Riding Fast
@Andy: Thanks for the compliment 
. I feel like at like certain speed it’s already fast enough for me. It’s not like I’m riding slow. I just don’t like riding crazy fast speed, which for me above 70kmh is already plenty fast.
Also, I’m totally fine with riding fast at speed and carving, it’s just the bombing down on a relatively straight line that I don’t like. To me, it’s way less control than carving, it’s less safer, and if you have some beginners on the slope you never know when they’re gonna turn, they seem to always go across the hill. But yeah, I do have been scaring myself lately here and there just going straight. I almost ate crap yesterday going straight and hit this big bump haha. But, high speed carving is something that I wanna improve at, we should do that sometime 
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P.S. Hey I wanna ride bumps with you pls
^ tl;dr - mogabike.
I never like going fast, I always try and keep the yellow jacket wearers happy….
Sounds like you’ve met everyone’s best mate Bob!? Had a quick chat with him today myself, work related though so it’s all good
Been fortunate enough to not meet Bob yet, but from all the stories it sounds like i definitely will at some point 
What do you do for work?
^ Dylan, you know what you need?
A MOTORBIKE & A SLED!
^ YES!!! SLED!
motorbike and SLED!
@skip11 - You’re right!!! No need for motorbike for now, getyourself a sled and get some speed in. =)
^ YES!!! SLED!
motorbike and SLED!
@skip11 - You’re right!!! No need for motorbike for now, getyourself a sled and get some speed in. =)
Staying low is good for stability, but only works if you know how to down-unweight. So if you don’t know what I’m talking about, then don’t worry about staying low.
Also independent lower body movement can be helpful, but it sounds like you’ve jumped straight to the most advanced stuff.
Nope, don’t know, although I could hazard a guess.
If you don’t feel like you can’t carve on smooth terrain without going too fast and losing control, then take it back a notch.
The hard part is I don’t know what your level of riding is atm. But basically , find some easy groomed terrain (early morning is good), focus on staying centred on the board (front to back), even weight on both feet and work on putting the board on it’s edge and hold the carve until you finish the turn. Roll smoothly to the next edge and do the same thing.
If you can’t do that, you need to go to a less steep hill or a wider one (or preferably both).
That’s all I can tell you without seeing you ride. Hope it’s helpfulAlso less edge at the start of the turn and more at the end can give you some extra grip to finish the turn across the hill and control speed. It’s good to have some control left up your sleeve for when you need it. Rather than just going all in, tilting as hard as you can and hoping your board turns before you run out of room
Thanks for the tips. I’m still working on getting out of some bad habits I’ve had for years, especially keeping my shoulders aligned with the board and as of this year I found out I was also riding with my front shoulder projecting up instead of level. I would like to be able to show you some video of me riding, but despite having shot many hours last year, it was pretty much all of the kids. Will have to wait another 5 months or so to hit the snow again.
Searching for knowledge of riding is good. But always remember - There is no right way to snowboard.
One man’s bad habits, might be exactly what the next man needs to make his style work for him. Or work on his mountain, different snow conditions, etc.
Riding with your shoulders aligned with the board is NOT a bad thing. I teach people to do this. It beats the hell out of riding while staring down the hill and kicking the back foot out.
I teach novice to intermediate riders this because it will fix a whole bag of problems they are having making their turns work.
As you progress to a more advanced level, opening your stance just a little, can give you a few extra bonuses to your riding. But only if you know how to do it properly and also don’t open it too far.
Moral of the story is, different styles work better at different ability levels. So find what works best for your ability right now. Then stay open minded about changing your style when you think u have it dialled and you want to take the next step.
I don’t know if it really matters? I mean, if you’ve got the skill/technique, or interest in developing your fast riding abilities…why not? One could equally question the desire to euro-carve?
I like having a number of different tools in my box, so that on any given day/condition, I can pretty much enjoy some kind of riding and progression.
Fresh groomers and pretty quiet? Rip it up fast and work on the carves
Soft and/or slushy, and forgiving snow? Take it into the park
Pow day? Hit up some freshies!
