We do it all the time as we make our way down the mountain, rolling from one edge to the other.

And the edge change can be seen as the start point of every turn you'll ever make.

So if you get it right, you'll set yourself up to properly control the arc of the turn.

So in today's video, I'm gonna run through some of my favorite and least favorite edge change exercises.

Some of them are downright stupid, but that doesn't stop people doing them.

And the reason I want to show you the bad ones is so that you get a better understanding of what you should and shouldn't be doing on your board.

Some of them are quite easy, some of them you'll find more of a challenge.

So without further ado, let's get into this video.

So let's start off with the worst one.

I call it the counter rotation trick, and it goes like this.

You literally swing your upper body around in the opposite direction to the lower body to change the board from heels to toes, toes back to heels.

So let's first give this drill some credit.

Why might it be used?

Well, as you can see, I am changing edge.

So on one hand, job done.

But in this case, the means don't justify the end.

That's because if you start adopting this method into your riding, it will completely hamper your progression and you won't move far beyond this level of wishy-washy skidded turns, which means you're not going to get much further than these mellow piste slopes either.

But the main reason why this exercise is so useless is because it promotes counter rotation.

And when you bring that into your turns, it does two really bad things.

Firstly, it always leads to your back foot skidding out.

Skidding can be seen as the opposite of gripping, therefore we want to eradicate it as much as possible from our riding.

And secondly, counter rotation puts you in a weak position.

If your body is twisted and not aligned properly over the board, then you're just going to make life much harder for yourself.

I can get away with this bad posture on these beginner slopes at slow speeds, but in more difficult terrain and going faster, it just won't hold up.

So that is why counter rotation should not be seen as a solution to making an edge change.

It can be useful in some scenarios.

For instance, if you want to quickly slow down and make a speed check, or it's also used in a load of freestyle tricks.

And I have in fact made a video that I'll post in the description down below where I go over three simple freestyle tricks that use counter rotation.

So it has its place, but helping you get better at turning is not where you should be using it.

So now let's move on to exercise number two.

Leading with the front arm.

This exercise follows a similar theme to the first one in that we are focusing on movements made with our upper body.

But this one is a lot better because at least this time, your upper body is moving in the same way that you want the board to go.

So let's take a look to see how it works.

You keep your shoulders in line with the board, but when you want to change edge, you turn your front arm down the hill ahead of the board.

Now this exercise can work.

You can see my turns don't actually look too bad, but obviously I'm doing other things that this exercise doesn't cover.

For instance, it doesn't tell us anything about how I cross my center of mass over the board at the edge change.

So sometimes it can be an effective way of getting people to turn, but really it's just not an effective way of turning.

That is because it is a very delayed way of making the edge change.

The movement, it starts up here with your head, your shoulder, your arm coming over the board.

And that movement gradually works its way down your body, through your core, into your hip, your knee, and your ankles.

The things that are actually turning the board.

So you can start to see that if it's our lower body that's turning the board, if that's the thing that's really having an effect on where our board goes, maybe we should start thinking about if that's where we should begin the movements at our edge change.

So we'll come onto that in a minute.

But for me, the real reason why I hate this exercise is that because although people like me can pull my arm around and make it look nice and easy, the reality is that for a lot of beginners, if you make this movement, if you turn this arm around like that, oh, I almost did it there.

I don't really want to do it.

It is very easy to catch an edge.

So this is a dangerous exercise.

I don't recommend it.

Let's move onto the next one.

Standing up to change edge.

This exercise covers all important movement of crossing your center of mass over the board at the edge change.

Get the timing of it wrong, as is all too easy in the last exercise, and you'll catch an edge.

But with this exercise, you can safely cross between your heel and toe edge positions without worrying.

So make sure you begin by traversing across the slope.

Then as you stand tall, your board will flatten underneath you and you simply sink down onto your new edge and then repeat for the next turn.

Now you'll see that the movements really aren't much at all.

But by standing tall, my hips are drawn over the middle of the board, letting me safely roll from one edge to another.

So this is a great exercise as it really simplifies the idea of turning.

And in fact, by just making these movements, you'll be able to perform some basic carve turns like I'm doing right now.

But it isn't higher on the list because it's still not the most effective way to turn your snowboard.

For that, we need to get into knee steering.

I'm going to set this up with a task that's pretty easy to grasp, but trust me, it's more difficult than it looks.

I want you to imagine you're in a supermarket shopping aisle and it's really narrow.

We've got wine bottles stacked on one side and baked beans stacked on the other side.

We don't want to send them tumbling.

So give me a watch, see if you can figure out what's going on first, and I will explain what I'm doing.

So I start off in a side slip.

I'm going to try and just turn my board around a point, staying within that narrow corridor as I go between toes, heels, and back to toes again.

Now, I said this exercise is all about knee steering, and staying within this narrow corridor really makes you have to isolate certain movements.

And the key movement that I'm making is pulling my front knee out across over the board.

I want you to imagine you've got two levers sticking out the top of your knees, or two ski poles jammed down your boots.

