I shouldn't be here.

I should still be hibernating.

It's only early October, but Austria has had some snow, so I made the trip over to Hintertux.

Once again, I'm starting my winter here, and the conditions right now are awesome up on the glacier.

I'll put a link to the area down below if you're interested in checking it out, but it's open now, and it's ready to go.

Today, because it is so early on in the season and a lot of you aren't even thinking about snowboarding yet, I didn't want to come at you too hard with anything too technical, but I just wanted to introduce a really simple idea because all the best ideas are simple ones.

Even though it's a simple idea, it is absolutely essential to implement what I'm about to tell you and implement this strategy into your riding if you want to get any sort of level of board performance.

We're going to think about a pendulum, an upside-down pendulum that rocks back and forwards like this.

In this analogy, the bottom of the pendulum right here, that is the base of your board.

The pendulum in this neutral position, not rocking anywhere, is the board on a flat base, and my arm up here, this is you.

This is your body.

This is your center of mass.

All we're going to do is start from there and then rock or lean or fall, however you want to call it, but drop your weight onto the inside of the turn and swing that pendulum back and forth.

I said drop your weight onto the inside of the turn, and it is by placing your center of mass on the inside of the turn that you're able to get the side cut of the board to engage and pull you around in a nice carved turn.

We're going to start off with a really simple drill that illustrates my point, and I'll show you how you bring it into some really simple basic carving.

Let me just get strapped in.

Whilst we're out here, I'm staying in the Alpenhof Berghaus Hotel.

They've hooked me up, and it's such a treat to be staying somewhere so nice, and particularly early on in the season when my feet are warmed up in the gym, and then when I'm off the hill, I love to go in between the sauna and the cold plunge pool.

It feels so good for your muscles.

I'll link that down below as well if you're interested in checking it out.

Now, after I fall over, back to the task at hand.

Here I am.

I'm going to put the board on a flat base position, point it in, lean in.

That's all you need to do, and look at my track behind me.

See how I've got a nice thin line in the snow, the board's gripping, the side cut of the board is engaged, and it's pulled me around the arc of the turn.

Let me show you one more on the hillside.

Pendulum's in that neutral position, lean back into the turn, side cut engages, board pulls you around.

Now, let's start to bring it into some carved turns.

All about rocking from the base of your board.

I'm neutral, lean in, and now lean back across.

The difference now is that my pendulum crosses that neutral position right there as I'm going across the slope.

That gives me an early edge change, which basically just means I'm changing edge and getting on my new edge before the board is even pointing down the slope in what we call the full line right here.

Lean into that position, pendulum crosses over, and just sit back there.

Let the board do the work.

Be lazy with this.

It's all about getting your weight in the right place.

I mean that with relation to the turn because so many people overthink stuff.

They're worried about what their posture is, how their feet are, what their stance angle is, what their stance width is, what their weight distribution is between their feet.

Really, the most important thing is this, just setting your weight in the right place in relation to the turn, which is always on the inside of the turn.

As the board is right here and right here, and then I just sit my weight on the inside of the turn and there's a balancing of my centrifugal forces that holds me on that nice carved arc through the turn.

This allows you to ride how your board was designed to be ridden.

Your board has a curved side cut purposefully for the purpose of allowing you to do just this.

Pendulum rocks over, lean onto the inside of the turn.

Pendulum rocks over, lean onto the inside of the turn.

If you can visualize this idea, honestly, you'll be able to get so much more out of your board and really get way more performance from it.

Early on in the season, it's just good to think a little bit about the theory of what we're trying to do and the image we want to create.

The reason I've been thinking so much about this recently is because at the end of last winter, I was filming loads of footage for an online course that I've been developing over the summer.

This is for anyone who can already turn, but you know the kind of rider.

Let me just show you a few turns.

You're not really getting that board gripping.

It's skidding a little bit, washing out, maybe kicking the back foot out and struggling on steeper slopes, things like that.

This course is for you.

It starts with this idea, this really simple idea of just dropping your weight onto the right place in the turn.

It's a linear progression, which means you can follow through it step by step.

Within each step, there's more drills and videos of exercises that will help you achieve that step if you're struggling with it.

It means you can work through it at your own pace.

It starts right here with this simple idea, getting the side cut of the board to engage by getting your weight in the right place using the simple pendulum analogy.

Then it really just builds on that and goes from that.

It starts to add in all these other things, steering, things like that.

The cool thing about it is because it's a progression, you start in one place and it takes you on this journey.

It's not like trolling through my YouTube trying to find the right video that's right for you.

This course will set you on the right track.

That was a bit of a heavy plug, guys.

It is a paid thing.

The link to it will be down below, but it allowed me to really achieve something that I'm not able to achieve just in these YouTube videos.

I will, of course, be making these free YouTube to do that because I know you're not all able to buy the course.

If you're really serious about improving your snowboarding, then I'm really proud of what I've created and it's worth checking out.

Link down below and there's more information about the entire course there.

Let's just do a few more turns and let's watch this pendulum analogy in action.

Flat base, neutral pendulum, lean it into the turn.

Let's go.

Crosses over, sit it right there.

It is so good to be back on snow.

I'm talking proper snow right here.

Sometimes when you come to these glacial resorts, you're on leftover patches of ice, but we have had fresh snow.

It's nice and grippy.

That's what allows you to see by tracking the snow underneath me.

All right.

Thank you guys for watching.

I'll be back probably a little bit closer to winter with more videos.

Can't wait.

Let's go.