@superfelix I highly recommend the Flow NX2 bindings - I have a set on each of my 5 softboot carving boards. I have US12 boots and XL binding size - I’ve leaned to love riding at F39/R30 just to minimize boot out potential even though I’m not an elite carver. I’m just addicted to the g’s 😎
Sweet setup.
Is it possible to rotate the high back for the NX2s?
@board-doctor That sucks - I do ride with an after market liner - Remind Insoles Soultion Liner - which I'm just getting broken-in. These are nice a stiff and look to be good for at least 200 days of riding.
@neversnowbored The Carbon high backs are not rotatable, just forward lean adjustable - I ride with pretty high angles F39/R30 so I get really good support on my heelside turns.
Remind Insoles Soultion Liner
@rocketman69 Do you have an affiliate code for these?
Just kidding, but for real you have 200 days on these and they're stiff? How do they compare to the UPZ Flo liner? I need something new for next season. I like the Flo but they're old and I'm always looking to improve my setup.
I'm just slaying...
@rocketman69 are the high backs pre-rotated then?
I’m on step ons and anything beyond 27 degrees on my back foot means little to no support heelside
@wild-cherry no - only like 12 days - just broken in. The manufacturer claims 200 days - we will see how they do. I’ve also been riding with your Trenched Boot Stiffeners at the same time - and the combo in my K2 Thraxis shells is by far the stiffest set up I’be ever tried in SB. I also have riden this combo in the Deeluxe Ground Control shells with the F2 Intec binding and it worked great.
@neversnowbored They high backs are biased in the design - see picture - the low side is on the inside of the leg.
I’m probably not a good enough ride to feel a lack of support on heelside - I know I work at getting stacked on the edge and try to get higher angulation and getting my butt to the ground - still a long way to go.
@neversnowbored the Flow NX2 Carbon are going to be way stiffer than Step-Ons for both toe and heel turns -
are the high backs pre-rotated then?
I’m on step ons and anything beyond 27 degrees on my back foot means little to no support heelside
Not pre-rotated no, but they do wrap around the calf enough for excellent support. Also, the Flow cable helps keep the boot in place at high stance angles. And because of the binding rigidity, especially when coupled with a stiff boot and additional stiffeners and straps, I never feel unsupported as I pressure my board on the heel edge in front of my front foot.
Step-ons are very different and not meant for such high stance angles or edge angles. You will lose more support as you approach 27 degrees for sure.
Why are you riding 27 degrees in your back foot? This is somewhat extreme, by western standards. Do you do it for clearance? if so, consider just getting a lower profile rear entry binding. Some of the Asian carvers use these extreme stance angles too and I'm not sure why but they make it work. Possibly it's because they don't have access to wide boards, or maybe it's just the dominant style that emerged through historical accident as riders copied their role models who may have adopted this stance from hardbooting or from trying to minimize drag with heelcup bindings on narrow boards. I can't really say and I'm not in a position to judge these amazing riders, but I know what works for me and I honestly can't see any advantage to extreme posi-posi stances and I was personally never able to get comfortable in soft boots at high angles though I tried for years without success until I met Ryan Knapton and discovered wide boards. For me, a huge part of the reason I ride soft boots is to avoid the high stance angles that I used hardbooting (60/55 degrees). I found this stance very rigid and uncomfortable when doing anything besides directional carving, whereas a 27/12 or 30/18 stance just feels more comfortable, versatile and organic (to me), and it's plenty steep enough for great carving.
I mean $#!t, I used to click out of my backfoot when just sitting down on the hill for more than half a minute because it was so uncomfortable. I would get patrollers stopping and asking if I was okay because it looked like I was nursing an injury, the way my knees were bent sitting down. And if you've ever dipped into the woods to "use a tree" in a hardboot stance you'll understand what I meant by "very rigid and uncomfortable when doing anything besides directional carving". Having said this, when carving in the forward direction, extreme angles are perfectly fine and highly suitable.
Also note that hardbooters pretty much universally use some heel lift in the back foot and toe lift in the front to make these steep angles more ergonomic. The steeper your angles, the more this lift becomes advantageous (I learned this from @riotsupercarver, though it seems obvious now). At 27 degrees in the backfoot @neversnowbored, I highly recommend the Trenched Canted Risers for comfort and performance if you're not using them already. But more than that, I would encourage you to try a rear entry binding and back off those angles a bit. And/or... Explain please why you use such steep angles, I've never understood this.
I'm just slaying...
I’ve been training with a US branch of FUNXR, originating in Korea as an offshoot of Infinity in Japan which descended from hardboots so history plays a part of it.
One of the main benefits is for low position retraction turns which serves as the foundation of the riding style.
Get in your riding stance and twist your back knee inwards. Now squat on your back knee and try to press your chest against your front knee. You’ll notice your pelvis and femur are out of the way which allows for you to get very low.
The motion of squatting from high position to low is what we call the “swing” (mimicking the movement of a swing). This naturally results in fore aft movement and facilitates the momentum transfer to make the edge change for our retraction turns.
Additionally, increased lower body mobility gives you more avenues to generate power. You now have higher mobility to drop your hips and rotate your pelvis.
You can also further decamber your board beyond normal riding by pulling your front and back feet towards you. This can by done on the back foot by pushing your inward back knee down.
This combined with being able to lower your hip to the snow allows for very high edge angles and tight turns.
