The Art of Carving

I find carving instructions fascinating. I’ve been surfing for almost 40 years and I snowboarded for roughly 10 years. No one ever taught me how to surf but I did take snowboard lessons. Learning how to surf was going to the spots with friends and everyone got in the water and surfed. From my point of view snowboard turns require more discipline than surfboard or skateboard turns to prevent face meets surface. After just doing it for a long time on surfboards and transitioning that to skateboards I think there are more ways to carve available. Layout turns for example. I’m not sure I could follow instructions on how to do it.

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Ugh. A radial metadiaphyseal fx. Good luck w the recovery

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In snowboarding my theory goes against many beliefs that carvers have held onto since forever, but it works, and is gaining respect among those who have open minds and try it for themselves.
My personal riding went from bombing the hill to laid out turns heel side and toe side in just 1 season.

Check my newly found heel turn ability, I can actually do a full 360 on flat ground like that, in this clip I was going to do the full 360 but my mate put himself directly in the line I was taking, he had no idea I could hold such a line and stopped in my path.

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show that on a skateboard and you will have my interest

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In this one I break down my own early season heel turns. I progressed a lot from there but I show that vid as it highlights all of my heel turn problems.
Ps I messed up the audio track so you need to turn it up to full volume sorry.

My method, and the body positions within it provide THE MAXIMUM down force that a human body can produce so the rest comes down to traction. Wheels and the riding surface would need to be grippy. If I had a bank to work against, ie help with sideways traction, I could do it on a skateboard in a heartbeat.

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as an aside did you have a chance to glance at Moja’s vid I posted?
that’s where I feel n00bs would be advised to start…

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These boards are gorgeous. Do you have a website or instagram or something?

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Not yet Kook. I will check it today but I taught 2 noobs and 1 skier to link carved turns on their first day with my method. I have never seen a 6 point theory that works so effectively.
Having so few key points that you can draw on when something goes wrong makes learning very easy
Knee open, sit on toilet, eagle wing the back arm for heel turns.
Knee in, soul arch, front arm back or wax off as I call it for toe turns.
Simple concepts, simple names, easily drawn upon when needed that works for first day noobs to extreme carvers like myself

Thanks BigBen.
I personally quit all social media a while back but there is an insta page my mrs runs .
@kijimasnowboards
My website will go live once I have the full run of boards produced before next season.

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Those are beautiful turns. On a flexy longboard with pneumatics you have a lot of shock absorption and very good grip. You can do layouts with your knees locked and just a little ankle action and back arch. Very graceful. You’ll love it.

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I struggle with toe side turns on channel trucks at low speed, not so much carving. It’s like I can’t put enough pressure in them to turn well enough, especially on foot paths.

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Try bringing your front knee inward, close to your back knee and standing in a soul arch position like this

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Right, getting as much body weight into the board without losing your balance point over the middle.

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And the opposite is true for heel side, front knee open then adopt a sitting on the toilet type body position which is much more natural than the soul arch position.
In our daily lives we almost never bend into the soul arch position but we spend hours sitting.
Muscle memory is strong

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Yeah, heel-side comes natural, as it’s quite controllable and easy to do. Gonna look like I’m trying to hump fences on some turns LOL!

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Since working all this out I find myself standing hips forward with a slight bend in my knees all the time and my life long lower back pain is gone.

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It’s all good mate, tried some of your tips just now, soul arch even works at speed for me, at least shoving my hips into the turn did, not sure how pronounced it actually looked from a 3rd person perspective.

Opening the knee for heel-side and closing it for toe-side with the back arm moving counter worked wonders too. I’ll definitely be practicing these going forward. Keep up the good work!

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Thanks for trying it out Mal!

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Once you get 6 basic concepts locked into muscle memory you can start to focus on drawing one big circle with your hips that starts at the soul arch position, swings forward and around to the toilet position, then rearward and around back to the soul arch.
So one big circle spread over two turns, or a set of turns as I call them as they really are inseparable.
Then once you lock that down focus on being tall at the soul arch and low at the toilet position, with everything in between a gradual transition to the other.
One rise and one fall per turn set.

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