Riding switch ?

isthatcool

isthatcool

Member
Hello , so today was the opening day at my home mountain.It was pretty sick.

Im kinda confused on what im doing wrong when riding switch.

I look over my shoulder but it seems that it works only for the side that im turning .

Also when i look over my shoulder it just spins me around to normal...its pretty strange , last season i was okay with riding switch , but this year i want to get more speed and start slowly hitting jumps switch.

So any help would be appreciated!

 
on boring days or days you are with friends that suck...

ski the whole run switch

practice makes perfect in everything
 
you should be looking over the side you are turning. So look over your left shoulder, if you are trying to turn left (looking down the slope). For a right turn switch sides. Also scissor your legs and lead with the ski you are looking over, it makes seeing and turning easier.
 
stagger may be a more understandable way to put that. in other words put the leg that corresponds to the shoulder you are looking over further down hill. but otherwise yeah just practice
 
Skiing switch is just like skiing forwards, but it takes time and practice to get used to the feeling. Soon enough you'll be riding switch as well as you can cruise forwards on groomers. Force yourself to look over both shoulders and be ready to take some tumbles, just don't overthink it.
 
pretty much this. after awhile it'll come pretty natural. My advice is do what this kid says and learn how to look over both shoulders. One will feel more comfortable at first but in the end it's alot better to be able to look over both shoulders while riding switch
 
haha dont listen to this guy, he obiviously doenst know what hes talking about, or has huge powder skis that make riding switch impossible without turning your head left and right.

Its way safer to just look over the other shoulder, so you can see where you are going all the time, instead of having a blind moment when switching sides
 
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can anyone carve the entire run riding switch but only looking over one shoulder no matter which way your turning. seen people do this and it looks sick. how do you do this?
 
i find that easier to do than switching shoulders, you definitely have a bit of a blind side, but just practice it
 
one thing to try, turn and then switch your head around. i find it easier. or doing the reverse and turning your head then turning. Either way i don't like turning while my head is also
 
Same here but i get nervous when there are ppl on the run with me,, its better to just practice looking over both shoulders from the beginning, rather than just getting used to jst one shoulder
 
I had problems with riding switch because i was looking over the shoulder i would look over if i were going to spin off a jump.

But when carving, i found that turning one way was far easier. So think of that as your "natural" turn. I then started looking over my other shoulder so that i could see my skis carving during my un-natural turn, and my natural turn would be blind. This gave me a lot of confidence so i was comfortable turning both ways, and now i can carve switch a whole lot better. try it out and see how it works for ya!
 
a tip as far as riding switch, helped me at least is u have to remember riding switch is like learning to ski for the first time again, start slow on easier runs than your used to doing, you can even work on the same pizza to parallel things backwards that you did as a kid in lessons they help. if you go straight to trying to parallel ski backwards on the hardest runs and focus on carves and such your going to probably look sloppy as all hell and do stuff like what your saying
 
One thing that helped me a lot when learning to ski switch is to not stand up like a pencil.

Obviously, you want to stagger your stance. Say you're looking over your right shoulder, make sure your right foot is your lead foot, and your left foot is just a bit behind (er, forward...?)

Anyway, BEND at the waist. Keep your knees bent and be aggressive about it. Keep your weight on the balls of your feet and instead of twisting your torso to look behind you, stay low and use your shoulders and neck. I hope that makes sense. Let me know if you need clarification.

The whole turning with your head staying on one side will come naturally after that. I still switch shoulders when I'm bombing a run switch and laying big carves because, well, you have to... but for dropping into jumps it shouldn't matter as long as you don't plan on carving like a madman into the jump.
 
Everyone does it a bit different, but just imitate this kind of body position and the rest will follow.

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THIS GUY IS DOING IT WRONG, DO NOT DO THIS.

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Its not so much about looking over your shoulder as staggering your body to sort of turn your midsection sideways.
 
Ya, it's way easier than looking over both shoulders and you need to switch shoulders when you're doing hard turns in different directions.
 
You're wrong. You have a blind spot when you're riding switch and sometimes you have to swap shoulders to see. I'm talking about more than just riding into a jump, that's very easy.
 
Switch clicked for me as soon as someone mentioned to point where I wanted to go. Serious, point! I started pointing, it opened up my shoulders through turns and made it way easier.

Also, committing to the turn. I had your exact same problem, but wasn't fully into turning my unnatural way in switch and would slide back round 9 times out of 10. Soon as i realised I had to commit way more in to the turn it happend.

Point, commit, shins on togues. Bosh. Least thats how i do it.
 
Some major things that you wanna do when you ski switch is stagger your feet, it will help a ton. Don't just try and turn your head try to turn everything from your waist up all the way around as much as you can. Bend your knees, the lower you are the better balance you will have. And try to look around your shoulder, not over it. If you look around it it will bring your whole upper body around.
 
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YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO ALWAYS LOOK OVER THE DOWNHILL SHOULDER.

BUT I RARELY SWITCH SHOULDERS. ONCE YOU GET COMFORTABLE ENOUGH CARVING SWITCH THERE IS LESS BLINDSPOTS AND MORE CONTROL
 
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