Tyler Chorlton is a 34 year old snowboarder, originally born in UK, who grew up in France and ended up in a small country called Andorra. It allows him to travel the world from there, profesionally snowboard and do his thing. A few years ago he started playing around with this elbow carve move and it has kinda become a bit of a trend. What's this elbow carve move about, how does Tyler keep himself fit and how does the special antioxidants-rich water help him? You'll find out in the following interview!
Firsty 10 quick questions:
1. Years of snowboarding? 21 years now.
2. Years of snowboarding profesionally? I've been paid for snowboarding for 18 years.
3. How long have you been riding for Horsefeathers? I've been riding for Horsefeathers since early 2015.
4. How many boards do you have? 5 or 6 a year.
5. Your favourite model of snowboard? Bataleon Partywave for elbow carves and Bataleon Magic carpet for playin' around.
6. The best park you ever road? Tough one. The most impressive one was a park in Mammoth. And then Whistler, LAAX, Hintertux, Mayerhofen, Absolut park. Can't pick one.
7. Your favourite freeride spot? The biggest and scariest freeride spot was in Alaska. And overall I would say the Whistler's backcountry to get dirty. And in Europe the Arlberg area in Austria as a comfort zone.
8. Most epic trick you ever landed? The elbow carve trick haha. Probably the reverse elbow carve to 540 floppy thing and land back in the elbow carve. That was the craziest elbow carve trick so far.
9. Dream place where you'd love to snowboard again? New Zealand was sick. Alaska and Whistler as well. And in Europe - Northern French Alps.
10. What’s your favourite HF product ever? Of course I’m gonna say my signature Ymir jacket because I helped design a lot of it, but I also must mention an item I use all the time which is the Walsh puffy mid layer which has now become the Asher (and for women’s the Ester), essential!!
Let's come to your signature move called the Elbow carve. Can you shortly describe what is it about?
The elbow carve is basically doing a long turn without your board slipping, so you are right on a sharp edge and in a plank position with your elbow sliding on the snow as well. So you're almost but not quite going in the straight line. From there you can also build on some freestyle, tricks and stuff like that.
How did you develop this?
Haha, it first started more than 15 years ago with bunch of friends. We would be just doing normal elbow carves. We were like: Oh that's cool haha. But didn't think anything of it. And probably around 2015 or 2016 Jake Simpson came over to Andorra while he was doing a junior contest in the other resort. He came over to ride at my place for a day and we were doing just some laps, filming with the Whitelines guys from the UK and he told me that he was with the same guys and they were doing some elbow carves and I was like: Ah I rememer those! So we started doing some and then on one of them I just pop a backside 360 out and I was like : Huh! There could be something to this! So I kinda just started there. And from then I just went with it and tried to see what was possible.
I noticed that you've been really creative with it. Are you still developing it or this is the final stage?
The development of this thing is pretty much infinite. Everytime I learnt something new, I think about how am I ever gonna top that? Then few months later I am like: Wow I can just do that and combo and add that with this and I'm totally enjoying it. It's an interesting little discovery journey.
Were your friends hyped about it, or they thought that you were crazy, haha?
Everyone is getting into it. It's pretty fun. It's really good to see.
I've been trying that too, I have to say that it looks amazing but it's quite hard though.
It's all about getting the right body position ;-)
So it's not about the shape of board. I cannot blame it on the board haha.
No, not at all. I wonder board helps to learn them.
Can you do it on any type of board?
Yep, pretty much.
Elbow carve is a move where you put most of your weight on your elbows and shoulders. Aren't they suffering from that a lot? Don't you feel a lot of pain due to this movement?
The first 2 or 3 years that I was doing elbow carves I was in a lot of shoulder/neck pain. And then I started climbing - bouldering an that really fix them up. It not only fix them up, but it gave them a very strong foundation to built on. So now I'm at the gym and I'm pushing weights, sort of building up more mass so I can actually land on my elbow but still keeping it functional. If I can pick one thing that really helps, it's the climbing. Climbing is the golden one.
