How to put on your snowboard bindings?

I have never seen anything with as many configurations as snowboard bindings. They can be set more open, more closed, forward, back, more or less angled… endless possibilities for something so basic.

We start at the beginning, the STANCE . The first thing you need to do is to find out your stance, the easiest way to do this is to measure the distance between the centre of your knee and the ankle bone, the distance obtained should match the distance between the centre of the soles of your bindings.

My favorite way to find out the stance is to stand on a chair and jump off it several times to land on the ground in the base position. Once the pirouettes are done, we will measure the distance between the center and center of the insteps and calculate the average of the total jumps. I think that jumping 5 times is ok.

Stance variations: First of all, I would like to say that there are probably a thousand other ways to calculate the stance, but I use the two above. Then I would like to say that it is not an exact science and that you may feel more comfortable with different averages than those obtained. I recommend that you play around a bit to find where you feel best.

Do we always use the same stance? NOPE, we start from the measurement obtained previously and we will increase or decrease it depending on the snowboarding we are going to practice:

• All Mountain Snowboard : If you're looking to be comfortable on all terrains, whether you're on the slopes, flat-riding, or hitting the park, set up your snowboard with the stance you obtained with any of the above methods.
• Freestyle Jibbing : We will reduce the stance distance a little when we reach an intermediate level. We want to be able to rotate quickly when entering and exiting the modules, having our legs further apart makes us bigger and slower. Think of a dancer spinning in the air, she has little stance… On the other hand, when we reach a higher level and rotate more easily when entering and exiting the modules, we will separate the bindings again to get a better footing.
• Freestyle Jumps : This time we increase the stance distance a little. We want to land in the most stable way possible, with our feet too close together we can't balance efficiently, but BE CAREFUL! with our feet too far apart we can't either.

 

Position of the bindings in relation to the nose and tail. For this configuration we will take into account the stance obtained previously and the variations

• Centered with the same distance between the front and rear bindings as between the rear and tail bindings. We will set up the bindings this way if we are going to ride both natural and switch. To achieve this configuration we will need our board to be twin or to play with the position of the binding discs. We usually set up this configuration on our freestyle boards.

• Set back , more nose than tail, we set up the bindings like this with the intention of:
  • Shifting the center of gravity, or weight, to the rear of our board when riding on virgin snow. When freeriding we need to lift the nose of the board so that it doesn't constantly dig in.
  • Having a larger nose will allow you to exert more weight (weight forward) when we are going down the slopes. The smaller the nose surface, the less force or load we can apply to the front of our board. If we go too far, it will give way and we will lose grip.

The last of the settings we'll talk about is angle . We'll adjust the angle of our bindings using the discs that attach the bindings to the board. The discs are marked with lines and numbers. Each line adds or subtracts three positive or negative degrees to the previous angle.

The angle of the bindings will make us face more or less towards the slope depending on whether we increase or decrease it. If we are going down the slope only on our side, we will configure, for example, +12º, +15º or +18º on our front foot and -0º or -3º on the back foot, trying to relax the back knee. On the other hand, if we plan to go on both sides equally, we can configure the same angle on both feet.

We can also play with the angle to improve our snowboard if we are going to do something specific. For example, for freestyle we will look for something neutral 6º - 6º or 9º - 9º, whereas for free ride or boardercross, where we know we are going to go straight ahead in one direction, we will be very aggressive with the angle of the front foot, reaching up to 21º, and we can also put the back foot in a positive angle.

Angulation will also play an important role in hip rotation, for example in low-level riders.