EC instructors in USA in Vermont/NJ/NY/PA areas?

[vizsyn]

The highlight of yesterday's practice session

Toeside/frontside

Toeside.jpg (87.15 KiB) Viewed 3462 times

Now, I need to figure out how to do it heelside/backside... And get some video

[yomama]

Joe,

Toeside is looking good!

Here is what you can do with your heelside turn at home.

- Stand 2 feet away from a wall with your back against the wall with your feet angled like on your board
- Get into the “Egyptian” position i.e.
a) Back of palm of backhand touching your butt
b) Front hand palm is on the front of your upper thigh
c) Chin looking over front shoulder
d) The above hand position will result in shoulders slightly rotated (remember you are just coming out of a toe side turn) with your knees bend nicely

- Now let yourself fall toward the wall.
1) To avoid losing your teeth in the fall, land with your two palms against the wall with your cheek flirting the wall while looking forward.
2) Now this is how angulated/inclined (as mentioned by Benttech) you want to be at the initiation and before the apex of the heelside turn
3) Notice how your weight is distributed
4) Since this is an initiation to heelside turn, you want to be a bit front leg for weight distribution.

- Repeat above process until your muscles memorize the drill.
- Repeat the above process with your boots/board on the carpet

- Go on the snow, ride accross the hill (perpendicular to the fall line) and just do the above and do not dive/link into the toeside turn but let the Swoard do its magic and carry you uphill until a full stop.
- Repeat with more speed and now push at the apex of the turn
- There are too many things going on during linked turns so you need to break it down (divide and conquer) to a single turn. The fear factor is due too many concepts to be processed at warp speed.
- Keep practicing one single heelside turn until you master it and then enjoy linking the turns.

Hope this helps.

Good luck.

[vizsyn]

A bit better today on the heelside, the wall drills seemed to have helped .... I have to keep reminding myself to focus on rotation at all times, and to remain disciplined and hold the hip and shoulder rotation position as I traverse heelside across the fall line until I am ready to launch into a toeside turn. Still working on overcoming the panic reaction when the board powerfully launches itself into a tight arc at the apex of the carve, I'm still not used to that sensation on the heelside(but on toeside I can just nail it almost every time without fear ). I'm still getting acquainted to the whole setup as well, an alpine setup definitely behaves quite differently from what I am normally accustomed to riding .

Learning this new way of riding has been an amazing experience so far . I am definitely having so much fun I've discovered very quickly that a SWOARD is a FAR more precise machine than any of the freestyle and freeride boards I've ever ridden. It is VERY responsive to any subtle rider movements , and definitely not very forgiving of clumsiness or mistakes . But falls are good, a little pain makes you learn to maintain focus very rapidly .

I really need to find somebody to video me... My riding buddies all want to stay in the park all the time... BOOO