How do you keep yourself in a good condition overally? Physically but also mentally.
Physically I had a lot of chronic pain from my years of snowboarding. The worst was lower back and my hips. When I was 25 everything was so bad i almost couldn’t walk and was sick all the time. So at that point I had to make a big change in my life. I went really healthy, vegetarian, stopped eating processed food, went all organic and started stretching/doing yoga everyday, stretched them muscles and rebalanced everything. And that helped a lot. And then I got into pilates as well, which helped me in force and strenght. And all of that pretty much helped me to keep my back/hip pain under control. For my shoulders I go bouldering every now and then, that keeps my shoulders and everything really strong.
Alright, and how do you keep yourself fresh mentally? Must be hard as well to stay focused and determined.
Do you have some tips for that? Experience is key. Obviously when you are young and starting out you're really eager and want to do everything to get noticed and to “make it”. I think once you get a little bit older and you kinda already have made a bit of an impact or made enough of yourself or the world to keep yourself satisfied, everything becomes more chilled and laid back and you can really enjoy and appreciate all the places and people snowboarding introduces into your life. That’s what keeps me going mentally these days is appreciation.
Nicely said.
And regarding health, I have my special water which is the only thing I drink every single day.
What's that?
It's the authentic Kangen water also known as it's electrolysed reduced water meaning it is highly antioxidant and hydrogen rich which allows the body restore our blood cells PH to an aerobic environment rather than an anaerobic one (that’s the cancer maker) carrying to them more oxygen, flushing/detox themselves much more efficiently and giving them a slight electric charge for buoyancy/to repel each other preventing the formations of a rouleau or symplast which is the beginning of heart/lung disease, cancers etc. Prevention is key.
How long have you been drinking this specific kind of water? Can you feel some differences since you drink it?
For two years now. The biggest difference was a reduction of aches and pains that came from snowboarding as the main function of the water is to reduce inflammation. For around 18 years I lived in a constant pain somewhere in my body, that's why I got into yoga, pilates and I started looking after myself because I was tired of living in constant chronic pain and discomfort. So doing years of yoga and everything helped for sure, but it wasn't until I started drinking this water that I was like: "Wow the pain is actually totally gone".
Why is this water so vital?
It's really high in antioxidants. Oxidation couses inflamation in body and inflamation causes pain in the joints. So if you are drinking water that it's really high in antioxidants you are reducing the inflammation in your body. It's a bit more complex than that, but this is the simple way how to explain it. It’s like having a continuous anti-inflammatory + pain killer pill but it’s not chemical or synthetic the only ingredient is water, there are zero negative side effect and zero waste products other than (not very) yellow snow.
Do you have any people around you that have the same positive experiences with this water?
Yes it helped my girlfriend a lot in her recovery after the surgery.
And how are you spending corona times? Does it affected your snowboarding a lot?
It didn't really affect me too much except last season ended a month or 2 early and I had a couple trips planned that didn't happen, but that was pretty much it. I live in a small village in the middle of nowhere and as soon as the season is over there's no one, it becomes a ghost town, haha. So we got the place for ourselves, we got the mountains literally on the side of our building, I can walk up there with the dog everyday, hiking everyday, not too bad. Now though there’s lots of snow and resorts are closed so it kinda sucks but good for hiking mission.
What are you up to when the snowboard season is off?
I like to be outdoors. Pretty much just hiking with the dog, gym and I like to go mushroom picking. Then home to chill in the evenings.
I noticed that you were doing an elbow carve camps and sessions. How did the snowboard community react to that? Were people straight away hyped about it?
Yeah, it's been pretty good. We had a bunch of camps with quite a lot of people, all of them went pretty well and everyone was hyped. At one camp I had a 56 year old guy and 11 year old boy at the same time. They both totally nailed the elbow carve, it was a pretty cool moment of appreciation right there!
Awesome! Thank you, Tyler and I wish you all the best.
Tyler's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tylerchorlton/
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