Kajū (loading) is made up of external and internal force: external force includes gravity, centrifugal force and resistance from the snow surface; internal force is the rider using muscles and joints to change the board's shape. Feel the external force first, then let the internal force work with it

# How Low Should You Crouch When Carving a Snowboard? Timing Matters More Than Depth Crouching down doesn't pressure the board; pressure comes the instant the crouch stops. KAKU: external force comes first, then internal force works with it. - URL: https://www.ykhokkaido.com/en/blog/carving-lab-04-how-low-to-crouch - Published: 2026-11-10 - Section: Technique - Series: Carving Lab (part 4) - Tags: Learning methods --- "Crouching down is applying pressure." 西西 says this may be the most misunderstood sentence on the road to better carving. This is Part 4 of Carving Lab, and it answers one question only: when you carve, how low should you actually crouch? The answer is not in the depth. It is in when you crouch, and in whether the force from the snow has arrived first. This post is for you if you: - can already link turns and are starting to practise carving - think carving means getting low and pressing the board, yet the harder you press, the less stable you get - fall over the moment you get low on the heelside, and don't know where to start looking The views below come from posts by 西西 and KAKU. They are not quoted from JSBA teaching materials. ## Crouch down, and the board gets lighter 西西 puts it directly: the act of crouching down does not, by itself, put pressure on the board. Your thighs and the board (if a board could feel anything) will both feel the pressure drop. Only one moment really puts pressure on the board: the moment you crouch and then stop crouching. At that instant, the G-force you feel jumps. The problem is that through a turn, external forces such as centripetal force and snow resistance never let up. Crouch down and stand back up, and you have applied pressure for only an instant. You cannot keep resisting the external forces that way.

Not "bend your legs and apply pressure", but "hold a posture that can keep taking the external force, and complete the turn in it".
西西

When it goes right, 西西 describes the feeling roughly like this: - The point where the nose meets the snow cuts in, and the speed builds. - After entering the turn, you gradually fold your body and lower your centre of gravity. You are crouching in the direction of the centrifugal force, so it doesn't feel uncomfortable. - At the lowest point the G-force comes on all at once, and you feel as if you're about to be flung out. Brace at this moment and hold your edging and your lean; the edge angle rises gradually along with them. - Once it's stable, slowly stand up and use the board's rebound to change edges. With your weight on the back foot, you can even spring yourself out and change edges in an instant. So the answer to the title: you don't need to crouch as low as you can. Fully bent legs mean the body is locked in place, and holding that position against the external force takes constant muscular effort; crouching too far also adds movement you don't need. The key, as 西西 puts it, is to crouch "within the range where you can apply pressure effectively".

What kajū is made of, as KAKU describes it. An editorial sketch: it shows only the components, not their relative size, and not how they are distributed through each phase of the turn.

**Key point**: crouching is not the same as applying pressure. Pressure appears the instant the crouch stops; sustained resistance to the external force comes from your posture. ## What a crouch does depends on how much you rise and sink 西西 does not say crouching is always useless. In another post, 西西 mentions a friend's key point: in a dynamic turn, crouching actually is applying pressure. As 西西 understands it, in that way of riding the centre of gravity rises and sinks very little, so crouching becomes the body working against the board, pinning the edge firmly. At the edge change, the rebound the board releases, plus a slight retraction of the legs and a little lift-and-shift of the body, brings the board onto the new edge. 西西 calls this actively pressured style very stable, and also "exhausting". Read the two posts together and the difference lies in the conditions. In a turn with a lot of rise and sink, crouching takes pressure off, and pressure appears only the instant the crouch stops. In a turn with little rise and sink, where body and board work against each other, crouching is applying pressure. This is our reading from putting the two posts side by side; 西西 did not lay it out this way in a single post. 西西 has also said that when you first practise folding your body, the fold won't necessarily bring the edge up; it may even make the edge lie flat. 西西's fix is to bring the joint closest to the snow toward the snow: mainly the hip joint on the heelside, mainly the knee joint on the toeside. This also takes load off the ankles. The original post makes one exception for a particular stance, which this post does not go into. **Key point**: the same crouch gives different results depending on how much you rise and sink. Fold with the joint closest to the snow. ## KAKU: the external force comes first, so the internal force has something to work with In a post at the end of July, KAKU opens with a question: for people who talk about "applying pressure" all day, where does the pressure come from, and what does it act on? In KAKU's view, "applying pressure" sounds as if all you need is to get low, push the hips, drive the knees and shove with the legs, and the harder the muscles work, the harder the board bends. So many people shove themselves off balance before any external force has built up, then blame it on not being strong enough. KAKU says the JSBA textbook talks about kajū (荷重, "loading"), which in Japanese covers two parts: - External force: the force formed by gravity, centrifugal force and resistance from the snow surface. - Internal force: the force the body uses, through muscles and joints, to change the board's shape. The external force has to be felt, absorbed and guided first; only then can there be any talk of the internal force working with it. Forcing pressure when none of those conditions exist is not, in KAKU's view, applying pressure. It is using brute strength to cover up having no feel at all for the external force.

