By Corran Addison
I’m a pretty good snowboarder. I started riding in the mid 1980s and since then have worked as a snowboard instructor, a snowboard patroller (I was one of a group of four who were the first snowboarders to be certified by the National Ski Patrol on a board), have raced, ridden big mountains, and can basically ride anything anywhere.
Corran Addison is a regular contributor to the Paddler magazine and owns Soul Waterman
Adapting skills to new equipment
Bear with me here; this isn’t just a trip down memory lane.
In the last few years there has been a reintegration of surf style snowboards onto the mountains, and as one always to be at the leading edge of trends, I grabbed an old ‘surf style’ board I had in the basement from 20 years ago and cut into it to make it more like the current trends. I rode it, and loved it. It was what I already knew, but better.
In fact it was so great, that mid-season I decided to go out and buy a $1,000 top-of-the-line surf style snowboard, hand-crafted in Japan – sight unseen. Not only had I never ridden the board I was getting, but I’d never even seen one in person. I spent a week eagerly watching Youtube videos of Japanese riders surfing the mountains of northern Japan, while I waited for my board to arrive.
It did and it was beautiful. However, it sure was strange looking. Never mind that… I slapped some bindings on it, set up my stance as a duplicate to what I normally ride and took off to the mountain.
I got five metres from the lift, caught an edge and crashed! Not a great start for someone who’s a self-proclaimed expert rider. An embarrassed smile to those standing around me, staring down in amused bewilderment, I sauntered off like the cat that didn’t want the mouse to begin with.
Deciding to break myself in slowly to this new board, I opted to take one green groomer run before committing to my favourite black carving groomers. Ten frustrating minutes later I was back at the base chair lift, staring at the board in confusion. I didn’t love it. In fact, I didn’t even like it one little bit. I’d crashed five times on a green groomer, couldn’t turn it, couldn’t carve it… heck, I couldn’t even stay upright on it!
But this was my new pride and joy, and be damned if I was going to just give up on it. So I took another run and another and another. A dozen runs later, bruised ego barely holding on, it was time to leave.
I really didn’t like the board.
What was I missing?
I went home, and spent the evening watching videos again of the Japanese guys riding, but this time really paying attention to what they were doing. Clearly they were making the board work. Not just work, but work well. What were they doing that I was missing? A few hours later, I’d completely changed my entire set up on the board – stance location and width, angles, thickness of riser plates… everything. Standing on the living room floor, it felt alien.
I returned to the mountain the next day, and on the first run, already I could tell a noticeable improvement just from the geometry change. Over the next few hours I slowly adapted the way I was riding, edging, and carving the board, and by the end of the day, I was really getting into it. Two days later, I absolutely loved it.
But now for the Rorschach Test? I took the board I’d been riding all winter (the chopped one that I loved so much) out for a ride. I hated it. It felt like an unwieldy, stiff, cumbersome plank. I have not been back on it since.
This is something I tell paddlers all the time, but have never really had to go through it myself. This is because I generally paddle only my own designs and these tend to be evolutions of previous ideas and designs I have had. Even ‘radical’ departures from the past still carry to a degree that ‘Corran’ feel that I can adapt to quickly. So my experience on the snowboard was a small taste of my own advice and something that I mentally kept repeating to myself that first day back on the mountain.
If you’ve been in Brand X for years and then try a boat from Brand Y from a completely different designer, it’s very possible that you might not like the boat. In fact, you might think it’s downright terrible. After all, unless the boat you’re accustomed to is basically a homogenized concord of industry-wide design thought and you’re getting into another one that’s essentially the same (even if from another brand), chances are you’re not going to just jump into Brand Z’s design and just love it.
But does that mean it’s not right for you? Do you need to adjust some, or all, of your paddling habits, or does the boat just suck (and even that is a rather unlikely statement, because you’ll always find someone who loves even what you consider the worst design). How can you tell?
You can’t. It’s the riddle of Schrödinger’s boat.
Watch what the best do
There is no short cut to this. But what you can do is exactly what I did with my snowboard. Watch videos of how the boat is being paddled by the best paddlers. What is their style? How are they edging and when are they edging. Look at their weight shifts, timing, and the kinds of strokes are they using? How have they outfitted their boat (see last month’s article on outfitting your kayak)? Jump on the forums and ask the people who are using the same boat for tips and tricks.
Of course if you’re just giving a new design a cursory try for 15 minutes, it’s hard to do this. But if you’ve been watching people paddle a certain boat and the style appeals to you, then you might need to take the time to really come to grips with HOW it should be paddled to really appreciate and get the most out of it.
Very possibly this could entail an entire skills set reboot (not a bad thing). Or maybe it’s just a few minor adaptions to skills and outfitting. It’s really a case-by-case scenario. However, over the years I’ve seen many people pass up on boats that in my opinion would have been perfect for them, because their first impressions were not positive.
You can’t have your cake, and eat it.
If you’re looking to upgrade from the boat you’re in because you’re looking for new sensations, or to take your paddling to the next level and up your game, you can’t expect to do that without understanding that with that desire to get new paddling sensations and experiences, or new levels of skill, is that you’re going to have to dedicate some time to learning how to use it. In fact, it’s almost a guarantee that if the boat you’re getting into doesn’t require a skills reboot, that it’s not going to accomplish the goals of handing you or the new sensations and the new ways of paddling you were looking for.
That might not be your goal of course. If your old Brand X is simply worn out and you need to replace it, and you’re not looking for radically new sensations or skills improvement, then there is nothing wrong with simply getting something else from the same designer, or a similar design from another designer. This is a perfectly acceptable reason for staying within a style.
Might be just what you need
However, for many, especially those that have been paddling for a long time, where the rush of that steep learning curve is long gone and you have a skills set that are deeply entrenched, a radical switch might be just what you need. You might have forgotten the two-faced coin of mutual frustration and exhilaration that comes from learning new skills but I can assure you that once, when you were learning, it was not just all easy going.
For many, those were good times; the good old days and they’re fondly remembered. You can get some of that back by challenging yourself, by taking that radical step and going for something that’s completely alien to you, so you can reap the rewards of your efforts as you’re exposed to news ways of paddling the same old river you’ve been on for ages.
