troubles linking turns on narrow trails

so i have recently picked up snowboarding and i have been trying to work on linking turns. i do O.K. but sometimes i take some rough spills.

i agree it takes time and practice the main thing you can do to improve is to practice and keep doing it and trying to get your feet around faster. also try and practice your narrow turns on an open trail so that you dotn go off the mountain and you have more room for error and practice.

thanks for the info...

A lot of it is practice and building your confidence up. You will take some spills, but as you get better, you will learn how to fall "into" the mountain vs doing a "fly swatter".

This may sounds a little off, but you want to get good at riding *fast*. The slower you are going, the harder it is to turn. Once you are confident riding with speed, you will want to point your board straight down narrow paths and scrub off speed as needed.

Carrying your speed is oh so important in many different scenarios.

Let's say you are turning on your toe edge. Falling into the mountain would be falling on your knees. Another word for this is a washout. You basically lose your edge and slide down the mountain.

A flyswatter would be if you were sliding down the mountain on your toe edge with your back facing downhill, and you caught your heel edge. Usually this is much more sudden and painful :)

You can washout or flyswatter on either edge. But the preferable thing to do is a washout.

practice practice practice.

Originally posted by cyrus10101 Let's say you are turning on your toe edge. Falling into the mountain would be falling on your knees. Another word for this is a washout. You basically lose your edge and slide down the mountain. A flyswatter would be if you were sliding down the mountain on your toe edge with your back facing downhill, and you caught your heel edge. Usually this is much more sudden and painful :) You can washout or flyswatter on either edge. But the preferable thing to do is a washout.

To answer your first question, I find it helpful to focus on really turning your hips.

When you're making long, slow turns, a lot of the time you focus on your feet and lower legs. If you lean forward and initiate the turn by flexing the board with your feet and shifting your weight a bit as you rotate your front knee, everything else just follows along. The whole idea of initiating with your front foot is that the sidecut of the board works with you and the rest of the board and your body just follows along.

On steep or narrow (or both) terrain, you don't really have the time to do all of those things and wait for the board to pull you around. I tend to turn using two techniques, depending on how deep the snow is.

If there's not a ton of snow, I keep my weight forward and initiate the turn like I normally would, but I think about using my front heel (or toe) as a pivot point, and I swing my hips around that point. This keeps the weight off of your back foot, so you're not dragging your weight across the snow to get the back of the board around. Instead of sliding into the turn, I twist my hips to bring the board into it. It takes a bit more effort, but you can make some quick turns that way.

If the snow is deep, that really won't work, because you're probably just going to plow the nose under by shifting your weight forward. In that case, I do the same basic thing, but I think about pressing the tail and pivoting around my back foot and swinging my hips. It can be a little trickier for me to do, because it's easy to fall back if you shift your weight too far. But pow is forgiving and it's not that big of a deal.

In either case, it's important to get your weight back to a more neutral position after you've swung the board around, just like in the middle of a regular turn.

Originally posted by Stanky13 also, how do you do very slight angles? like, if i am pointed straight down and want to just veer to the left or right vs. making a full on hard turn... how do i do that? i tried a few different things but sometimes i get the worst feeling like my board is unstable or getting caught up on something. i dont know how to describe it.

In this case, I don't worry about swinging my weight, or rotating my knees, or initiating with the front foot at all. Toeside, I just press my toes down, and push my knees and hips out over the edge a bit. Heelside, I just lift my toes and 'sit down' a little bit. You can actually be pretty lazy making these kinds of turns and just shift your weight back and forth slightly. You have to be comfortable on your board, but it's not that hard.

practice on wider trails, but keep yourself to narrow turns.  then its the same thing when you're on narrow trails.

Originally posted by B1-5G Originally posted by Stanky13 sometimes i get the worst feeling like my board is unstable or getting caught up on something. i dont know how to describe it. I think you're describing the feeling you get right before you catch an edge. For me that was one of the harder things to overcome as a noob.  I figured out that it's much easier to link turns if your weight isn't on your back foot and you are in a squat position. You just gotta keep a good mental state about everything the guys here mentioned so you can practice it on the mountain. That's how I learned.

Control your speed, be on a slope you're comfortable with. Once you have the fundamentals to turning, it's just doing it at faster speeds. And you will have to watch out for other riders/skiiers, having the confidence knowing you can control where you're going and how fast will keep everyone out of the first aid tent =)

thanks for all the intel!

One more important tip compliments of trusnow:

Snowboard Basics: Falling Safely

The best thing I found was go to a wide run later in the day when there are less people around, pick the narrowest line you have the balls for and stick to it for as long as possible, when you feel like your going to fast just remember, your on a wide as run, just go back to boarding like your comfortable until you are ready to go again. First time you do it you might want to slow down and start again but soon enough you'll just pull out for a second to get your mind back.
You'll go from pulling out to the side and slowing down, to pulling out to the side and keeping the same speed and before you even realise you won't even need to!
Have fun, riding narrow runs between trees over powder is one of the best things about boarding!!!

If you are riding narrow trails and you have some skiers in front of you you have to relax and you have to move the tail strongthly.

I mean, it is not to skid but is to move more heavyly the tail to lose speed and not having accidents.

When you feel more confident, you will be able to change from edge to edge more easily and you will be doing turns even in the narrowest rail..^^

enjoy