This morning Asam Gardner and myself attended a workshop with the single Czech snowboarder here at Interski, also named Adam.
His focus was on relating basic skills to higher end competitive snowboarding. The two skills he chose to examine were edging (which he interchanged with carving) as well as “dynamic balancing”.
He had us try to isolate the movements involved with edging, namely and hips forward position on the toe edge and use of the ankle to adjust edge angle on the heels.
As well, he introduced a pronounced rotational move combined with driving of the knees in carved turns.
Following this, we looked at the use of separation as a means of improving balance skills, especially for SBX riders. He had us experiment with fast straight running in both a “neutral” sideways aligned position, and also with a very open upper body position. This definitely generated some conversation among the group.
Overall it was interesting to see the Czech take on these things and the differences in approach between countries!