Improving and helping

I have been at the Hemel Snow Centre nearly once a week in recent times, on the thursday evening sessions. I have spent a lot of time helping my friends to improve their freestyle. Mostly I have been working on flatland and buttering with them, and they are struggling with balance and thigh burn, as all novices do ! heheh……..so I feel slightly evil in pushing them, but it has to be done !

I sometimes get into the flow of things myself and start hitting the rails and kickers. I have managed to learn Switch Frontside Boardslides, albeit slowly, and on ride-on features……I need to carry on practicing before I can attempt side-hits like that.

The SCUK Spring Bash was held at Hemel on Saturday 14th May, it was an excellent day with loads of people attending and freestyle coaches on hand. I rode in the evening jam session. This pic is me doing a cab180 off the pole jam:

And here is a quick video of a run a did on the night:

The week after I was at Hemel again, and Jools Smith was there doinga photo shoot with Lon Canu and Jake Terry. I was hitting the same lines as them and Jools got a shot of me on the up box.  I should learn that it is better to do simple styled tricks rather than tech ones if it is a single shot pic.  I was halfway through a 270 out of a boardslide, but it looks like I’m coming out of a frontboard………next time it will be better I’m sure !

The week after that, I attending the Maverix Purple Snowflake course at Hemel. Designed to help more technical riders improve their freestyle. The day concentrated more on kickers, I would have preferred more rail development but it was still an excellent day. Here is the video from the day:

 

And finally, a pic of me doing a switch front board, I think this was my 2nd attempt:

 

Stance widths

This is an age old argument/discussion with the general concensus being that the wider your stance, the more stability you have, but the narrower your stance makes it easier to spin faster.

For the last 3 years I have had a 25inch stance which is quite wide for my height of 5’7″ and short legs. I have always found it comfortable until recently. In Bulgaria, I was running that stance width as normal, but since I came back, and have done 2 sessions at Hemel, I have noticed something different. When I am at Hemel I prefer to keep both feet strapped into the bindings while going up the lift, it makes for faster laps of the park setup. The first time at Hemel after Bulgaria, I had my 25inch stance, and had both legs strapped in most of the time. I did suffer for the next two days with slight knee pain. So I decided to narrow the stance for the next time out.

I’ve narrowed it slightly to 24 inches, so now my bindings are centred over the last set of holes each side (not offset to push them further out as before). I personally didnt notice much difference in the riding aspect, but I was definitely more comfortable going up the lift and didn’t have knee pains for the next two days. I will not go any narrower though as I have tried friend’s boards with narrower setups and my legs feel mega restricted !

The bottom line is, go with whatever is most comfortable and try different widths to find what is best for you !

Borovets, Bulgaria, Stag Do !

In February some mates of mine who have just got into snowboarding, invited me along to their snowboarding stag do. A few people had dropped out and the offer was too good to refuse.

We were booked up for 12th March, I figured it would be quite warm out there so I took advantage of the Westbeach sale and ordered a new hoody.

It was an awesome week, it was the good old routine of breakfast, snowboarding, lunch, snowboarding, jacuzzi, shower, drinks in the bar, dinner, then out on the lash.

There was very hot weather all week, 14 – 16 Deg C with bright sunshine, which meant sunburnt nose and neck, and the slopes getting mega slushy by the afternoon. Also with that much sunshine, the snow was running out, and got thinner and thinner by the day. At the end of the week, 50% of the runs were closed due to lack of snow. But that didnt stop us having a top time.

I found this rail, which people mostly sit on, and its used to seperate and funnel in queues for the lift. It was not setup at all, so wasnt prepared and didnt have a kicker to get up on it. But looking at it, I figured I could frontboard it. The run in was a little flat so speed was an issue, but the first attempt I ollied clean over the rail. I was good to go. Got the lads to film me on 2 attempts, and then we came back again in the afternoon to try again…………………..

When I was riding through the week, I spent time with the lads, helping them with their technique and getting them into some basic freestyle. If you watch through this next vid, you will see how they improve through the week under my tuition

So overall, Borovets is a pretty fun place, although the mountain is on the small side, there is plenty potential. The new park is pretty decent too. Recommended !

