Marry Christmas to you all!
This is mainly a "thank you" post. I had a lovely season opening in Val di Sole (Italy). It was a alpine snowboarding training event and I can finally say that - after umpteen seasons of trying hard to self teach myself - I can almost make the board do what I want it to! Thank you Canman and Shaman (
http://www.snowboard.pl).
In fact, what started for me as a full on snowboarding experience, after a few days turned to be a full time skwaling event.
Is it unavoidable??
I made a conscious effort to switch boards from time to time to become more aware of the technique and separate it from the snow conditions and riding gear.
What I found was, that although I find it difficult to apply push-pull on an alpine board (will have to work on that later) it works wonders on a skwal. On top of that, a touch of rotation, mainly applied on what is my snowboarding back-side, works well to stop me from counter-rotating (my old bad habit). I put my racing tongues into my boots (stiffer boots help skwaling!).
Thanks everyone for guiding me through the learning process (
ObiOne, Zarkod). Here is the video of me progressing:
http://youtu.be/9MZo_RBhxpUI also tried to keep my free-hand stable to keep my upper body quiet, it worked well as an exercise (looks weird, though).
http://youtu.be/sV6k-r94rssI finally managed to slow myself down. I know that I need to work on my balance, feet-clock, and to keep the hands off the snow!
Plus, I need a steeper slope. Anything else? Don't hesitate to comment, it is hard to develop a good technique with no guidance!
