7 Habits to Instantly Improve your Snowboarding

Hey what's up everyone, Kevin here. In this video I just want to share with you guys some habits you can implement into your snowboarding that will instantly improve your riding, make you more comfortable on the slopes, and give you more control. So the first habit is to start riding with your back hand over top of the tail of your snowboard. By riding with your back hand over your tail it's going to give you more control, it's going to line you up with your snowboard so you have better balance and help you to complete each turn. The next habit to get into is really think of making your turns even, so spraying the same amount of snow on your toes as you do on your heels. A common mistake in snowboarding is just spending too much time on your heels and this can cause you to kind of like chatter out, but if you spend the same amount of time slowing yourself down on your toes as you do on your heels it's going to so that throughout your turns you're going to have more control and you're going to feel like you're slowing yourself down an equal amount, but it's also going to put more effort into your toe turn so you don't have to spend as much effort on your heels. The next habit to get into and this one is a real easy one is to start just doing more turns. I feel in snowboarding sometimes we forget that the more turns we do the more control we're going to have over our riding, so just for a lap try to do twice as many turns as you're used to and by doing more turns you're going to feel like you're more in control, so next time you're out just do twice as many turns and I think you're going to notice a big improvement. Another great habit to get into is a practice doing some carving turns, so if you've never carved before you can just work on doing one single carve across a slope. If that feels good you can carve across the other direction looking uphill to make sure that there's nobody coming. Once you do a few carves across the slope you can then start linking your carving turns together and by making carving a habit it's going to get you around the mountain with more precision and control. If you need to get over to the left you get onto that toe edge and it really helps you to get to that side of the mountain quick. Carving is a skill that you can use anywhere so the more that you can make this a habit in your riding the more you're going to progress to those more advanced levels. A really good habit to get into that will just instantly improve your riding is thinking about your body position, so having your knees and hips bent but with your back straight and keeping it fairly relaxed too. It's going to give you the best balance over top of your snowboard. With your knees bent you can use them more for steering and for absorbing bumps in the snow and with your back straight that's putting your weight more like centered over top of your snowboard. If you're too straight up and down then you're gonna like chutter out on your heels and if you're too bent over that's when your weight's gonna go past your toe edge and your weight's just going too far out over the snow that way. So having your knees bent back straight the best body position to help improve your snowboarding. Another habit to get into is moving your weight back and forth from your back foot to your front foot. Being able to have more weight on your front foot and kind of like slide turns around getting your weight onto your back foot if you're going to be riding through some powder is a really valuable skill to have and allows you to ride more diverse terrain. Even throughout your turns you want to be alternating your weight so when you start a turn you're a little bit more on your front foot then as the turn comes around you're getting a bit more onto your back foot. The more that you can practice this throughout a run and turn it into a habit the quicker you're going to become a more advanced rider. A good habit to get into and to practice every day is to actually get into riding more switch. By doing more switch riding it's going to challenge your balance and it's actually going to transfer into your normal riding. If you can spend half your run or every time you get to a mellow slope practicing your switch your switch is going to greatly improve but it's also going to transfer into your normal riding as well. So challenging your balance and then giving you better balance overall throughout your riding. If you guys have any questions about these habits hit me up down in the comments or if there's something I forgot and something you want to share let us know down in the comments as well. Don't forget to like this video, subscribe here to Snowboard Pro Camp and I'll catch you guys in the next video.