Transcription
In this video, I'm going to teach you one carving tip that will absolutely change how you see snowboarding. The tip is using your stack position to set preemptive edge pressure before initiating any turn.
Whenever you're trying to perform a carve, you want to get on your edge so you can load into it, and that's only possible through a stack position. So, we're going to quickly explain the most important fundamental of all snowboarding: the stack position. This information is going to be key for understanding every other principle you'll learn in this video.
There are two variations to your stack position: toe side and heel side. A toe side stack position requires you to have your weight set over the balls of your feet. You do this by bending your legs, letting your upper body hinge forward, and putting your chest over top of your knees. This sets your weight over the balls of your feet, giving you slight edge pressure while keeping your weight primarily set over the center of your snowboard.
As you add more bend into your legs, your stack position will shift. This is because the point of a stack position is to maintain a single balance point over the balls of your feet. As you squat down, your butt will come out. So, in order to keep our weight centered over the balls of our feet, we need to make sure that our upper body comes down in correlation to our butt going out and our legs coming down.
It's through moving within this range of motion while maintaining the same set balance point that you get so much more power and control over your snowboard. For a heel side stack position, you need to drive your weight into your heel edge. This is a harder position to hold because you can't use your hips and shins to apply more pressure to your edge.
To counter this, we need to let our upper body come more forward as our legs come down. The main difference between heel edge stack position and toe edge is that your stack point is now on your heels. You're going to need to let your upper body hinge forward even more as your legs come down in order to keep your center of balance set over the heels of your snowboard.
The goal of the stack position is to maintain the same balance point over your toe edge or heel edge through your full range of motion. As you want to get deeper into your turn, you start adding more squat and more bend. This is very different from leaning into a turn.
As you get more familiar with shifting from your heel edge to toe edge stack position, you'll start building more momentum. This momentum will let you start utilizing leaning, using your hips, and every aspect of carving to get cleaner lines and drive power out of each carve.
With that information, you're ready for the rest of the video. Whenever I do a turn, I first engage my edge, and then as I go through the turn, I start loading up. This loading up motion gives you a lot of control, a lot of power, and lets you stay snappy on your board. That's how you see snowboarders do explosive motions.
If you try to go from a flat base and then push in, it's not going to give you that power. So here, if I try to do the same thing but start with a flat base every time and try to lean, I don't have that bend in my legs, and I don't have that center of balance to get going. When you're flat base and you try to push through a turn, your weight goes straight back down on your board.
Let's pop a little example here. If I'm trying to do a heel side turn and I start flat base, it's going to make my weight and power drive down just into the balls of my feet, so it's not getting any extra turning momentum. What you want to be doing instead is finding the stack position, weight set over the balls of your feet, chest open. That will make it so you're on a slight turn angle.
See how I'm slightly turning across the slope here while keeping my body weight nice and stacked over my board? From there, we can start loading pressure and loading the edge. You can do this in a couple of ways. First, you can lean your weight onto your hips. Think about pushing your knees forward; that's a good way to get these turns deeper with more speed.
You can also open your hips to get that extra drag, but it's all coming from getting that edge in and then pushing through it. If I'm riding into a feature, I'm not riding flat base into a feature because that's going to make me too tall, not balanced, and not have any grip. Instead, I'm going to use that stack position because that's going to help me load up and stay balanced over my board.
So here, we're going to load up in the stack position, and that lets us pop up and get maximum power while keeping everything connected. I can just hold that constant position, and see how that's letting me stay in line with my snowboard, handling all of these bumps without compromising my motion? That wouldn't be possible flat base or through leaning.
That's only possible through finding that balance point and building off it. That's really the key to being a good rider. A good park rider is getting that point, mastering it, and building off it.
Whenever you see a snowboarder do a 360, they do a little snowboard slide here for shifting their body weight around the stack position. That lets them get on their edge preemptively. A really important note for trying to do this position is to make sure your spine stays straight.
This doesn't mean it stays straight and tall over your board, but instead, it comes down in correlation with your legs. As my legs come down, I'm letting my upper body come forward. Think about squatting in a squat rack; it brings your chest to your knees, and this is exactly what we want for adding that point.
If I try to go with a super straight spine and squat down, it's not going to keep my weight over that point. As I squat down, it's going to make me more and more imbalanced. So, the key is finding that balance point and finding your way to squat down and load on that point.
I have my full range of motion on my toes and heels, so I can fully extend, shift forward, shift back, and move my body in a full 360 while maintaining these balance points. That's what gives me so much micro control and movement. It lets me move my board in vertical ways, adjust, and keep control.
It's just being able to maintain these balanced positions that keep me lightly over that edge from any point. If I'm even in a weird position, I can get on that edge quickly because I'm always snowboarding knowing that I'm going to be slightly on that edge. That's what really makes it feel fun and casual to snowboard.
What you need to avoid when doing this is trying to load that pressure in compromised ways, like rounding at the spine. If I'm rounding my back, it's going to make me very top-heavy. So, as I try to load my weight onto my toe edge, I'm going to round, and it's going to keep that weight set over that point, making me just go over or back.
A straight spine is really important. We also need to make sure we're not bending our upper body not in correlation to our lower body. If you start to drop your upper body not in correlation with your lower body, this is going to keep me flat base, not give me any control, and not give any grip.
Here, you can see I'm running flat base, and it's really hard for me to get my weight over onto an edge. This is obviously hyper exaggerated, but I'm just trying to show that you want to keep your weight stacked over that point and work on getting your full range of motion through it.
Because once you can do that, you'll be able to powerfully get these turns, get locked in, get low, explode into slashes, and do fun little slides. You can get hard on both heels. So, like here, it's super icy, but because I'm keeping my weight over this point, I can slow down, and I'm keeping myself stacked.
If you master the stack position and get your full 360 range of motion while keeping your heel side balance point and your toe side balance point, it's going to make you so much more balanced and so much more of a beast on your snowboard. Be it freestyle, park, or powder, it is a principle that makes all of these things work.
So go practice it, try it, and let me know how it goes!