External Force and Internal Force: Load and Weighting

In snowboarding, you often hear phrases like,
"Let's apply more load."
"Weight it firmly."
Of course, neither of these is wrong.

However, these two are often used interchangeably, which I feel makes things a bit confusing.

So, this time, I would like to organize the concepts of "load" and "weighting" from the perspectives of external force and internal force.

First, I want to clarify, what is an external force?
An external force is a force received from outside yourself.
Typical examples include:
・Gravity
・Centrifugal force
・Falling force
and so on.
And I believe that

load is something created by these external forces.

You might think, "Since I'm putting my body weight on it, isn't that my own force?"
However, body weight itself is a
force created because gravity exists.If there were no gravity, like in outer space, there would be no body weight.
In other words, the body weight transmitted to the board just by standing is a load created by the external force of gravity.

Furthermore, when you start a turn, centrifugal force is added.
Then, your body weight is transmitted to the board as an even greater force.
Therefore, load during a turn can be described as
the force transmitted to the board, which is your body weight due to gravity plus external forces like centrifugal force.

In other words, the reason the load increases as the turn gets deeper is not because you are trying hard to push.
It is because the external force is increasing.
That is why, in the second half of a long turn, the load naturally increases without needing to use any special muscle strength.

So, what is weighting?
This is not an external force.
It is a force born from within your own body.
In other words, it is an internal force.
Pushing with your legs.
Stepping down.
Using muscles to apply force to the board.
I consider these actions to be weighting.

Therefore,
load is an external force. Weighting is an internal force.

These two may seem similar, but they are completely different forces.

What is important here is
not to go out of your way to use internal force for things that can be done with external force.

For example, in the second half of a turn.
Even though sufficient load is being generated by centrifugal force, if you push down with muscle strength thinking, "I need to step more," you might stop the flow of the board that was naturally turning.

Of course, there are situations where weighting is necessary.
In an ollie, you use muscle strength to flex the board.
On rough terrain, internal force is also necessary to quickly recover your posture.
So, this is not to say that weighting is bad.

The important thing is
to think separately about situations where you use external force and situations where you use internal force.

The more skilled a person is, the less they look like they are straining.
That is not because they are not using muscle strength, but because
they are skillfully utilizing external forces.

They use gravity, they use centrifugal force, and they use muscle strength only where necessary.
That is why their riding has no waste and looks natural.

"Load" and "Weighting."
When organizing these two, first start with
load is an external force. Weighting is an internal force.

If you start from this way of thinking, I believe that both how you view your riding and how you think about technique will become much simpler than before.

This was Rei Aoki, the demon of verbalization.