What up shredder. Just by watching someone push on a skateboard or snowboard, I can tell in about three seconds, how long have you been snowboarding and whether they can really shred or not. Do you want to know the telltale sign of a newbie and learn how to push like a pro? We’re going to break it down in today’s video on how to ride with one foot.

There are a couple of fundamental skills you need to learn when you’re just starting out on a snowboard. Even if you take the time to learn these skills properly, they’re going to make snowboarding a lot more fun and most people just don’t take the time to practice these. If you take a couple of minutes to practice this skill at the bottom of the lift on flat ground before getting on the chair, it’s gonna make you so much more confident.

The chairlift doesn’t have to be your enemy. Plus you won’t be the slowest person pushing across a cat track. And this method of pushing I’m about to teach you actually takes a whole lot less energy than the way that most beginners push. In fact, some people even describe this as feeling like they’re flying. When I was growing up, I learned to snowboard on a bunny Hill at Tussy mountain in central Pennsylvania in the only way to get up this Hill was a pommel lift or as the Canadians like to call it a button lift.

This thing was a destroyer of worlds. It would chew up and spit out newbies, but it was also a fast teacher. The only way to get back up the Hill was to learn how to ride one footed up the mountain. And I learned very quickly how and how not to ride with one foot in. This lift has since been replaced with an actual chair lift. And I actually feel kind of bad for the kids now because they’re not forced to learn.

One of the trickiest things in snowboarding, how to ride with one foot, but lucky for you, you’re going to learn Palm a level one foot riding today. Now we usually cover prerequisites for tricks on this channel, but the only pre-recs for this trick are, you know, if you’re regular or goofy. So that means you know, if you ride with your left foot forward or your right foot forward, you know how to strap into your snowboard and you have a snowboard or you have some snow.

Now you could do this in your yard. Okay, we’re starting at the beginning for this one, we don’t even need to be on the mountain. Now our goal with riding one foot in pushing is just to be able to cover distances on the snow when it’s flat. Kind of like rowing a canoe on a still Lake. Now the mountain might be like classified Rapids, but once we hit the comb, we have to be able to move somehow. And this is where pushing or skating comes in.

First things first, I want saw someone at my home, mountain in Pennsylvania take their foot out of their boot and push with their sock while their boot remains strapped in. It’s one of the craziest things I’ve seen in my life and we do not want to do this. In fact, we’re going to make sure that we’re unstrapping your back foot every single time, not our front foot and certainly not taking off our boot.

Now we have our front foot strapped in in her back foot is free. There are basically two ways to push with your foot in front of your board and your foot behind your board. Now if you’re a beginner and especially if you don’t skateboard and you’re like most people, you’re going to find it easier to push with your foot behind your snowboard. Now remember this is just like rowing a canoe.

We want to row then coast row, then coast. The mistake that most people make here is putting their weight on their back foot, on their pushing foot and this causes them not to coast. They’re really just bouncing off their back foot and they’re not even really riding the snowbird. They’re just using it to assist with that balance. This is very tiresome and it’s not very effective. Now if we just learned to put our weight forward on our front foot, we can coast for much longer.

This is the defining factor to know how long someone has been snowboarding, how long did they coast? Is their weight on the front foot? Go out there and watch beginners and you’ll see what I mean. Now, the extreme version of learning to do this properly would just be to learn to ride entirely with one foot with just your front foot and just lift up that back foot.

If you can do that, you’re going to have an awesome time pushing. Now you don’t have to go that far with it, okay? You can just do a little exaggerated version like Natasha does here, and if you start to lean forward and think of your back foot more like that, or net a support beam, you’re going to have a much better time. You’ll also be able to get off the lift easier, get across flats easier and out.

Push your friends. Now, some other things that go wrong when people are riding with one foot is they spin out to combat this, especially when we’re getting off the lift, we just want to focus hard on going in a straight line with no turns. So when you’re getting us to lift or you’re riding with one foot in, don’t try to turn or slow down unless you absolutely need to.

If you’re getting off the lift, try to just coast to a stop in a straight line until you get the hang of it. Okay? Once you get a little bit better, you can start turning, but we just want to ride in a straight line off that lift. That’s getting us the best chance of success. No. Another mistake people make here is they don’t pick their back foot entirely up onto the board. So you want to push your back foot up against your back binding in.

Make sure that it’s the whole way up on the board. Now, once you go as far as you need to, you can always push your board out in front of you as you’ve come to a stop for stability. Okay, so coast in a straight line, then come to a stop. You can also get a stomp pad to help with this. But I think most people find that a stomp pad helps a lot less than they think it will.

And really proper technique is your friend here. Now it can also help if you remove the snow from your snowboard. That’s gonna make it a lot slipperier. So to repeat myself, I am a big believer in putting all of your weight on the front foot and only using that back foot like a rudder on a boat. You’ll need to push it in to the board if you want to turn.

But if you’re just going in a straight line, you can stay pretty light on your toes on that back foot. So go out there, practice this on the flats at the bottom of the lift. Spend the time, 20 minutes just practicing this before you get on the lift in. Pretty soon you’ll be riding smooths off the lift and even riding button lifts and the dreaded bar.

Now, one more thing you can do here is you can just skate up a tiny little Hill at the bottom and then turn the board straight and ride down that Hill to practice going down steep off France from the lift. You practice that a couple times and you’re going to be a pro getting off that lift. So that’s it for how to skate or push on your snowboard. Go practice at the bottom of the mountain. Give it a shot and let us know what you think in the comments.