Читать книгу Complete Book Snowboarding - K.C. Althen - Страница 10

CHAPTER 2

First Runs

Setting Up

Finally the moment of truth has arrived. You can sense that you are about to embark on a challenging adventure. Who knows what exhilaration and thrills await you?

Make your way to the bottom of a small slope. The bunny slope at a ski resort is better than a snowy golf course or local sledding hill. Although local hills will work, there is sometimes a reduced fee for the use of bunny slope lifts compared to regular lifts. You will get your “snow legs” quickly, and you can log a lot more mileage with a simple lift. In fact, you can learn about the feel of the board and how it handles going both down the hill and up the hill on a surface lift. But don’t worry about lifts quite yet. Stay on the flats.

Find a flat area and strap in the front foot only. Sitting or standing while fixing the bindings is a matter of personal preference, but sitting or kneeling will probably work best initially. Attach the safety strap first and always brush away any loose snow from inside the binding. With high-back-style bindings, do the ankle strap first, then the toe, and then the shin strap (if there is one). See the section on bindings, page 123. There is no reason to tighten the toe strap down very hard. It just holds the boot in position between the stiff sides of the binding. Similarly, do not overly tighten shin straps. Some instructors recommend that you not use shin straps, especially the one on your rear foot, when you first start. Remember the safety strap is required at all ski areas.

Before clamping in your rear foot, pretend you are on a skateboard and “skate” around on the flats. Place the rear foot between the bindings and glide for a few feet. After skating around until you feel comfortable with the new sensations, you have several options.

Option 1. Walk up a little slope. This can be done for a short way with the board still on your front foot. Simply place the board perpendicular to the fall line. The fall line is the path a rolling ball would naturally follow down the hill—the steepest course. Now side-step up the hill. The easiest way is to move your free foot up first, then bring the board up (limp up sideways). This will give you a feel for digging in the toe edge, which is an important skill to develop.

Rider: Kathy Allman Photos: Gregg Ledge

Skating

Side-stepping

Option 2. If you don’t want to side-step, you can take the board off and hike up the hill.

Option 3. After practicing a bit, you can go to the top of a bunny slope using a poma lift or rope tow, if you are familiar with them. Ride these lifts with your rear foot between the bindings, as when you were skating. (Read the section on lifts, page 28.) If you half-heartedly let the toes of your free foot hang out, or if you put your foot out reflexively to catch your balance, your foot will instantly grab and you will spin out. This mistake is a major cause of falls. Rule: Keep both feet on the board while moving. Do not take a chair lift at this stage.

Skate to a flat spot next to a sloping area. The trick is to find a place where you will not slide while fastening your rear binding but where you can start sliding easily by swiveling your hips or jumping once you are fastened in. The slope should be only a few feet away at the most. One way to have an ideal setup is to dig or stomp a flat area with the board right on the slope. With practice, this takes only a few moments. Once you have discovered or built this platform, fasten your rear binding. If you attach the rear binding while sitting down you do not necessarily have to have a flat spot, but then you must be prepared to go as soon as you stand up.

If you are not set up near a slope, you will have to hop, roll, or be towed to a point where gravity can take over. You can also sometimes move short distances by bending over and pushing or pulling with your hands. All of these methods are useful at times, even a lot of fun, but planning ahead is best. Now—stretch, take a deep breath, and get psyched. Big smile. You’re ready to launch.

Launching

If you are positioned near where the slope breaks, or if you have dug a little platform on the slope, all you have to do is center your weight, bend your knees, hold your arms out, and throw your weight forward. Use your hips—not your back! This motion will break the board free from the level snow on which you were standing and will put your weight over your front foot. Keep 70 to 85 percent of your weight on that front foot and simply try to go straight. If your board is sideways to the hill, keeping your weight forward will pull it into a straight course down the hill. You may prefer to launch with a little jump that points you in the right direction immediately. Unless it is extremely gentle, this run should only be a few dozen yards before it levels off. Repeat this procedure. But at this point do not work your way up the hill so far that you will have to edge or turn to control speed.

Figure 1. Slope terminology

After a few small straight runs, again practice swiveling the board while standing on the flats. This will give you a preview of the feelings involved in turning. You can then try a slightly longer run where you do some swivels on the way down. The slope should be so gentle that the swivels don’t involve any conscious edging and falling down isn’t a problem. If you are spending all your time getting up from falls, you are probably on a slope that is too steep or you are not keeping your weight forward—or both. These problems go together. You will learn faster on an easier slope.

Instructors vary in the amount of time spent on this stage. Some private instructors will simply gradually increase all of the variables so that the students are concentrating on turning immediately. Other instructors believe in teaching rudimentary skills so that the students know all of the basics. Edging and traversing are two of these basic skills. They have to be learned—either sooner or later.

Edging (Sideslipping)

The single most important thing to master in snowboarding is edge control. By controlling your edges, you control your speed and your direction. This is what snowboarding is all about. Fortunately, learning this control is straightforward, which is one reason why snowboarding is so much fun.