2011 so far…

So it’s 2011, with Christmas and New Year out of the way, back to being single and looking forward to Avoriaz. But first I wanted to get some of my freestyle skills back. Enter Maverix.

I contact Jay and we discussed what I wanted to achieve in the session, and organised to meet at Hemel the following Thursday evening. The idea was to get some confidence back for hitting kickers, and as is the usual way, Jay filmed every run I did for us to assess immediately before the next run. Here is the vid:

I’m still working on what I’m doing with my arms while I’m rotating, they still get a bit flappy ! lol

Literally a week later we were off to Avoriaz, also the same week as the SCUK people were gonna be in Morzine, so again it was cool bumping into friendly faces out on the slopes. Avoriaz is such a great place for freestyle. The Burton Kids park has some cool easy jibs to hit while warming up, as does the Lil Stash, which you will see in the following vid. The Chappelle park has 3 kicker lines from easy through to hard as well as a variety of ride-on and side-on rails and boxes to hit. The Stash is as awesome as ever and the hits seem to get bigger and bigger each year ! The Arare park higher up the mountain has some huge kickers (which I don’t have the balls to try!) and some high-set boxes and rails, its all a bit more serious up there ! My usual routine in the mornings was to run through the Chappelle Park and Lil Stash to warm up until my mates we ready to ride, then we would go cruising the pistes and the off-piste towards the end of the week.

Here is a vid of my warm up.

Since I got back from Avoriaz, I felt I had got back into my snowboarding groove and was at Hemel nearly every week, either a thursday or friday. Ive got lots of my confidence back working on my usual rail tricks and trying to progress onto new ones. I have been riding with Lon and Luke regularly and I find riding with people who are better me, helps me push my game further.

Speaking of Lon, here is a quick vid of him frontflipping onto the down box, and off of the scuk box, nutcase !!

So this brings us bang up to date. My blog posts will be more ‘real-time’ and less historical.

Next stop, Borovets, Bulgaria, the land of cheap booze and cheap whores, oh…..some fun snowboarding too ! hahahah

2010……..lost my snowboarding mojo !

The year started off great, with our annual holiday to…….yes you guessed it……Val D’Isere ! lol…….that makes it the 5th time I had been to the Espace Killy area. We had a great week with some good progression from the other lads in the group. We had fun riding off piste hitting mini-booters as well as lots of switch riding. The nightlife was great as always but the big big letdown was La Tocade, the legendary burger/kebab joint. Well, it under different management and the classics we munched on at 4am years ago just arent there…….most notably the chicken doner with thousand island sauce ! Oh well.

I still carried on going Hemel but not that often. Then the opportunity came up to go to La Plagne for 3 days in mid-april. It was the weekend of the volcano disaster so we ended up road tripping. We had a great 3 days and I enjoyed lapping the 7Cube park and the mini half pipe. This picture was taken next to our chalet in Les Coches, part of the La Plagne resort.

So, from May, as I was finding other ways to be entertained on friday nights I stopped going to Hemel for the freestyle nights. I was still going occasionally but it tended to be a midweek evening and occasional thursday. As I hadn’t been practising much of what I had learnt in 2009, I slowly lost my confidence in hitting rails and kickers, especially side-hits. Everytime I tried to do a Back1 onto the scuk box, I would only get 90 round and catch my heel edge falling backwards. Doing that a few times will really make you think twice about doing it again !!

I was still doing all my flatland buttering spinny twizzles but the more I concentrated on that, the rail and kicker skills fell by the wayside. I didn’t mind too much as I was spending quality time with my girlfriend and my general snowboarding ability hadn’t been lost.

