First time question....toe side turn problems!

[Miguel]

First off let me say how thrilled I am to find this site! It seems like every season I read about different ideas and techniques and have tried many new things over the years. Some work and some don't. I've studied your techniques and they seem to follow closely with the way I ride. The problem is my toe side turn, especially when on a steep slope. Everyone seems to think the toe side is easier but it's always been a problem with me. Turning the body into the heelside turn seems to work well because it easily creates body torque when twisting the body but with the toeside I can't seem to create enough body torque/pressure. How far do you need to turn your body in order to create a sharp crisp toeside turn. Mine are always more open than I would like them to be. Sometimes I think I must be placing too much weight on the back of the board but I'm not positive.

Also do you do any steering with the knees and/or hips? I seem to emphasize that quite a bit and it seem to work well. I'm going to give your techniques a try as they seem uncomplicated and natural. My angles are about 48/45 on the 21.5 waist. Are those angles to low? Any problems with that?

Thanks for any advice you are willing to give me.

[Mphdemon]

Hey Miguel,

I'm one of those people who prefers the toeside turns. I think what I do is to make sure that I get as low as I can going into the turn and then as I go through the turn I push hard with my legs. This usually provides enough edge pressure. As for body torque I just turn my body about as far as it can go. I've gotten some really sharp and fast carves doing this, and it makes me more comfortable on the steeps cause u're leaning down hill for a much shorter period of time. One thing that u might want to be careful of is that if u have a relativly short board then it may turn a lot faster than u're expecting or than u can handle . I have a Burton 168 and I've had turns that I could not stand up through because there was so much centrifugal force. I hope this helps.

[Miguel]

Chris
I'm going out tomorrow so I'll give it a try. I'm sure getting lower will help. Sometimes I think I'm riding too tall and when I rotate the body to the toeside I may be shifting my body too far toward the back of the board. Staying low should help eliminate that problem. I'll let you know how it goes.
Gracias, Miguel

[Mphdemon]

Hey, good luck man. I hope it works out for you, I should be going tomorrow too, where are u going? I should be on the first chair at Mt Sunapee in NH. Well enjoy, I know that I will. This is the first time this season for me, I've been dying to go. Have a great time. And yeah, let me know how that works out for you, I'm curious whether my advice is valid or not.

[Miguel]

Hey Chris
Well...I gave it a try today and made a few observations. Definitely getting lower going into the turn helped quite a bit. For some reason it feels really awkward when I turn my body aggressivly into the toe side. I'm blind in my left eye which also happens to be my lead eye. Consequently I lose sight of what's downhill when I turn my body to the toe side. I kind of lose track of where I am. I think I must be turning my head down the fall line while trying to turn my body toward the toe side and bodies naturally tend to follow the head. I wonder if that's effecting my turn to that side. The other thing that made a significant difference was simply focusing on greater angulation to the toe side. That more than anything seemed to whip it around.

We're hoping to receive a big dump (of snow that is!) tomorrow in New York State, so I'm hoping to get out hammer this thing out. Thanks for the advice Chris.

Doesn't anyone else have an opinion on the toe side turn?

Miguel

[harald]

I have experienced the same problems, both for toeside and heelside turns, especially when it's steep and also when I was beginning to learn to carve. The problem, I was told by friends and by my own experience, was too much weight on the back foot. This again is a result of fear which results in moving bakwards instead of forwards. My turns has improved by training on flat and moderate slopes where the speed is moderate and controllable. For me, the secret was, as you have found out, to stay in a lower position, put the weight more on the frontfoot in order to engage the nose for initiating the turn and also angulate the board steeper. When the confidence came, I moved to steeper slopes. But when for some reasons I experience difficulties with the turns, I go back to easier slopes for practice. The important thing is to develop the feeling for how the board works in order to trust it. As Chris wrote short boards with little radius can turn too quickly when you angle the board steep with the much of the body weight on the front foot.

[Mphdemon]

I agree with you harald, I think that it is a really good idea to kind of train yourself on less steep trails to get a good feel for the board, and that you should put more pressure on your front foot. But you do have to be careful with that, for a long time I was putting too much pressure on my front foot, for heel side turns anyway. What it did was I would always over pressure the edge and it would break the carve. The snow would give way and the nose of the board would slide out while the back stayed in place, which would put me into a really bad spin down the trail. So I would certainly agree to put more pressure on the front foot but make sure you find the right balance. Eventually when you find the right balance then you will feel just as comfortable on steeps as on flats, cause it all boils down to the same motion, there may be slight adjustments that you need to make to adjust for steeper trails but all in all it's gonna feel the same, just a lot faster.

[Miguel]

I'm just not exactly sure why it only happens on the toe side. I think you're right about going back to more mellow runs and progressively kick it back up. Although fear may be a factor on really steep runs, my toe side turn isn't as good as my heelside even on easy runs. I do believe that somehow the weight is being shifted to the back but I also believe it's more technique than fear. I'm going to over emphasize staying low, angulating a bit more. and see how it goes from there. Thanks again for the advice.
Miguel