I have tried to learn the EC technique by trial-and-error, with some success. My background is many years of race boarding and a couple years of a break from winter sport up until 2012/2013 season, picking up a swoard.
Where I am still struggling is with the backside turn where I occasionally either lose my balance and sit down (ca. mid turn), or can't keep a clean line and the tail slips outward, sending me into a spin on my back.
As I am normally a very methodical learner, I went through the forum, the swoard site and many youtube videos and tried to distill all this in a table, for time versus different aspects of body dynamics:
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Weight distribution Upper body position longitudinal Upper body position crosswise knee position/vertical axis
******************* ******************************** ***************************** ***************************
transition Heavily on the back leg slight layback centered fully bent
Beginning of the turn Mainly on the back leg starting to lean forward going down / ca. 45° extending
Midsection Even between front an back clearly toward the nose, angled at the hip fully layed down maximally extended, but not compl. straight legs
End of turn Slightly to the front centered getting up, but faster than getting down extended, at the very end fast "pull" for trans.
Last question: I learned in my old days to never put my knees together (not putting the back knee in the hollow of the front knee), especially on the backside. I have seen this in quite a few videos though.
What I try to do is this:
frontside turn: push back kneecap toward center of turn
backside turn: push front kneecap toward center of turn
this results basically in pushing the knees apart, which for me works well. Any thoughts on this?
Thanks for any help and thoughts,
Andreas