Over the summer months, I felt my board, the Ride Society, was on its last legs. It had lost its camber, the edges were split and I found my riding became very inconsistent. So when I saw Jamie from Conspiracy at Hemel one night, I grabbed him for a chat. We spoke about several types of boards that he had tested that year and were due into the shop within a couple months. After doing research and speaking to various people (inc Jamie Nicholls at the Metro Show) I decided to go for the Salomon Official, being a similar kind of board to my Society, albeit a more modern version. Salomon and K2 held a board test at Hemel and I tested out various boards. Unfortunately, there wasnt an Official for me to test which I was quite disappointed about, but this maybe a blessing in disguise. It was suggested I try out the Drift and the Grip which I did. I found both the boards great fun but just couldn’t decide between the two. After more chats with Jamie at the shop, and with James Fuller of Salomon, I went for the Grip. Since I hated the mexican xmas jumper graphics of the standard Grip, luckily the Team edition was available in a much better colour scheme. Jamie sorted me a great deal on it and I’ve been very happy with it so far. Ideally I wanted to change my bindings as my Triads had seen better days, but since they weren’t broken, I stuck with them.

After a couple of shakedown sessions at Hemel to get used to my new set-up, I found I was slowly building my confidence and very much looking forward to the next holiday, Avoriaz in January 2011. I treated myself to a new Bonfire Jacket and Pants and also got rid of my old Dainese impact shorts. They had served me very well over 6 years, however, the new Red D30 impact shorts were more slimline and more comfy. Things were starting to look up…..

Footage, footage and more footage

No more talking in this post……..just videos posted in order to show my progression over 2009.

And the best till last……another great session with Maverix !

Roll on 2010 !

HEMEL !!!

April 2009………Hemel Hempstead Snow Centre opens its doors for the first time. A much anticipated event.

For us living in North London, it meant a 23mile drive to get our snow fix, and not the 45mile slog up to Milton Keynes. The quality of snow in Hemel was so much better over the sugary snow at MK. Coupled with all new facilities and a cool bar area, the scene was set for the coming years.

The slope is smaller than Milton Keynes and covered less area, but for us there was absolutely no point going the extra miles up to MK. Over time, the rails and fun boxes have been built (mostly by Steve Terry) to create a great selection and variety of items for us to hit on friday nights. The DWA (Diggers With Attitude ) crew always do a great job of building the parks in the short time they have each week and they do put the effort in to make it different every week.

There is always friendly atmosphere and lots of regular faces, with freestyle coaches and other tip jibbers on hand happy to give advice to anyone who is trying to progress.

The night is always ended with a beer and some sahara nuts, there is no other way !!

2009……a very green year

So now sporting my new gear and learning more tricks inc this tailblock……..

I was soon off to Tignes again in January 09. I love Tignes so much and the opportunity to go with a certain someone was too good to pass up. It was the same week as the SCUK (Snowboard Club) Winter Bash, which meant bumping into lots of people I know on the slopes and some great fun times in the evening.

This pic is taken at the top of the Solaise bowl in Val D’iere, with a view all the way down to the lake and dam at the bottom of Tignes.

A couple of cool pics taken on the Nissan kicker and my first ever Cab540…….well not quite the full 5, but all good anyway

Maverix……the start

In November 2008, Maverix held their first all day coaching course at MK. They had a good plan for the day , split us into 2 groups and had a photographer take pics of us. It was an awesome day and set the stage for the future of freestyle coaching in UK Snowdomes.

These days are highly recommended, anyone who has been on one, always comes away knowing they have progressed their freestyle and learnt something new.

moving up in Society

Its Summer 2007, having just come back from Tignes, my confidence grew massively, I was improving each time I visited MK, boardslides, buttering, even sketching out the odd Back3 on smaller kickers……I wanted a new board now, so it meant a visit to Jamie at Conspiracy.

Jamie knew how I rode and what sort of thing I was looking for, he didn’t even discuss other boards, just gave me the Ride Society 154 07/08 to try out with every confidence I would love it. And he was right ! This is me giving it a test in my living room………

I was still using my Burton Mission bindings but had my eye on the new Triads, the blue perfectly matched the blue on the base of the board, not that I’m a tart or anything…

At the time, this was my collection…..

January 2008…………..and its off to Morzine