Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • All right, do I use knee steering and can you use knee steering in carving?

  • Absolutely, I'm doing it right now and it can help you get slightly more snappy edge changes and a bit more power through the end of a turn as well as a bit more grip at the start of your next turn.

  • So knee steering, which I'll link some videos down below, is the idea, or not the idea, the movement where you make every edge change, you initiate every edge change with the front ankle, knee and hip and then you follow with the back ankle, knee and hip.

  • You get this kind of one-two, one-two, front leg, back leg, front leg, back leg movement and it's normally associated with the type of turns I was just doing there, the shorter turns like that because when you open up that front knee you can really pull yourself around into the turn, it creates a bit of rotation through your upper body where you turn ahead of the board and then it's kind of unwind that rotation and you can really encourage the board to pull around through the turn in a over the board as one big unit like that and right now I'm just moving both my knees, hips together and I am still carving pretty well but you can bring knee steering into your carving as I mentioned at the top to get a little bit more performance out of the board.

  • So let me just show you what I mean.

  • If I'm going to come around, if I get a bit of space, you'll let these skiers go past, they're going past, no they're not, so coming through the heels I turn and I just pass my front knee and hip over the board followed by the back as I come from the heels, front knee and hips followed by the back and what that allows me to do if I maintain pressure through my back foot, through my back heel at the end of the turn I can keep the board steering up the slope, I can maintain grip but at the same time I'm simultaneously crossing my front knee and hip over the board to initiate the next edge change and then as soon as that shin starts pressing down into the boot I engage this top part of the board here, I'm starting to get grip on the toe side and I can just release that back knee and hip over the board and the board just slots into that toe side groove that I've created.

  • So that's the heel to the toe side turn and when I'm going from toes to heels again at the end of the turn just hold this back knee in place, keep your back hip stacked over the top of the board, that's going to keep giving you grip through the latter part of the turn whilst you can simultaneously pull that front knee, pull that front hip over the top of the board engage your edge and what this means is you get this edge change where you've never really got this kind of dead flat spot which even though you don't get it for very long it's better not to have that at all and you'll be able to see your track in the snow as soon as one turn has finished and the other one begins.

  • Let me see if I can actually just show you that.

  • So I'm going to make a few turns and I'll try and get back up to my track so you can see.

  • Come around on the heel side, pull the board around.

  • Can I get back up there?

  • Am I going to walk up?

  • Probably not.

  • Okay you're going to have to take my word for it, as soon as one track finished the next one started.

  • You get grip through the very end of the turn and because you're kind of holding that grip through the back end of the board it actually really kind of powers you and springs you into the next turn as well.

  • So the timing of the movement is very very quick, a-bam, a-bam, front leg back leg.

  • It's almost at exactly the same time which is why to be honest when I am teaching basic carving and in my previous carving video I talked about I did just say to kind of cross your upper body, your center of mass over the board as one unit, it still works but if you want to get the most out of your board hold that back foot in as you open up and pull the other one around.

  • So let's just make some turns here.

  • So pressure through that back foot, release the front, pull it in, it engages.

  • One, two.

  • Always check back at your slope when you're carving across it, always get told off in the comments for not making that abundantly clear because guys even though there's the person in front you have right of way that don't mean you want to get completely kablammoed and ruin your season.

  • All right you can practice this really well on mellow slopes like this, front knee back knee, front knee back knee, get this quick snappy head shake back, left foot like this.

  • Can you tell it's the end of the day?

  • I've been working all day and I've gone a little bit crazy.

  • Thank you guys for watching.

  • It's time for me to go home and I'm done.

All right, do I use knee steering and can you use knee steering in carving?

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it