You have already started to learn the correct posture and to get a feel for balancing on a moving board. Now you must move higher up the slope, or to a steeper section of the hill, to learn edge control.

Not all edges are created equal. The preferred edge for your initial experiments is the toe edge. This is because balancing on the balls of your feet is naturally easier than balancing on your heels. The toes have far greater sensitivity than the heels. While the range of motion for both edges is equal, the calf muscles used for the toe-side edge are easier to control and stabilize than are the shin muscles, which are used for the heel-side edge. The toe side is also a little less tiring. Another consideration is that if you should overbalance into the hill, it is easier to get up and regain your balance from your hands and knees (a toe-side fall) than it is from a sitting position (a heel-side fall), especially on a shallow slope.

Forcing the toes down digs the edge into the snow and slows movement. Begin by standing with the toe edge set (dug in) and with the board across the fall line. Keeping low with your knees bent, release the edge to start sliding. After gaining some speed, gradually reset the edge. An abrupt edge set will throw you off balance. You want to continue facing straight uphill with the board remaining perpendicular to the fall line. Slide straight down the hill on your toe edge by keeping even pressure on both legs. Try to continue this pattern of setting and releasing the edge while sliding straight down the slope. If the board doesn’t stay perpendicular to the fall line, it will shoot off on a traverse (sideways). You must prevent this by shifting more weight to the side that is lagging uphill. Although this skill practice may not look so great, be patient. This same sideslipping and edging technique can take you down steep, advanced slopes if you find yourself in the wrong place.

Rider: John McGinnis Photo: Andy Geiger

Side-slipping on the heel edge

Rider: Kathy Allman Photo: Gregg Ledge

Sideslipping on the toe edge

For your next descent, switch to the heel edge. It is important to learn both ways and not to get into the habit of favoring one edge over the other. The principles are identical. The most conspicuous difference—besides being able to see where you are going more easily—is that you can use your thigh muscles to sink the heel edge in with a vengeance. Resist doing this or edging and stopping so suddenly that your weight pitches forward. If you do, you may be forced to put your toe edge down. And if you do that, you will discover the Golden Rule of Snowboarding.

Also avoid the temptation to go stiff-legged on the heel-side edge. Always keep your knees bent. “Keep low” is one of the very best pieces of advice for snowboarders.

Continue alternating edges until you have a good feel for both. This edging action is the same as that required for stopping, so you must master this technique before attacking steeper slopes.

typical toe-edge position	typical heel-edge position
setting the toe-edge to slow	setting the heel-edge to slow
about-to-crash edging	about-to-crash edging

Figure 2. Edging (sideslipping)

Golden Rule of Snowboarding

Golden Rule: Always control a snowboard with the uphill edge. Never let the downhill (forward) edge take any weight or dig into the snow. Catching this edge will instantly catapult you onto your face or onto the back of your head. Everyone learns this rule the hard way. But if you understand the principle behind this rule, you will instantly recognize when you’ve neglected it, and you can keep from doing it again. Falls from letting the leading edge dig in and catch are abrupt and violent.

Very little muscular effort is required to ride a snowboard flat (not on an edge), especially straight-legged. Also a snowboard goes the fastest when it is ridden flat, but avoid the urge to do this when you are feeling lazy or tired. You have no way of controlling a flat board, and if a rut knocks you one way and the board the other way, you crash.

Golden Rule (short form): Think edges!

Falling

In falling, remember two things:

1. Ride low. Being low will reduce impact distance and reduce the risk to your knees by keeping them bent.

2. Fall sideways—the direction your toes and heels point. This protects your ankles, especially the front one.

Falls to the knees and hands, or to the rump and hands, can be done all day long in soft snow with little consequence. If at all possible, do not go out your first time in icy, hard-packed conditions. If you have no choice, expect to have less fun and more bruises. Wear wrist guards in addition to protective padding. This is important.

Falls directly forward over the tip of the board are not too common (except from jumping), but they must be avoided. If you are losing control, getting low may allow you to recover. Also, getting forward will usually improve your chances of a recovery. Together, these two actions will at least make the fall over the side edges rather than over the tip or back of the board.

Be wary of finger and wrist injuries. You may want to protect your thumbs by putting them inside your gloves or mittens. Let your arms or trunk take the brunt of any impact. A more detailed discussion of falling is included in the section on safety (see page 146).

Traversing

Traversing means crossing the hill from side to side. A series of starts and stops in one direction creates a garland pattern. The purpose of practicing traversing is to reinforce your edging skills, to gain more speed in a controlled manner, and to improve your stopping ability.

