I should add that I rode twins with camber for 20 years, so I learned to ride pretty nose heavy and then get my weight back.  With modern directional boards with rocker in the nose you just don’t need to (and some you simply can’t or you’ll fold the nose).  With more setback, you have more leverage on the nose and less on the tail as well.

it was interesting to watch that K‘-carving series, but it’s really targeted to beginner carvers and addresses ‘problems’ that I don’t have.  I’d love to see him do a more advanced level vid.  Some of the fundamentals (basic body position) are really good though, and admittedly I should work on that.

I wondered if stance width might play into this, but in Class 1 he says that he goes by the height to the centre of his knee, which is a reasonable 54-55cm. Nidecker refers to this as the Natural Stance (NS):

I'm 172cm tall and my knee is at 49 cm, but I've never went that small.  I'm usually 52-55 and prefer 53cm.

Note that Jeremy Jones is 173cm and rides the 154 Freecarver 6000 at 48cm, so the small stance thing isn't just a Euro-asian thing.  And there are advantages like centre-flexing the board, quicker fore/aft shifts and pivots (though that may be a drawback for carving).

I do think that when some people go from duck to posi they sometimes go too wide.  The stance on-board is between the binding disks, but biomechanically you should be looking at the distance between your heels.  If you keep you heel in the same place and go from duck to posi, the stance gets considerably narrower.

Posted by: @superfelix

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You don't think they're shifting their hips forward? I'm guessing you're mostly focusing on the deep carves rather than the wigglier ones?

Yeah, and I think I'm figuring this out.  That counter-rotation of the shoulders going into the toeside (ep7) really helped me see it.  In their crouched stance they're using their shoulders a lot more.  I feel like I keep my shoulders fairly quiet, and being more upright they're practically above my hips. 

I think these guys are often throwing their shoulder forward to effectively bring their centre of mass forward.  This doesn't require as much fore/aft movement of the hips, so the rear leg remains flexed and the front is often extended.  These cross-through transitions are considerably lower than their cross-under/retraction/wiggly ones.

Back to the first vid, sometimes that counter-rotation is really exagerated:

"https://youtu.be/5ZwU1PBpLjs?si=sZ8vy4XtmOsGXMNQ"

They do bring the hips forward, but not to the same extent that many do.

Posted by: @board-doctor

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I think these guys are often throwing their shoulder forward to effectively bring their centre of mass forward. 

...

They do bring the hips forward, but not to the same extent that many do. 

Oh, yeah, that actually matches with what I said that I felt like their bending at the hips kind of hides how much they put their hips forward! I think what I noticed was more their center of gravity moving forward as opposed to the hips moving forward.

And like you said, I think in a crouched stance it may be more efficient to bend more at the hips to shift your weight rather than focusing too much on the hips... Interesting! 

Yeah I read somewhere else that they generally have the hips over the rear boot and their chest over the front boot, so that their centre-of-mass is somewhat centered, allowing them to pressure the front & rear with out as much movement.

My 'style' (for lack of a better word) has been described as more of a joystick, where the (more vertical) torso moves fore/aft together.

@Felix, thanks for helping me work through that (and politely being upfront that I wasn't right). lol

@board-doctor Hi, I also looked closely at the K-carving series. It is address to beginners but he progresses up each lesson to quickly get into the nitty gritty details.

If you add it all up, a lot of the rules given in James list are present (albeit with some differences).

One thing that I have observed in many of their videos is that some riders appear to have stiff boards while other have very soft flexing boards doing switch riding and a lot of spins but still laying down low carves and high board angles. It appears to be related to the technique and getting the board up on edge allowing them to carve deep regardless of the equipment

They are not necessarily relying on stiff boots and stiffeners under the tongue to hold themselves on the rail. 

The teacher in the K-series appears quite relaxed and not straining when doing his medium speed carves. 

Just saying...

Posted by: @flyguy

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The teacher in the K-series appears quite relaxed and not straining when doing his medium speed carves. 

Yeah, he seems to be in more of zen state of flow than a lot of those in high adrenaline videos. 

Some of his fundamentals are indeed similar to James, but the body movements are a bit different.  Typically a little more of a down-unweighted (cross-through) turn with less COM movement, whereas I think James uses his COM for more of an up-unweighted/cross-over turn.  I think this vocabularly is useful, but I don't think it's strictly black&white/up&down... I think it's more of a (greyscale) spectrum.

One issue that seems different at least from the Japanese side is board width.
Japanese manufacturers do not manufacture wide boards. Not only are "hammerhead"
models which are aimed at the hard boot community not wide but so are the softboot
models which focus on carving. Take the Moss Snowstick PQ 160. This Performance
Quad (aka PQ) is more focused on carving on groomers than the other Moss models
but the waist width is 258. I know that many Japanese have smaller feet but even
with a strong posi-posi stance, that is not very wide. Moss does have a shorter and wider
PQ54 with a waist width of 274 but you are losing effective edge when you size down. (I
suspect that the PQ54's extra width is more attuned to riding powder).

Posted by: @kagurasnowsurfer

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that is not very wide

That's what I've been saying...  I don't get it.  It seems (for now at least), the North American way is wide boards and the Asian way is steeper stance angles.

I think the narrower widths may be the reason behind the down unweighted carves I see in a lot of the Asian videos.  

Posted by: @wild-cherry

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That's what I've been saying...  I don't get it.  It seems (for now at least), the North American way is wide boards and the Asian way is steeper stance angles.

I think the narrower widths may be the reason behind the down unweighted carves I see in a lot of the Asian videos.  

 

Yeah I think there's probably a few reasons they don't go wider.  Smaller feet & shorter heights won't have the same leverage, their terrain is often more mellow and their style is certainly different.  Perhaps they've adapted different aspects of their carving as it evolved, whereas North Americans simply adapted the boards.

Having said that, I tend to go more up-unweighted on mellow terrain and more down-unweighted on steeper terrain, so maybe it doesn't have anything to do with the terrain.