This is what I think about all the time when I'm riding, and it's what I'm looking at when I'm teaching and watching other people ride.

It's not a specific movement or technique.

It's not a certain posture or stance.

Instead, it is your turn shape, your line down the mountain.

And that line is an S shape.

We call them S turns, and they are the most important thing that you need to get right if you want to snowboard well.

Now, every time I talk about the importance of making turns, which, to be fair, is something I do quite a lot, I get some strange comments from angry people who seem dead set on riding, well, like this.

Now, this method doesn't take up much space, and it does, in fact, allow you to get down the mountain very quickly.

So if it works, why am I advising against it?

Ugh!

Well, like it says in the title, this video is for people who want to snowboard well, which, to me, means that you want to be able to ride everything.

And that method of riding, where you just skid your way down the mountain, only works on groomed slopes.

As soon as you try to take that technique into powder, tight trees, bumpy terrain, moguls, basically anywhere else, then much like a scuba diving sheep, you're going to be out of your depth.

S-turns are how we control our speed down the mountain without skidding.

So, rather than controlling your speed by scraping the board against the snow, we'll instead use the shape of our turns to cut us left and right across the slope, meaning that you are turning against the full line.

The full line is the path that gravity would take down the slope, or the path in which a ball would roll down the mountain.

And by cutting against the path of gravity, you slow yourself down.

Now, you can adjust the size of your S-turns to give you complete control of your speed.

So, bigger S-shaped turns are going to have you spending more time in the full line.

Therefore, that's going to allow you to keep more speed on mellow slopes.

Whilst if you make small, tight, little S-turns, you spend less time in the full line, therefore less time accelerating, making them ideal for steeper slopes.

And one thing that is key to S-turns is that your board is always riding forwards.

It is always running nose through to tail.

Now, this might sound a little bit obvious, but let's quickly look at a skidded turn.

Here, you can clearly see that I'm traveling and going in one direction, but the board is pointing in a different direction.

Like a car that has lost control, you are drifting.

In an S-turn, I'm always going in the same direction as my board.

It's like a car gripping to the track and finding the racing line.

And this is how your board was designed to be ridden.

And this is why S-turns will allow you to ride everything.

On piste, this allows you to engage the side cut of the board and have it pull you through the arc of the turn.

In powder, it allows the nose to lift you up on top of the snow, and then you get the full surface area of the entire length of the board underfoot to keep you afloat.

And in bumps or tight trees, this turn shape is how you navigate around obstacles.

Snowboarding is very simple, and if you can make proper S-turns, you'll be well on your way to really being able to ride the whole mountain, any terrain, in any conditions.

So in this video, I will now take you through each phase of the turn so you know exactly what you need to do in order to master your S-turns.

And guys, if you're finding this video helpful, the one thing you can really do to help me out, and the only thing the YouTube gods seem to really care about at the moment, is just to let this video run to the end.

That would be awesome.

Let's get going.

The first thing we're going to do is pull apart those two arcs of the S-turn, because that will allow us to focus on this bit right here.

And the end of one turn is the start of the next.

And if we don't get that bit right, then the whole turn is messed up.

So we're going to stretch it out, and that means it will look like this, a carved traverse across the piste.

And this is the first thing you need to be able to do.

So, for your toe side, I want you to bend your knees so you feel your shins pressing down into the front of your boots.

Nudge your hips forward, stack them vertically above your edge, and lean slightly to the hill to help you tilt the board onto its edge.

With your upper body, keep your shoulders pretty much in line with the board, and keep your head turned to look where you're going.

For the heel side, you just want to drop your hips back behind the board.

You're going to feel your weight going down into the heels of both feet.

And try not to rely on lifting your toes up or anything like that.

You don't need to do that to create the necessary edge angle.

Instead, you just lean back a little, again, leaning into the hill, so that the back of your legs presses against the back of your high backs, and that will tilt the board up onto its edge.

Now you've got that, we're going to make sure that you can make an early edge change.

And all that means is that you can roll the board from one edge to another whilst it's going across the slope, and that the edge change is completed before the board is pointing down the slope and in the full line.

The early edge change is crucial to achieving the smooth arc of the top part of the turn.

Notice that the edge change does not mean that the board is turning.

The turn will begin once the edge change has been completed.

Edge change, and then turn.

You don't need to kick your feet out or try to push the board around in any way.

Now, there are a few different techniques you can employ when changing edge, but the only thing that absolutely needs to happen is that your center of mass must pass over the top of the board.

