Advice For Beginner Snowboarders

The First Day Up

On your first day up snowboarding it is important to go with someone who may know how to snowboard, but wont get tired of lagging around with you while you learn the few basics. It's important to pick someone patient and who will help you learn.

To Get Started

Since you are beginning you will obviously want to start with this basics. Make sure you have all your gear. To start off with I think it is important to first learn how to stop before you venture too far.

Stopping

There are many ways to go about practicing starting and stopping. What I found was the most helpful way it to practice a method called "Falling Leaf." To start this you want to have your body facing downhill will your board horzontal to the mountain so you are not going anywhere. You then slowly rock yourself back and forth allowing your board to slowly go from left to right and so on, imitating the way a leaf falls off of a tree (hence the name). Each time you go from left to right practice coming to a complete stop without falling backwards. Once you have mastered this it is time to start practicing simple turns.

Simple Turns

Simple turns are what you build on. Once these are mastered the world of snowboarding is in the palm of your hand. How to practice these are while practicing your stopping in the "Falling Leaf" method, instead of going left right all while facing the same way, try slowly pointing the front tip of your board downhill for a second as your keep turing until your are facing the opposite way that you were when you started. If you are doing this right it the turn your are creating should look like a large "C" shape on the side of the mountain. Practice doing these turns both frontside and backside so you learn to turn both ways. Keep practicing these until you feel comfortable and then you can start linking turns.

Linking Turns

Once you feel comfortable with simple turing one at a time, and you can both do frontside and backside turns practice linking these turns together as you snowboard down the hill. This should make a zig zag shape in the snow and you will increase speed. At first practice linking one, and then two, and then more turns together until you feel completely comfortable. From here you can start small tricks.

Tricks

After learning how to quickly link together turns so you are to the point where you feel comfortable with them, you can begin to start experimenting with small jumps and cliffs. Jumps should always be approached leaning back and there is nothing worse than rolling forward onto your face and neck. You will see that once you start going faster down the mountain with your turning you will hit small jumps without noticing it. Keep practicing and maybe you can be a world class snowboarder someday.

Other Questions and Comments

Any other questions or comments can be left in my Snow-Web-Board or e-mailed directly to me at Gjh202@aol.com.

REMEMBER: NEVER GIVE UP!