At the moment, on my toe edge, they're both pushed forward.

When I want to make the turn, I'm going to pull my front lever around first, and the back lever is going to follow.

Watch this.

Pull it around, back one follows.

The same thing happens as I go from heels to toes, but it's just in the opposite direction.

Right now, both levers are back.

Push one forward, follow with the back one.

As you can see, it doesn't look like I'm doing much, but it's clearly a really effective way to get the board to turn around on a point.

And the effect of moving my knees over the board is that I get what you might have heard as something called foot pedaling.

On my toe edge, my feet are like this.

As I roll my knees around, my front foot flattens, back one follows.

Same thing happens as I go from heels to toes.

Foot flattens, back one follows.

But as I just explained it, I much prefer to talk about using the knees as levers, because if you think about foot pedaling, it can be tempting to kind of slam your foot down, and really your feet are quite passive.

The movement comes from your knees, pulling them across over the top of the board.

Stick with this one, because despite it not looking like the most exciting thing to do, these small independent knee steering movements are a necessity for higher end riding.

And this exercise is the ultimate test of whether you can perform those movements or not.

For me, that drill is essential if you want to master complete control of your snowboard.

It really isolates that knee steering movement specifically, but you'll see big improvements to your overall riding when you bring it back into all your turns, wherever you are on the mountain.

Now, it's not higher on the list, because despite looking really easy, it's actually pretty complicated.

And you can achieve the same task, that is those turns, side slip to side slip, within a narrow corridor, by regressing all the way back to what I showed you in drill number one, where you just counter rotate like this and this, and you don't want to do that one.

So if you're doing it, make sure you're getting it right.

And if you want to go further in depth into that knee steering movement, I've got a video that I'll post in the description down below that shows you really how to do it.

It takes you through all the steps and then shows you how to apply it to much higher level riding.

I really hope you guys are enjoying this exercise list and through it, you're gaining a better understanding of some of the movements you can make to help turn your snowboard.

And if it is helping you, it'd be great if you could hit that like button, because that will help YouTube to push it out to a wider audience who might benefit from this video.

Now, let's get on to some of the very best exercises you can do to help with that edge change.

In second place, it's the ski pole drill.

This drill is excellent because it is so simple, yet so effective.

And it focuses on all the fundamental building blocks of your riding.

Let me explain.

All you do is rest the pole between the palms of your hands and the top of your thighs.

Your posture is sorted simply by keeping the pole parallel to the line of your board throughout the turn.

As the board points down the slope, your upper body goes with it.

You can check your center of mass is in the right place simply by looking down.

On the toe edge, the pole should be stacked vertically over the toe edge.

And on the heel edge, it will be stacked vertically over the heel edge.

When I change edge, I can see the pole and therefore my center of mass move over the center line of the board.

And if I'm introducing some knee steering from the last exercise, I will see the pole turn just ahead of my board.

This is what the second exercise, the arm out in front exercise, was trying to get you to do.

But in this one, your whole body stays much more coordinated and moving as one machine rather than as a collection of disjointed parts.

The pole is a clear visual guide that keeps you in the right position.

And if you make sure not to actually hold the pole, but just rest it between your hand and the top of your thighs, then if you twist or rotate too much, the pole will drop, letting you know you've made a mistake.

Now this exercise is so good that yes, of course, I have in fact dedicated an entire video to it, which again is linked down below.

Finally, we come on to my favorite edge change exercise of all time.

Now I probably would say the last one is actually one of the better ones in that it's so easy to teach and apply it to your riding.

But this is just a really great exercise to challenge yourself.

It's carved edge wiggles.

And essentially, it just takes that knee steering movement that we learned in that narrow corridor exercise that applies it to much more advanced riding.

Carve across the slope, stay low and isolate the knee steering movement from the earlier exercise to make quick edge changes back and forth without turning past the full line.

Now, this exercise is challenging.

It takes all the fundamentals you've perfected in the ski pole exercise, but completely alters the timing and the duration.

See how quickly my knees smash back and forth over the top of the board.

And I don't hold onto the turn either.

After each edge change, I immediately rock back onto my initial edge as many times as I can before I get to the other side of the piece.

Now, try not to swing your back leg out as this will result in the back end of your board skidding out.

So guys, give this one a go.

And if you can get it, you can then bring those quick early edge changes back into your normal riding.

As I mentioned in the intro, the earlier in the turn you can set your new edge, the earlier in the turn you're in control of the path of your board.

There's hundreds of exercises that you can do to help with your edge changes.

So if you've got a favorite, stick it down below and help someone else out.

Or if you've got a least favorite, if you've done a terrible one, perhaps you've seen other people doing it, or you were taught it yourself, put it down as well and we'll warn people not to do that one.

Thank you guys for watching and I'll see you in the next one.

I just spied some instructors teaching that exact drill.

Hopefully they're using it as an example of what not to really do, but it doesn't really seem like it to be honest.

So yeah, you do get it.

How you doing mate?

Yeah mate, yeah.

There's my filmer.

Absolute workhorse he is.