.

This means that when you extend your legs, you have a solid platform of snow to push against.

If you're still skidding when you try and jump, well, you're just going to end up pushing the board away from you rather than transferring your up movement, that vertical energy into a jump.

Drill two is now to do that hop in a traverse across the slope.

Like how the first drill taught us that we need a solid platform to push against for the jump, the same rule applies here.

Obviously, we're moving, so now to have that solid platform or a ledge to push against, then we need to be balanced on our edge and again, not skidding.

You should be traversing across the slope, leaving a thin line in the snow behind you.

To help you get that, you need to lean into the slope, stay centered over the middle of the board, and also flex your lower body joints to get down low and make that down movement, which will help you balance in this position.

Then once you're locked in, you can make the up movement, extend against the board to jump whilst riding across the slope.

Once again, if you try to jump whilst skidding, then really you're not going to have much luck with this.

Now by doing these two drills, what have you learned and what can we take from this into our riding?

Well, down movements or flexing can help us find grip on the board.

In the first drill, we use them to help us come to a stop.

In the second drill, we use them to help us get the board balanced on an edge and traversing across a slope.

Then because the up movements, the extension movements, apply more pressure through the board, you only want to use those the board is already gripping and the edge is digging in.

Then at the end of that up movement, that is the biggest release of pressure, exaggerated in the drills with an actual jump where the board is weightless underfoot.

Therefore, that is going to be the exact time that we want to make the edge change.

Now let's bring those movements into your turns.

We carry on in a similar vein to the second drill, but rather than doing a jump, this time when you up and over the board for the edge change, you'll then sink down onto the new edge.

We know that by sinking down lower, this is going to help you get the board gripping in the snow.

As the board grips into the snow and pulls you through the turn, you can then stop pushing against it, but only if it is already gripping because otherwise, you're just going to push it away from you.

Then you use that extension to push you up and over the board for the next edge change.

Now you see that when I'm sinking down and standing up, I'm not actually moving a great deal and you really don't need to exaggerate these movements for them to have the desired effect.

Now, in all honesty, you might not need to fully understand exactly what flexing and extending does to your board so long as you know when to use them, but I do believe that by understanding what's happening, you'll become much better rider because you will know how the inputs, that's the things you do on top of your board, affect the outputs, the things the board actually does underneath you.

I'll get fully into that in a second, but first, I just want to say that hiring a good instructor will help you get there quicker.

That's why this season, I'm promoting Ski Bro.

They're a booking platform that lets you browse hundreds of instructors across European ski resorts so that you can find the right instructor for you and you know exactly who you are getting, what their qualifications are, and where their specialities lie.

You can spend a lot of money on lessons, so you want to make sure that it's a worthwhile investment.

I'll put a link for Ski Bro down below.

Taking lessons is a great idea, whatever your level, and Ski Bro will help you get the most out of that experience.

Now, let's get onto the timings of these vertical movements.

I'm going to bring in my trusty S-shape diagram.

This is the exciting part.

The edge change happens up here.

That's so long as you did in drill number two, where you did that jump at the end of the turn when you're going across the slope.

That's the same point that you're then going to stand up to make the edge change, which means at that top part of the turn, you're therefore quite tall and not particularly well balanced and not in a strong position to find grip.

You need to immediately start sinking down into a lower position to help.

The good news is that you have time, provided that you made the edge change up there.

That's why an early edge change is so important.

You can then use this top part of the turn just to sink down and get into a strong position because all you're doing is going with gravity, having the board go down the slope, which doesn't require any effort on your part.

As soon as you pass the full line, that point right there, then that is when gravity wants to keep pulling you down.

Your momentum wants to keep pulling you down so that by that point there, that is where you want to have found yourself in that strong position to give you the best chances of having the board grip as you come through the lower part of the turn.

Now, you might find that grip right away, or you might find it after a little bit of skidding, but it's important not to try and push against the board and try to extend up and over the board for that next edge change until you found grip and your board has its edge digging in, giving you a platform from which to push off from.

Otherwise, that vertical movement is going to be wasted and you're going to push yourself out into a skid.

Now, to get even more techie.

If you don't find that platform until the end of the turn right there, that's no problem.

It's absolutely fine.

In shorter, tighter turns on steeper slopes, you likely won't have the edge fully digging in until the very end part, but on a larger turn on a more mellow slope, you might already be fully carving and in a low position early on in the turn.

Then you can progressively push against the board to decamber it.

That is to bend it into reverse camber, which will tighten up the arc of the turn.

Then as you reach your high point to change edge, the boards will snap back and pop you into your turn.

Give that a go.

Bring those vertical movements into your riding to help you pass your center of mass up and over the board and to help you make an edge change.

Use what you learned in drill number one to get down low and find a strong position to help you achieve grip.

Then use what we did in drill number two where we took that grip in a clean traverse across the slope.

You don't need to do the jump, but make sure you finish the turn, you're going across the slope and you have that platform to push against before you extend up to come over the board.

Then in more higher level riding, you can practice pushing against that platform to decamber the board and try and get more aggressive carve turns.

Thank you for watching.

That'll do.

I'll see you in the next one.