Soft boots carving. EC Backside : the endless quest...

[g2florette]

Hi,

I've just edited (1'30") some of my last (end winter 2016) soft boots (on Dual 168 board) BS turns, result of 4 winters of effort, testing, viewing videos, reading forums, listening advices in Zinal and elsewhere... It's a long way, but it's in progress

It's here (I apologize for the poor vid quality) :

Feel free to comment/give some advice...

See you,

G.

P. S. Very special thanks to Alex (Саша) of funcarve.ru (1) for his tuto which gives me inspiration and motivation some years ago and (2) for the (crucial...) advices he gives regularly to me, with patience and disponibility, since 3 years

[Abrax]

Great!

Seems that you just got there!

Looking forward to ride with you softboots!

[slayer]

g2florette,
Where do you ride? I also have the Dual (175) and Burton Driver-X softies. Also seeking the perfect backside turn! Last season, I tried using hardboots on the Dual (UPZ RC-10), and it did help with some precision, but it also hurt my feet (Plantar Fasciitis, which still bothers me even now!). I think I have an OK backside now, but only on a nice smooth and steep piste, and I cannot pull it off every time yet!

Can I ask, what is your setup on your soft-boots? What make, stance, looseness on rear foot? I tried riding it loose, but if you hit a lump of snow it can be painful/dangerous.

I live around the Zurich region, so any trips with other 'Dual-ers' would be great...

cheers,
Slayer

[g2florette]

Hi Slayer,

1. I ride mainly the South France resorts : Vars, Serre-Chevalier, Les Orres, Les 2 Alpes, La Grave... Sometimes Zinal, once a year

2. Setup :

• - Boots : Ride Insano
  - Bindings : flow NX2
  - Front 36°, rear 30°
  - no looseness...
  - stance : i don't remember exactly... I remember I'm starting with the usual rule 0.3*size (I'm 1,76m) and choose the inserts giving the nearest greater stance than the formula.

See you,

G.

[joel]

Try to put 39 deg for the front foot. And put around 49-50 cm stance. I suspect you have too much stance and therefore you can't finish your body rotation.

[Abrax]

Hello,

My setup is 45 front, 37 back. Stance is around 60 so way bigger than it should be. That is because I ride DUAL 168 and I should 175. By setting wider stance I wanted to make the board harder. It also helps with fast nose/tail weight transitions which I often use while riding slalom.

The problem is that setting the angles that high will require extremely hard bindings/ boots setup. I use Drake Podium and Northwave Prophecy 540. I wish I could set the angles to 40/33 but the boots are too big and the overhang kills my turns. I mention 40/33 because it would work better with the hardness of the setup but it will definitely cause some troubles with rotation. Please keep in mind that in perfect world when everything is totally fine ( hardboot setup) we set our angles to 55/50 despite the fact that we could go much higher this simply works best with our rotational technique.

Higher angles work against maneuverability when you are straight up but helps in a turn while ExtremeCarving

[slayer]

Thank you g2florette, joel and Abrax,

I think I will go back to softies on the Dual this season, and try and get an EC4 or similar to mount the hardboots on. From what I recall, with my softies (Burton Driver-X size 12), I need to apply >40 degrees just to avoid boot overhang on my Dual 175.

Good comments about the stance, I started quite narrow, which helped with board flexing during EC, but made it hard to manage in bad snow. Wider stance helped with control, but I felt added to feet stress in lumpy snow. I will try playing with that more this season.

Some things I learned about myself last season (especially after attending the Carving Masters in Solden) that I need to improve this season..
1) I have proportionally long legs for my body, so I have trouble getting low down before the turn especially with backside. I need to work on this a lot more. My centre of gravity is wayyyy too high.
2) I don't rotate enough, and I rotate too late, on backside.

The Carving Masters event allowed me to try out different boards (mainly Oxess), which is a different philosophy (narrow boards, higher angles) which favours a hard locked forward boot and a more flexible/loose rear boot. It was quite interesting riding this style (significantly, the higher angles made it easier and allowed me to get better/lower at backside turn, and appreciate having a lower centre of gravity). Also I guess the ideal steepness of the dedicated black run we had helped a lot as well. I wonder if trying out other (narrower) EC boards first helps with Swoard learning??? Interestingly the narrower boards are also quite good in lumpy snow conditions, less pain on the legs! I hope to attend a Swoard event this season, to learn Swoard's focus on technique, especially rotation.

cheers,
Slayer.