Problems riding flat

[Jakob]

Hi everyone!

For the last couple of days I was out on the snow and I experimented a bit with my bindings setting.

First of all I need to say that I had to open this new topic because all cant/lift topics have been locked.

Anyway, the snow was rather soft, but otherwise quite good for carving, especially in the morning.

I ride Elan Ballistic 171cm long, which is pretty good race board with common stats=pretty narrow (18,5 cm waist), I reckon 11,5 or 12 m radius. I use Burton race bindings and I ride them with cant/lift pad under the rear foot ant the front binfing flat on the board. Since my feet are rather big, I have to ride pretty high angles (63/60).

I like my stance and have little problems with this settings, except that I sometimes skid when it's too hardpackish. However, I wanted to try riding both bindings flat as suggested on this site. When I removed cant/lift disc I could really feel the edge and could very well control board and did push/pull with more ease. But all the fun ceased when I tried fully laid turns. It occured mainly on the heelside turn, as my edges bit the snow very hard as if the board bent too much. I lost nearly all speed and could not link turns. I have none of this problems when riding with my usual settings and when I changed back I could EC again.

I really don't know what went wrong. I see a few possibillities:

1. The board is too soft. But why no problems with cant disc then?
2. The technique. But why no problems with cant disc then?
3. Too soft snow, and the settings exert too much pressure this way. But why no problems with cant disc then?

Any suggestions that could help me solve this riddle?

Thanx and carve low,

Jakob

[Mphdemon]

most people ride by pushing their back knee into their front knee, When you put a cant on your board, and I assume that you have been riding with that setting for a while, it made it easier for you to put a flex on the board because it created a shorter distance between your knee's. So, when you set them so that they were flat, you might have been still pushing your knee to the same place. Which is probably instinctual at this point. Without the cant, there was a much bigger gap between your knee's, so when you squeezed your knee's together then it put a lot more flex on the board. This would explain a turn that was much to tight to handle, and when you put that kind of flex on your board the arc of the turn was probably so tight that you lost a lot of your speed in it, which would make it impossible to link turns because you don't have enough speed to start the next one.

I did the same thing once, and it took me a while to figure out why it did that too. But from what it sounds like it's the same thing. If the turn was so tight that you found it overwhelming and pushing you down to the board then it's almost definitly that. If you try to ride flat again, then try to keep your knee's slightly more seperated and the problem should go away.