External force creates the board's pressure on the snow, and decides whether the board goes or stops. Internal force creates the pressure that changes how the board bends, and the bend decides how big the turn is, when it goes and when it stops.
KAKU

Not being able to feel the external force doesn't mean you lack talent. KAKU says it is completely normal for speed, the sense of falling and centrifugal force to make people scared and stiff, and to make them sit back. KAKU's advice is to start on a safe, manageable slope, let the board ease into the fall line, and feel how the external force builds. Only when you know where the force comes from do you know when to push and when to let go. In a follow-up reply, KAKU also says that in learning to ride, improving your ability to feel matters more than physical strength. In October, while reviewing for the JSBA A-level instructor theory exam, KAKU wrote more: beginners don't need to understand it in fine detail all at once. They won't remember it, and they don't yet have enough physical feel to connect the theory to the movement. Once you reach the progression stage, though, you need to know where the force comes from, where it acts, and how your own movement should work with it. KAKU's example happens to be a sore point for many riders: falling over as soon as you get low on the heelside. One direction to check is whether your body's movement is working with the support the snow surface gives you at that moment. In these posts KAKU does not give the size of the external force in each phase of the turn, and this post does not fill that in. 西西 talks about crouching, KAKU about external force. The angles differ, but both are talking about a posture that keeps taking the external force, not about how low you crouch. **Key point**: first ask where the force comes from. Until the external force has built up, more effort is just brute strength. ## The research gets one line Most research on this comes from skiing, where conditions differ from snowboard carving, so it can only serve as background. - Wulf et al. (1998) had participants perform slalom-type movements on a ski simulator and found that a relatively late onset of force is a feature of expert performance. The first experiment had only 8 participants. - Gilgien et al. (2018) interviewed the coaching staff of Olympic alpine ski teams, who describe the technical events as demanding a more pronounced pattern of loading and unloading, and greater ground reaction forces. This is a racing context. Both lines show only that the timing of force is a variable researchers study. Neither proves how low you should crouch when carving a snowboard. ## Who this post is not for - Riders who can't yet link turns consistently: get your edge changes solid first. You can start with [the fake weight shift in a beginner's first week](/en/blog/first-turn-03-fake-weight-shift/). - Anyone looking for a standard answer in degrees or centimetres: neither instructor gives a number, and this post won't make one up. To check all this against your own riding on snow, see SnowWind's Snowboard Progression Lesson on the [courses page](/en/courses/); to sign up, you need to be able to link turns consistently. For 西西's qualifications, see [西西's profile](/en/instructors/xixi/); for KAKU's, the [principal's profile](/en/instructors/yuugyo/). Part 1 covers [what carving is](/en/blog/carving-lab-01-what-is-carving/); the previous part covered [where to look in a heelside carve](/en/blog/carving-lab-03-heelside-gaze/); the next part covers [stalled edge changes and edge angle](/en/blog/carving-lab-05-edge-angle-and-transition/).

西西's material is drawn from 西西's Threads posts and teaching notes; KAKU's from KAKU's Threads posts of July and October 2026. The research section cites only conclusions stated in the papers' abstracts. The views of KAKU and 西西 are their own teaching observations, not official JSBA positions.

## FAQ ### How low should you crouch when carving? For 西西, the lowest crouch is not the point. Fully bent legs lock the body in place, so resisting external force takes constant effort, and crouching too far adds needless movement. Crouch within the range where you can apply pressure effectively, in a posture that keeps taking the external force. ### Does crouching down put pressure on the board? 西西 says the act of crouching does not by itself put pressure on the board; your thighs and the board actually feel less pressure. What pressures the board is the instant you crouch and then stop crouching: the G-force you feel suddenly jumps. ### Is applying pressure the same thing as kajū (loading)? The JSBA glossary renders the Japanese kajū (荷重) in Chinese as 施壓, "applying pressure". KAKU says the textbook's kajū covers external force (gravity, centrifugal force, snow resistance) and internal force (the body changing the board's shape with muscles and joints), not just crouching and pushing. ### I fall over as soon as I get low on the heelside. What should I check first? KAKU names one direction to check: whether your body's movement works with the support the snow surface gives you at that moment. How that support builds and how its direction changes need analysis, and must be felt while riding. These are KAKU's exam-review notes, not an official JSBA position. ## Sources - https://www.threads.com/@kakukazui/post/DbaNiZXj6ld - https://www.threads.com/@kakukazui/post/DbaPLffjzLP - https://www.threads.com/@kakukazui/post/DemcynQAV-1 - Gabriele Wulf, Charles H. Shea, Sabine Matschiner (1998). Frequent Feedback Enhances Complex Motor Skill Learning. https://doi.org/10.1080/00222899809601335 - Matthias Gilgien, R. Reid, C. Raschner, M. Supej, H. Holmberg (2018). The Training of Olympic Alpine Ski Racers. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/05074912491f49e127efcbc093e9d565a5e9fff2