How To Improve Your Riding On A Snowboard

Improve your riding. Hi this is Nev Lapwood snowboardaddiction.com We're riding a Whistler Blackcomb and this tutorial is on how to improve your riding. We cover a few issues that happen to intermediate riders, how to spot them, and what you can do to fix it. This tutorial is mostly related to body position. If you can get your body position correct you'll snowboard a hell of a lot better and you're going to feel more comfortable jumping, riding in the park, and hitting all types of features. Film your riding. Nearly all riders encounter the same problems with snowboard technique. The problem is that most people do not know they have any of these issues going on until you've seen it on video. I'd highly recommend for you to get out there and film your riding. Everyone has access to a video camera these days, whether it's a GoPro or just the camera on your smartphone. Go up with a buddy, take a lap out of each day, and film each other so you can go home and see what you look like. This is going to do wonders for your riding. You'll pick up so much stuff that you did not realize was happening and you can compare your riding to mine or other pros that you want to ride like. Ideal turns. Ideal intermediate turns on a snowboard should look like this. Each turn has a smooth consistent radius with your speed being controlled throughout the turn. Your knees should be bent with your hips pushed forward and a straight upright back. Your whole body should be making each turn together in unison with your upper body and lower body aligned through your turns and your hips located central between your feet. It should look and feel effortless. Straight legs. The first problem that many people have is riding with their legs too straight. With snowboarding you need to bend your knees so you can ride smoothly through all the little bumps and inconsistencies in the snow. Riding with straight legs creates a bunch of other problems. When you try to make a heel edge turn with straight legs it looks like this. You get this really awkward position where your bum sticks out and your upper body bends over. I often see people riding in this bent over position. It's not stable and it's not going to help your riding. In a straight leg turn you often have a lot of weight out towards your heel edge. You may find yourself chattering through the turns. It's like cha-cha-cha-cha-cha as you're making that turn and you're probably going to fall over like this. What you want to do is be in this position pushing the shins into the front of your boots while bending your knees and pushing your hips forward which allows you to keep your back up straight. Riding in this position is going to give you a lot of advantages. It puts the weight of your body over top of your board increasing your stability and control. The flex position will help to absorb bumps. You'll be able to pop better from jumps and absorb your landings. This posture keeps you upright and it'll help your riding a lot. One of the strategies you can do to improve this is get strapped into your board and feel this position of pushing your shins into the front of your boots and your hips forward. Hold onto something for balance and feel what it's like to use the toe and heel edge. To pressure your toe edge push your shins into the front of your boots then push your hips forward like this. For your heel edge try to keep your shins pushed into the front of your boots and sink your hips down towards your high back and lift your toes to create edge. While riding traverse across a quiet run on your toe edge. Push your shins into your boots and push your hips forward. It's much easier to feel this position on the toe edge. On your heel edge see if you can still push your shins forward into the front of your boots and sink your hips down slightly lifting your toes to create edge. Adding forward lean to your bindings is a simple way to achieve this body position. The high backs of all good snowboard bindings can be set into a more forward position like this. I personally ride with a lot of forward lean as I like the extra response it gives your riding and I recommend it to most riders. If you ever see a gap between the back of your boot and your high back while riding on the toe edge then I recommend adjusting your bindings so they have more forward lean. To avoid your turns chattering you need to improve your ability to apply pressure on your edges. Ride straight downhill gaining a little speed then come to a stop on your heel edge as quickly as you can. Once stopped take three hops uphill on your heel edge. This is tricky but it'll help to develop your skills. If your legs are too straight then you'll probably fall. This exercise helps you to build and release pressure quickly over the edge of your board. Ride downhill again this time come to a stop as quickly as you can on your toe edge. Jump three small hops downhill on your toe edge. This exercise forces you into flexing with your knees and ankles which will translate into your riding improving your ability to control pressure through your turns. Counter rotation. For smooth controlled riding you want your upper body and your lower body to be in line with each other because it gives you better balance and stability in your riding. One of the most common problems for intermediate riders is riding with a body position that is not aligned. You'll see riders cruising with their upper body turned this way facing forward. It's not very stable. If you hit a bump it's likely you'll get thrown off balance and may crash. Instead you want to be like this with your upper body and lower body in line with your board. You'll see a lot of people going down the mountain doing something like this with awkward turns constantly out of alignment. That's called counter rotation where your upper and lower body become disjointed not working and harming and twisting against each other to make the turn happen. This especially happens when doing turns on your toe edge. On this freeze frame you can see how this guy's upper body is completely out of alignment with his lower body. If you compare this with my riding you'll see that every time I make a turn my upper body and my lower body are almost always heading in the same direction. It looks smooth balanced and effortless as I flow through each turn. If you can get your riding like this you'll be more comfortable with everything else you want to learn on a snowboard. On flat ground this is what good alignment looks like. When I do a toe edge turn you'll see my upper body helps to initiate the turn. My shoulders, my hip, my knee and everything goes in the same direction. On a heel edge turn my upper body turns, my hips turn, my knees turn all in the same direction. You probably don't know whether you counter rotate your turns or not until you get to see your own riding on video. If you do you're going to want to try to break this habit to increase the stability of your riding. One tactic you can do is try to grab your pants while riding. This will aid as a subtle reminder to keep your upper body and lower body moving together in the same direction through each turn. Imagine you have a pole that goes through your body and you're holding on to each end of the pole. To turn your snowboard you turn the pole through your hips. Turn the pole this way and you'll initiate a toe edge turn. Turn this way for a heel edge turn. After you've got the idea relax and try to make it look natural again. Riding with your upper and lower body in alignment. Uncentered hips. Many riders get into the habit of sliding their back foot around on each turn going from side slip to side slip rather than having nice round turns. This is usually the result of having your hips slightly too far forward and a little too much weight over your front foot. If your direction of snowboarding is more downhill rather than nice round turns, you're not using a lot of space on a run or you see a lot of snow being washed downhill after each turn and you are probably sliding your back foot out. If you look closely at my riding you'll see that my hips are in the center of my board as I go through each turn. If your hips aren't in the center then your body position is not as stable as it could be. On a mellow slope try hopping while you traverse on your toes. The point is to get a flexing motion going especially with your back knee. Now during a turn see if you can do four hops through the turn. This tactic brings your weight back to be more central over both feet. It also makes your turns a lot wider and rounder so you'll take up more terrain through each turn which helps to fix this issue. After several turns with hops continue to ride the slope doing big wide turns taking up lots of terrain. Another tactic to get the weight off your front foot is to try to do turns up the slope. To ride uphill you need to transfer some of your weight slightly more to your back foot. If you stay over your front foot you'll feel that it's much more difficult getting your board to ride uphill at the end of your turns. Summary. This tutorial outlined a few of the common problems that occur with intermediate riders as they are progressing. You want to make sure you remove any of these issues that may be in your riding and try to copy the technique and body position of experts. Make sure to get out there and film a few laps with your buddies. Analyze your own riding from the video and compare it to mine to see where you can improve. This is Nev Lapwood snowboardaddiction.com. Our goal is to improve your riding.