There’s also the more commonly known reasons for going more posi such as the open, stacked starting position, reduced pain from the back knee
To answer some of your points:
I personally found that the rigidity is mitigated with additional hip control. The more posi, the more hip nuance necessary to balance the loss in foot steering (which imo isn’t that effective anyway beyond +9). In hindsight, I value the higher comfort in my back knee/foot over the marginal increase in foot steering from lowering to +12.
All my boards are directional and I found riding switch beyond +6 isn’t that fun so I’ve reconciled my fate as a directional carver outside of the odd trick if I decide to go that route.
That being said, I’m still relatively new to the style and the above is a limited distillation of months of coaching and training so it’s just a slice of the massive pie. Happy to discuss further
Get in your riding stance and twist your back knee inwards. Now squat on your back knee and try to press your chest against your front knee. You’ll notice your pelvis and femur are out of the way which allows for you to get very low.
Thanks @neversnowbored !
This is the first decent explanation I've had of the extreme stances I see on so many Asian riders. That makes sense, getting the back knee and the pelvis out of the way for bending low. I suspect that the canted risers accomplish this in a way too. Very interesting to see it spelled out. Almost makes me want to try a 45/33 stance on a narrow(ish) board like a C4 162 286mm waist, just to see how it feels.
I will have to try this next season for sure, though the retraction turn (great description) is not my usual style. From a purely aesthetic perspective (and a highly subjective one of course, as all aesthetic perspectives are) I've always felt like standing tall is better style. I bow over my front knee only so much as is required for a smooth carve. It works great when conditions are rough, so great that it sometimes feels like cheating. Now I'm not calling anyone a cheater, everyone is absolutely entitled to their own freecarving style, and I'm not trying to put down any other styles either, but, having said this, the upright style is what I've always aspired to. Long fast carves with absolute minimal body movement. Making it look easy and smooth, but powerful too with maximal g-force. That's what I'm trying to achieve.
(Thinking about it now I may have brought this aesthetic over from rock climbing, where "making it look easy" correlates strongly with efficient movement and minimal energy expenditure, and thus a greater chance of success on a route. You won't find much disagreement among climbers about aesthetic movement styles; efficiency is pretty much always king, though admittedly expediency does have it's place too in special circumstances.)
The other high aesthetic for me is the perfect track. I wanna be able to (theoretically) drop a marble in my trench at the top of the run and have it follow my line all the way to the bottom. No chatter visible in the track, no more width than necessary for given snow conditions, no evidence of scrubbed speed where the marble might exit the track; using the turn shape to control speed rather than snow displacement. And only then, once the perfect track is achieved, do we start to play with body positions and movements to express ourselves with snowboard turns, and only insofar as the perfect track is maintained.
I had an idea two seasons ago to make a YouTube video that compared Asian and Western carving styles. I tried to get some footage of me mimicking the Asian style (without the switch riding and ground tricks of course). I learned two things: first, it's harder than it looks (we put the camera away and I decided to practice the technique further on my own time). And second, I found that it was slow; I wasn't able to link many turns before I has to straightline a bit to gain back some speed. I was on an easy blue run (I may be able to dig up the footage, but not tonight). So to me (and again the disclaimer, I'm just expressing my own personal goals and aesthetic, without judgement on anyone else's, and I'm certainly not claiming to be any kind of expert at this technique), I'm losing a lot of the g-force that makes carving so addictive when I practice the retraction turn.
I just want to lean and twist, letting the board take me where it will. Almost like a bird of prey circling above a canyon might appear to a human observer to be completely at rest. I teach all these complex movements , including bowing over the front knee, but in my own freecarving I try to make them almost imperceptible.
I had another video idea towards the end of last season for example, unfortunately the surface had some refrozen crud in it and I wasn't able to do quite what I had intended. The idea was "the freecarving robot", where I exaggerate the stiff posture and keep my movements minimal and robotic. We'll see if I can do it well enough to be worthy of an Instagram reel next winter. Hmmm... Maybe I can find a C3PO costume at Halloween?
I'm just slaying...
Of course, more than happy to share. There’s definitely a lack of info in the western forums for this style. Those are some astute observations
I would say one of the major differences between up-unweighted turn mastery (as you described) and retraction turn mastery (as with FUNXR) is the momentum distribution throughout the turn. In an ideal turn with perfect form, both practices conserve the same amount of momentum.
With retraction turns, rider input is necessary to store and direct momentum for an explosive transition release to the next turn. As a result this extends the feeling of weightlessness (“zero g”, or another dip in the rollercoaster) that you would normally experience at transition.
If you could plot the forces for each turn, the up unweighted turn would be more round and more linear than the retraction turn.
The flip side of this is that the additional rider input and verticality means additional points for riders to refine. Enter low position (position “Zero”) before getting on edge? Don’t hold your Zero long enough before lowering your hips? Drop your hips too aggressively and drag on the snow? These are some of the points of technique inefficiencies that will lead to leakages or drag in momentum and power
When will be the new Board anounced/able to be bought?
When will be the new Board anounced/able to be bought?
Hey @daniel-seppele, you're waiting for a G4 162 soft flex right? Soon, I'm told. They're in progress now, ten or twelve boards, all 162s soft and mid flex. I'll make sure you get one!
The only board in stock right now is a G4 168 with a 296mm waist and a 13m average sidecut, mid flex.
I'm just slaying...