Solid base + pow day? Find some sweet tree lines
Everything tracked out after some fresh snow? Head out backcountry (this will be me soooooon…:rage: )
There are benefits to learning about all kinds of riding, shall I say,‘disciplines’. Riding fast is a valid and useful one, in my opinion. I certainly couldn’t ride as fast as say, Jeremy or Andy for example, but within my personal abilities, I like to challenge myself and push my limits. Sure, it doesn’t always pay off in the short term (my left wrist is an example of this), but it all adds up to being a much more confident and well-rounded rider.
My .02 cents worth
so many good points, now i want to go take advantage of the staff lessons to get a better idea of where i am at and what/how i can improve!
What do you do for work?
“Quality Assurance” - the survey people in the red jackets. 3 days a week, work at your own pace, get some fun laps in if you feel like it… cant complain!
1st day back riding today from broken arm so I thought I should take it easy and slow - we rode trees all day, slow and technical instead of fast on groomers, it was awesome!
it has been a long 4 weeks, stoke level after today is back up at 11!
I don’t know if it really matters? I mean, if you’ve got the skill/technique, or interest in developing your fast riding abilities…why not? One could equally question the desire to euro-carve?
Of course it doesn’t matter, it’s snowboarding, there is no right or wrong 
. I was just wondering the “why” of fast riding. I recently watch some pros (Terje, Peetu, Seppe, etc.) on youtube experimenting with Push Snowboarding which measures speed and bunch of other things. What I notice even when they’re riding slope style course with huge jumps that requires speed, they’re average speed is only around 30-35mph which is about 48-56 kmh. That is way below the speed of some us here like to cruise at. So that lead me to a conclusion: that some of us just love blazing speed, we are overestimating our speed, or that pros don’t really cruise super fast either.
Anyways, as I said before no right or wrong, just wanted to have a good discussion on riding fast.
^ well you know for slopestyle speed doesn’t count.
Maybe you’ve got too much of a clinical approach to this snowboarding thing.
At the end of the day, with personal progression (and that is what it is, PERSONAL, and no one can tell me any different, )and what not considered, as a snowboard company said:
SMILE! It’s SNOWBOARDING! =)
oh yeah also, rico needs a sled, because he’ll get a motorbike after getting the sled.
@grunge: Why does speed doesn’t count for slope? You definitely need to go fast to hit the huge jumps. I would argue you would need more speed for slope than for cruising the groomers. And based on the videos, even when hitting huge jumps they are only going about 35mph (56kmh) on AVERAGE.
And yes I do have kind of a clinical approach to snowboarding. Even though I said there is no right or wrong in snowboarding, I do believe that there is a “proper” way to snowboard in that you have to learn the fundamentals (e.g. learning how to properly turn, pressing a board, etc.). I guess this comes from my background in basketball and lifting weights, I like to break things down. I guess I am a bit OCD even with my own riding (e.g. if I can’t get a turn or a butter looking a certain way I will keep doing that until I can make look it decent before I even progress to harder tricks even though I can already do said things).
Hahah, that was a nice Bataleon plug :D
haha I would love to see Rico on a sled or a bike.
Motorbikes FTW!
I’m joining in on the general consensus here: Get outta your head and into your boots.
I’m all about the love of snowboarding. I like to progress - i like to try out stuff - but most of all i like to snowboard. Be it groomers, park, powder, pipe.. (haha pipe, i’ve hit it like 4 times in my life… anyways the alliteration got me) I’m not one for so much chatter on the technical, dont get me wrong, its good to know the steps on how to master something - but nothing beats experience! can’t say how much my riding improved by doing a full season back in the day - and i didn’t read a single forum
*EDIT: Disclaimer; I also love to go FAST. in the immortal words of Ricky Bobby’s father “if your not first - you’re last”
@rhys: It won’t ever happen Rhys ahaha.
Just to be clear, I am NOT hating on people who likes to bomb. As mentioned before, I do love to go fast just not all the time. The thread is about the why of going fast.