Hands flailing in snowboard short turns? Forget the hands; watch your side compress and extend

In short turns, many people’s hands swing wildly back and forth. 西西’s view is that the problem is not the hands.

This is Part 8 of Carving Lab. First, a plain-language explanation of the “lateral line” that readers have asked about; then a round-up of what 西西 has said about short turns.

This post is for you if you:

• don’t know where to put your hands in short turns, and start flailing as soon as you speed up
• find your short turns running away with you, with speed you can’t rein in
• have come across the term “lateral line” and didn’t understand it

What follows is 西西’s practice notes, not an official JSBA standard. 西西 has also noted that the part about the head is a feel from practice and may not be right.

The lateral line: one line down the side of your body

When 西西 posted on this topic on Threads, one reader replied that the explanation made it even harder to follow, and another asked whether 西西 had coined the term. 西西’s answer: 側表鏈 (the Chinese term 西西 uses; literally “side surface chain”) is what human anatomy and fascia theory call the lateral myofascial line, known in English as the lateral line.

In plain terms: think of the side of your body as one connected line. According to the Anatomy Trains website, this line starts at the middle of the sole, wraps around the outer ankle, runs up the outside of the lower leg and thigh, crosses the trunk in a basket-weave pattern, and ends at the skull near the ear. The idea comes from Thomas Myers’s book Anatomy Trains.

So “compression” means this line along the side of your body shortens and curls up; “extension” means it lengthens and opens out. In short turns, this is what 西西 wants you to watch, not your hands.

Two caveats. First, this is a body model proposed by Myers to describe how muscles and fascia work together; we have not found any experimental evidence for it in snowboarding. Second, applying it to short turns is 西西’s use of it, not what Myers originally meant.

Key point: the lateral line is one connected line along the side of your body, from foot to ear. In short turns, watch it, not your hands.

Why it is the line that moves, not the hands

As 西西 puts it, a short turn looks like the hands swinging, but what really changes is the lateral line.

Extending the lateral line releases the body's internal force, and that is what controls how much the board skids.

西西

西西 sets one precondition: during the edge change, the body is curled up. Only when it is curled up is there room left to extend. Then you extend into the toeside edge, and extend into the heelside edge.

Look at it the other way round. Big hand swings without this compression and extension give you the situation described earlier: almost no pressure and no skidding to control speed the whole way down, so the board easily runs away with you.

Key point: curl up first, so there is room to extend; the extension is what controls the skid.

A short turn is, at heart, falling downhill

西西 stresses one basic point to get clear first: at heart, a short turn is falling down the hill.

So the rhythm of short turns is naturally much faster than that of long turns, and they take much more internal effort. In 西西’s account, when carving on steep slopes, medium turns are the most tiring, then short turns, then long turns. That is 西西’s feel, not a measurement. For more on steep slopes, see Part 6.

西西’s other account: closing the armpits, and the head

In a separate teaching note, 西西 described the same problem differently. We include both here, because they are the same person’s notes from different times; we don’t merge them into a single set of cues.

Closing the armpits. Where you need to apply pressure, close the gap under your left armpit; switch sides, and close the gap under your right. It looks like the hands are swinging, but this is what the upper body actually feels. 西西 says the hands are not decoration; they are the switch for the rhythm of pressure.

No butt sticking out on the toeside. The ankles need to fold to some degree: the shins press down and the boot tongues flex. Once the ankles bend, the butt tucks in by itself. 西西 says toeside pressure in JSBA Level 1 short turns follows the same logic: quickly fold, in order, the back ankle, the back knee and the front hip joint, and the pressure goes straight to the toeside edge, controlling your speed. This is 西西’s understanding, not textbook wording.

The head. 西西 marks this as a feel from practice that may not be right. Entering the turn, especially on the heelside, the head reaches slightly toward the direction of travel and the weight goes onto the front foot, so the board turns faster and more precisely. At the instant of the edge change, the head has a feeling of being drawn slightly upward, similar to what Chinese martial arts call xū líng dǐng jìn (roughly, the crown of the head held lightly lifted): the body’s centre of mass rises slightly anyway, the head goes with that rise, the lower body uses the board’s flex to finish the edge change, and the upper body ends up in a reverse-bow (angulated) position by itself.

Who this post is not for

• Riders who can’t yet carve linked turns consistently: read stalled edge changes and edge angle first.
• Anyone looking for a fixed hand position or a standard angle: 西西 didn’t give one, and this post won’t make one up.

To have an instructor look at your short turns on snow, see the Snowboard Progression Lesson on the courses page. For 西西’s qualifications, see 西西’s profile. The previous part covered the upper and lower arcs of a turn; the next covers the five elements of carving fundamentals.

This post draws on 西西's Threads posts and teaching notes. The path of the lateral line is cited from the Anatomy Trains website (as described in Thomas Myers's Anatomy Trains); the application is 西西's. These are 西西's practice notes, not an official JSBA standard, and not a safety guarantee.