Unlike the preliminary edging practice, you are now snowboarding. So focus on good posture: knees strongly bent, torso slightly twisted forward and shifted well over the front leg, both arms towards the front, and elbows bent. Launch as always, then ride the uphill edge across the slope until you feel like stopping or slowing. To stop or slow yourself, push or put weight on the back leg to bring the tail of the board down more perpendicular to the fall line or crosswise to your direction of travel. Do this gradually and try to maintain constant control. If you overdo it, the tail will point diagonally down the slope, and away you go again—backwards!

Rider: Kathy Allman Photo: Gregg Ledge

Heel-side traverse

Practice traversing in both directions. Go across one way on your heel edge, and return using your toe edge. When you come to the edge of the slope, you must either stop and maneuver the board into the opposite direction and start up again, or you must turn. After a few garland runs, you will be ready and able to learn how to turn.

Turning

There are three basic types of snowboarding turns: skidding turns (pivoting turns directed by the rear foot), carving turns (smooth arcs dependent upon weight shift and board shape), and jump turns (forced rotations while essentially airborne). Master skidded turns first. You will progress to the others naturally with practice and time.

For starters, return to a very shallow slope! Establish good posture, flash a big grin, and launch. With both arms out and somewhat forward, turn your head and point your lead shoulder in the direction you want to turn. Look where you want to go. This motion will throw a small amount of weight onto the edge that will become active (the soon-to-be uphill one). Your weight should be mostly on the front foot already.

1. Holding toe-edge traverse

2. Weight on front foot pushes nose downhill

3. Head and shoulders rotate in desired direction. With weight on front foot, hips and back foot forcefully push rear of board around during transition to new edge

4. Control stabilized on new edge

5. Holding heel-edge traverse

6. Weight on front foot pushes nose downhill

7. Head and shoulders rotate in desired direction. With weight on front foot, hips and back foot forcefully push rear of board around during transition to new edge

8. Control stabilized on new edge

9. Holding toe-edge traverse

Diagram: SLM Canada, Inc.

Figure 3. Turning sequence

Exaggerate it a bit now. Steer with your back foot. That is, simultaneously push with your partially unweighted back foot in the direction opposite to that of your shoulder shift. Wow!

Although a small paragraph is all that is required to outline turning technique, this is the crucial stumbling block to overcome, both literally and figuratively. This is the key to everything. It is not nearly as easy to do as it sounds. Regardless of your background, the movements will be foreign to you initially. Learning to turn always takes considerable time and perseverance. It also takes some courage.

When you coordinate all of these actions, your turns will be fluid. In the beginning, concentrate on just where you want to make the next turn, and go for it with commitment. Although toe-side and heel-side turns may seem quite different, try to feel their similarities in terms of weight shifting and edging. The driving force always works through your hips. Keeping your weight forward will pull the board back into the fall line for the next turn. If you start to favor one direction, force yourself to work the opposite turn repeatedly until it becomes the easier and the more fun.

If you are keeping low and forward like you should, your front leg will be burning quite a bit in the early stages. Training and more advanced skills will eventually cure this problem. Don’t worry; just bear it for now.

One major reason that snowboarders “lose it” during skidded turns is that they put too much weight on their back legs. They then over-rotate and spin out. This error can come from inattention, from not knowing better, from front leg fatigue, or from a fear-based tendency to lean back. Recognize any cycle of “fear of falling” and “falling from fear” and break it early. You can break the cycle by not trying to progress so rapidly. Go back to traverses or to a shallower slope. Keep comfortable to keep progressing.

After the first day or two, depending upon local conditions, you will have a feel for turning and linking your turns together. This early learning needs to be reinforced. You can continue to improve when you are not on the slopes by using visualization techniques. Close your eyes, and with intense concentration play back the necessary moves in detail. Rehearse. Use mental imagery. Also watch snowboarding videos and let your mind and muscles get involved. Think about snowboarding during all of your spare time.

Stopping

The way to stop is by holding an abrupt turn. The idea is to get the board on edge perfectly perpendicular to the fall line (like sideslipping). Snowboards have an incredible ability to keep moving and drifting if they are kept flat. They also have an amazing ability to keep moving even on an edge if the board is pointed downhill. Since you do not have any poles, or any anchors to toss overboard, you’ll need considerable finesse and skill to make the board “stick” in a particular place at the bottom of the hill.

Rider: Chris Karol Photo: Gwyn Howat

Applying the brakes

To change an abrupt turn into a stop, apply weight to both legs, as needed, to maintain board position. Remember the lessons you learned in the earlier edging practice. Do not keep all your weight over your front foot. Experiment with different amounts of pressure when engaging and releasing the edges. As before, practice using each edge to stop.

Once you can turn in both directions and stop at will, victory is yours. You are a snowboarder.

Now start linking turns together. Make them short, make them long, make them rhythmical. Synchronize them to a musical beat. Turn, turn, turn. Try getting even lower. Don’t try to add style by arching your back or experimenting with strange accents and arm movements until after you have mastered the basics.

Get these basics down solid and log as many hours as you can. The next chapter gives you the necessary information for understanding, getting around, and making the most of ski areas.