About

Welcome to Aggressive Stances; a blog that tracks my progress as a snowboarder. I grew up playing soccer in South Florida as a well-rounded player... from striker to sweeper, I covered the pitch and settled into a midfielder role as I got older. As a fitness junkie, hard tackles and exhaustive runs were an outlet for my aggression... and on occasion I would find myself dancing around defenders for fun. My general approach is to charge full speed ahead while relying on training, reflexes, and agility to navigate the environment... this happens to translate over to snowboarding quite nicely.

I began snowboarding in 2008, shortly after seeing real snow for the first time, and was online ordering a board later that day. Stiff flexing, ultra responsive gear sounded about right and it made for quite a challenging learning experience. Mellow slopes terrified me because any small mistake quickly sent me to a ground that was often icy, so I found myself on steeper slopes working on my turns. The more secluded areas on the mountain helped me stay focused on my training and not worry about others nearby me on the trail, so the majority of my progression was on mogul-filled runs.

The lumps scattered across the slope have a nice geometry to them. Formed by skiers and dreaded by most snowboarders, the patterns I found in the moguls became quite enjoyable and somewhat predictable. Similar to agility training with cones, the moguls provided reference points for where to turn and their particular shapes dictate the types of turns possible. In addition to the technical nature of this training, the effort required to make these turns was immense. Only a handful of successive turns would be enough to have me gasping for air... suicide sprints in the snow; stopping to catch my breath and then getting right back in there for more... this High Intensity Training is not much different than soccer fitness.

I only made a few trips each year to the slopes until around 2015 when I bought a season pass and committed to spending more days on the mountain. I also bought a twin shaped board and started teaching myself how to ride in the switch stance; with my right foot forward. In only a handful of years, my switch riding has almost caught up to my regular stance... I can comfortably ride in expert terrain in both directions and tend to ride on the side that favors the slope of the mountain. For the 2019/2020 season I started committing to "goofy days" on a directional board, which further closed the gap.

Last season [2019/2020] I started collecting some video footage of my riding but found myself increasingly heading towards heavily wooded terrain. I don't think my style of riding is quite set in stone but the mechanics of rapidly turning in moguls and trees on very steep terrain is what inspired this blog, Aggressive Stances. The forces felt coming up through the board while maintaining a low center of gravity are exhilarating and I hope to see more boarders out in these secluded parts over the years to come.