Now, every edge change, I like to imagine that I'm falling over the top of the board or falling down the slope, or that gravity is pulling me across the top of the board, because that is what's happening.

Because we've cut across the slope, we've cut across the full line, the board's going this way, we're going that way, but we know that gravity is trying to pull us down that way, and I'm just going to let it.

You can imagine it like you've got a piece of string attached to your belly button.

You're coming across the slope, and you just allow gravity to pull on that string.

That rocks your center of mass over the board, and that's how I'm able to make these effortless edge changes from toes to heels, and back from heels to toes.

And all you really need to focus on doing after the edge change is getting down low into a strong position on your new edge all by the time that you reach the full line.

Because as soon as you pass this point right here, as soon as you pass the full line, gravity wants to keep pulling you down, and the momentum of your own mass wants to expel you out of the turn.

So if you want to hold your edge, then we need to talk a little bit more about posture and what that strong position is.

This taller, more upright position we held for the carve traverse earlier was a good starting point, but it's not going to be enough to hold against the forces that are created through the lower part of the turn.

And as you can see, it doesn't take much for Adam here to pull me down the slope.

So what we need to do is drop our hips back behind the board, and suddenly, I'm in this much stronger position.

I've created more edge tilt, but most importantly, I've placed my center of mass in between me and my board, but in line with the direction that the forces are pulling me.

Really try and pull me here.

The faster you're going, the harder the turn is, the more you can really sink down into this position.

Now, as you come round onto the toe side, the analogy doesn't work quite so well here because I'm a little bit twisted, but the theory is the same.

Once again, this taller position we held for the carve traverse, very easy for Adam to pull me back, but as I just bend my knees and drop my hips down onto the inside of the turn, I'm going to create more edge tilt right there, and I can just balance my way easier on the inside of the turn.

So drop the hips down, but don't just kind of dip your shoulders into the turn as well.

You can see my back remains a little bit straighter, a bit more in line, stacked over the top of the board, and it's by doing this on the toe side as well, you'll be able to hold yourself through that low part of the turn.

So that is how you get through that lower part of the turn, and then we're back into that carve traverse once again.

So the forces acting against you will have now subsided, which means you can come up out of that low position that you were just holding, and we're going to use that movement, that slight standing up movement, as an impetus for the next edge change.

As I come through the bottom of the turn, I'm just going to give a slight push against the board to bring my hips up and over the top of it, thus taking me into the next turn.

It's not a big movement, so don't over-exaggerate it.

Just a small push against the snow to propel you into the next one.

And the final step is to eliminate this static part here, that carve traverse.

So what we're going to need to do is make sure that we have the timing and the coordination of those movements down, so that as soon as one turn is finished, the board's gripping, and you can prop yourself up and over into the next one.

So that is how you make S turns.

You get the board gripping across the slope, so you can then make an early edge change.

Use that early edge change to help set you in a strong position to have your board gripping throughout the rest of the turn, and then push up and out from that strong position to cross your center of mass over the board and into the next turn.

If you do this, you'll get a smooth arc to your turn, and that smooth arc is how we successfully redirect our center of mass from traveling one way across the slope to going the other way across the slope, which is all turning really is, going left and right.

It's the first thing you learn and the last thing you master, but having a solid S turn is the most crucial skill to learn in order to be able to ride any terrain and tackle any conditions.

Once you have that as your base, you can then add in the extra finesse, things like more fore pressure at the top part of the turn to pull the board around in a tighter arc useful for steeper slopes, or perhaps more pressure through the back foot to help stop you nose diving in the powder, but everything starts with that S.

I want to take a moment to thank everybody who's been purchasing my online course.

I put a lot of time and effort into it, and I really appreciate hearing all the positive feedback.

The course takes you through a step-by-step progression that takes you through everything you need to do if you really want to perfect your turns.

There's a lot of detailed content in there, much more that I could ever fit into a YouTube video like this, so if you're interested and you're serious about really improving your riding, then you can check it out by the link down below.

Now, before we wrap up, I want to briefly cover turn size.

I haven't really gone over all the techniques for short turns in this video.

They're still S turns, they still follow the exact same formula that we've just been through, but there's a few more intricate movements required to properly achieve them, and I've described all of those movements in great detail in this video up here, or if it isn't shown in the screen, I'll also link it in the description down below.

So thank you for watching, and I will see you in the next one.

Sweet.