Snowboard Toe Drag
Snowboard toe drag or heel drag is one of the worst things for your snowboarding. Toe drag and heel drag is when your snowboard boots hang too far over your edges. The main problem with toe/heel drag is that your boots will actually touch the snow during your turns, which can cause you to wipe out or not be able to make hard turns. Having toe/heel drag will also take away your ability to fully manipulate your edges. The best position for your snowboard boots should be right above your edges.
So How Do You Fix Snowboard Toe Drag or Heel Drag?
Adjust Bindings:
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The first thing you need to adjust is your bindings. First look at your binding plate (the part the screws go into and is rotatable). Some binding plates have a bunch of separate holes, like Burton (note picture) and other's have open slots. Both styles are set up so the rider has the option to adjust how the binding sits on the board.
The holes/slots are layed out with two options, riders can use the horizontal holes/slots or the vertical ones. For people with snowboard toe drag or heel drag you want to set-up your bindings using the vertical holes/slots, this way you can slide them either forward or backward depending on which end has the most over hang. For example, if you have more toe drag then you can set your vertical hole/slot down a bit and that will help reduce the toe drag. You might not be able to eliminate the drag all together, but you should at-least make your drag even. For example, if you have a 1&1/2" toe drag and 1/2" heel drag, try and set up your bindings so you at-least have a 1" drag in both the toe and heel.
Get Binding Risers:
At this point you have two more options for fixing snowboard toe drag or heel drag. If you like the angle of your bindings now and don't want to change them you can get some risers. Risers are used under your binding plates to lift your bindings off the board. This extra lift will help with toe/heel drag. It actually doesn't elminate the drag, it just rises your boots higher from the edges. The means that it will be a lot harder for your boots to make contact with the snow while turning. Risers are also good because they give you better response on your turns.
Check out the Burton Elevator Binding Risers
Adjust Binding Angles:
If you don't mind switching your binding angles you can try and make them more duck-footed. A lot of big-footed riders who have a 0 degree for the back binding angle can greatly reduce the amount of toe/heel drag by switching their back binding angle to the same as the front or slightly less. For example, a standard snowboard stance is 15 degree binding angle in the front and 0 degree binding angle in the back. But by setting the back to -15 degrees or at-least -9 degrees, you spread more of your boot over the width of the board side ways. This will help reduce the amount that hangs over the edges. I wear size 12-13 boots and ride a stance of 21 degrees in the front and -21 degrees in the back and even though I ride a pretty narrow board, I don't have any toe/heel drag. Give it a try.
Now if you can't get rid of your snowboard toe drag or heel drag or can't at-least reduce it to an acceptable amount, even by combining all three options above, you are going to need a a wider board. They do make wide snowboards for the big-footed rider.
Still have snowboard toe drag? Check out the wide snowboards and eliminate it for good.
Need help switching your bindings angles? Click here
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