Reflections on The Secrets of Snowboard Carving Part I

Posted by: @board-doctor

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Kevin seems like a nice Canadian boy that’s living the life… but I had to stop following him because so much of what he says is just wrong.  His description of unweighted turns and pressuring the edge (UNweighted?) was mind boggling. Be cautious with what he says.  I presume he’s getting the newbie/beginner clicks? 

Definitely seems like a nice guy, but the lack of self awareness was astounding to me. I watched his "are you an advanced snowboarder" now that you mentioned him talking about pressuring edges during an unweighted part of the turn and I almost got second hand embarrassment from what he was saying and the way he was riding. He definitely gives off park rat vibes to me as he seems to be fairly confident on a snowboard, but I'd argue he's got worse riding technique than me even, probably mostly because he's not self aware. Him demoing riding steeps is where he basically just pushed all the snow off the mountain which reminded me of this video of Deb Armstrong taking some really brave and skilled kids on skis down some serious steeps and yelling "Hey! You guys are skillful enough. You do not need to slide slip this. Side slipping takes all the snow for other people!" at around 2:40 which I think is a really great sentiment and is one of my pet peeves with actually riding steeps, too often people throw themselves into way too steep terrain and I don't think that's conducive to learning. Eh, maybe I'm just grumpy and want groomers for myself...

The previous post was mostly just a reflection on how something as simple as going from a duck stance to positive angles almost forced him into a better riding position and to slide less as he turned without him trying. I guess it was also a bit of a reflection on how little many snowboarders reflect on their riding. I've mentioned before when I learned riding that I put my bindings from everything between like +60/+45 to +50/-50 just to find out what was most effective. 

PS. Deb's channel is amazing and as some others have noted I think some of the core concepts in both skiing and snowboarding are the same, we lean into the turn and angulate out of it for example, you initiate the turn with the front and end it more at the back etc etc. So I think there's a lot to learn from her even for snowboarders! She's also a positive force of nature and deserves more subscribers!