If you're looking for snowboarding tips for beginners, you probably already went snowboarding for the very first time.
If you're a beginner snowboarder and you're looking for tips to quickly and easily improve your riding, these 5 tips for beginner snowboarders will change your riding and help you get good at snowboarding fast.
5 Snowboarding Tips For Beginners
1. Use The Right Snowboard Gear For You
If you are a beginner snowboarder and you ride the wrong size board, have the wrong stance setup on your bindings, or don't wear the right outerwear, you might end up miserable, falling on your butt wondering, what does everyone like about snowboarding?
It's very important that you ride a beginner-friendly snowboard, with the appropriate stance for your height and body. This is going to make it so you can focus on actually learning instead of just overcoming the gear obstacles.
If you need help, ask your local rental shop, or even better, go to a snowboard specific retail store with snowboarders who actually know what they're doing. They'll be happy to help you set up your stance.
The same goes for outerwear. If you're wearing a cotton sweatshirt instead of a waterproof jacket and it's a blizzard outside, you're going to be cold and wet, and have a hard time actually learning to snowboard.
Check out this post on what to wear to the mountain, and get your gear right.
Wonderin' how to start snowboarding for the first time? check out this post!
2. Take a Snowboard Lesson
Yes, snowboarding lessons at the mountain can be expensive, but there are cheaper alternatives.
Especially if you are a beginner snowboarder, it's important that you learn the proper technique from someone who actually knows what they're doing.
The reason is, you're not the first person to learn how to snowboard. This means, you could either make all the mistakes that have ever been made yourself, and maybe end up getting hurt in the process, or you could just have someone who's already been through the mistakes warn you about them ahead of time.
This will shortcut your learning curve by years. Plus, you'll have more fun. If snowboard lessons on the mountain are too expensive, check out some online alternatives.
Just be wary of watching random YouTube videos in random order, as these are often made more for entertainment than teaching you how to snowboard in a logical, step by step progression.
You might get one piece of the puzzle, but be missing 10 others. Try to follow a step-by-step snowboard video tutorial that is in order of importance so you learn the right snowboard technique at the right time.
Want to get good at snowboarding? this post is for you!
3. Learn How To Fall
When learning how to snowboard for the first time, it's not if you will fall, but when.
Any by when I mean, probably every single run. That's ok because there is a lot you can do to reduce the pain involved with learning how to snowboard.
First, it helps to wear the proper protective gear. Wear a helmet to protect your head. You might even want to wear wrist guards or butt pads to soften the blow.
The most common beginner snowboard injury is a wrist fracture, so especially the first couple of days or weeks, wrist guards can do a lot to help.
Next, learn how to fall properly. Mainly, we want to protect our downhill edge at all costs to avoid the dreaded “edge catch,” and keep our hands in close to our body so we don't extend our wrists out to catch our fall.
Our butts and hips are much stronger and well equipped to take the brunt of the impact with breaking anything. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a lightly bruised hip over a broken wrist any day.
4. Watch Videos Before You Go To The Mountain
Most people go to the mountain, figure out what they're doing wrong by falling over and over again, and then go home and try to find answers to their problems.
If you watch a few key videos BEFORE you go to the mountain, you'll learn much faster and avoid common mistakes in whatever it is you are trying to learn.
When I was growing up I would hit rewind on the VCR, and watch a pro do a trick over and over again to see their body position, timing, pop, movement, and more.
This helped me to visualize doing the trick myself and when I actually got to the mountain, I'd have a much better chance of landing the trick without taking some serious falls.
It doesn't matter if you are trying to learn how to carve, or do your first 900, watching the trick in slow motion and visualizing yourself doing it will help you tremendously.
5. Practice Your Lift Unloading and One-Foot Riding At The Bottom Of The Mountain
If you're wondering how to get off the lift as a beginner snowboarder, the time to find out is not when the lift reaches the top of the mountain. By then, it's too late.
Nobody likes falling in the unloading zone, having the lift stop, and making the entire mountain wait for you to pick yourself up and get out of the way.
The good news is, you can practice unloading at the bottom of the mountain before you ever get on the lift.
Find a small hill or roller, or just walk a couple feet up the mountain, and practice riding down to a flat area with just one foot strapped in.
The key is to lean forward on your front foot when getting off the lift, rather than leaning back as most beginners do.
Practice pushing and coasting across the flat with one foot in, and try the unloading drill as many times as necessary.
To watch it on video and see dozens of other beginner practice drills, check out the online snowboard school.
Congratulations. You just learned 5 beginner snowboarding tips to help you go from beginner to intermediate in no time. Now, there are about 100 more steps to go from beginner to pro in less time than ever.
If you want to shortcut your learning curve, avoid the major mistakes and have more fun snowboarding, check out our beginner to backflip snowboard tutorial video series.
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