Highbacks, angle, setback, etc etc, today we're gonna talk
snowboard bindings and how to set them up.
So to know if you're goofy or regular it's all about the surprise,
you need to know which foot you're going to be landing on,
so I've been landing on my left foot, so i'm obviously a regular.
Question number two. Do you want to go wide? Narrow?
I personally go 59 centimeters which is fairly wide, but not the widest.
So if you're a beginner and you don't know what stance you're going to be needing,
just put your feet a little wider than your shoulders,
so that when you're bending a bit your legs, you're going to feel comfortable.
Once you like something, just stick with it.
So now that you know your stance, it's going to be important to know, how do I center my bindings?
So most boards have their reference stance, which is going to be marked on the board.
So here I know that all these four inserts and the same ones on the end have a stance of 59cm
and if i take the middle of that that's going to give me the center of my stance,
and then from there you're going to take whatever stance you want to have
so if it's 60, you're going to put 30 on both sides, you're going to be marking it,
like this, so that you know, that's going to be the center of your binding.
The center of your binding will be the piece in between all your screws, that's the most center.
Setback is basically moving your bindings towards the tail,
it's basically to have more surface on your nose than on your tail,
so that you're going to be floating better in powder.
Basically your nose is going to stick out more, so you're not going to have to force as much
and have your back leg so tired.
The downside to putting setback is that it's going to be harder to ride fakie
so if you're going to be riding piste or park, I would not recommend to put any setback
and also if you have a freeride board, which is already designed with more surface on the nose than on the tail,
I would not recommend any setback.
Next step is angles, what angles are you going to put your bindings with?
Let's see what's the best for you. I personally like to ride with 18 degrees on the front
and between 0 and 6 degrees on the back foot, usually three degrees will be my average.
I think this setup is really good for what I do, for riding all kinds of terrain
it won't be perfect for riding switch, but it will give me a really good edge grip,
especially on the heelside turn.
Then the duck stance, will have positive in the front and negative in the back,
that's a pretty trendy setup, that's really good for freestyle
because it's good when you ride switch
but in my mind it's a setup which is not going to be super good for
being able to carve and put pressure on the back of your heelside edge
and which is potentially going to hurt your knees in the long term.
Alpine style
that's a lot of positive on both sides,
I think that's a setup that kind of works if you have really big feet compared to your board
but it's going to be a setup which is going to twist your body
so which is not going to give you so much power onto your edge.
So centering the boot is super important to avoid heel drag or toe drag.
So that's going to be when your boot is off-centered and it's going to be touching the snow when you turn.
So I usually like to have my boots sticking out a bit more on the toe side edge of the board
because I'm going to be able with my ankle
to keep the board flatter when i'm riding toe side compared to heel side.
So now screwing.
If you like to be very technical you can use a little bit of loctite
so that the screws are not going to come loose
whenever you have vibrations - because you ride so fast.
So high back angle, that's a very personal topic.
It will depend basically on what kind of riding you like to do.
If you're a beginner, or if you like to ride powder, or really free and you don't like to keep an edge on hard snow
then you're gonna have them as open as possible
and the more technical you're going to be wanting to go, the more angle you're going to put.
Usually I like to put a bit more angle on the back foot
and I pretty much have zero angle on the front foot especially if I'm going to ride powder.
If it gets bumpy, if I want to carve, if I want to be riding more aggressive,
I'm going to add a bit on the front foot but I'm always going to keep it casual.
So normally my high back should be at quite an angle compared to the edge,
but I like to put it parallel to this edge here, to the heelside edge,
and that gives me a lot of freedom for the boot to move
forward but also backwards, and that's something that I really really like.
For this you need to unscrew your buckles,
so that you can move your high back, so that it will be parallel to your edge.
Eh voila now you know everything about how to set up your bindings,
there are quite a lot of things to take into consideration,
so take time to think about it, go out there and experiment,
but don't go too crazy, once you find your set up, just stick with it, go out there and think about riding.