How To Ride A Snowboard

Learning how to ride a snowboard can be a lengthy and painful process. While nothing outside of practice is going to teach you how to snowboard, following a few basic guidelines can drastically accelerate the process. Learning to snowboard is worth the effort, since there is nothing like heading out to your favorite mountain with your friends and riding all day.

In order to learn how to snowboard you will first need:

• A snowboard

1. Choosing a board. There are three available styles of snowboard to choose from and each one is used for a distinctive purpose. A freestyle board is used mainly to do tricks in terrain parks, it is a very forgiving board and is often the recommended choice for beginners. A freeride board allows for better carving while still maintaining the ability to do tricks in the terrain park, this is the most popular choice of a snowboard and a viable choice for beginners. An Alpine board is made for attaining the highest speed possible down the mountain. It is generally reserved for advanced snowboarders.

2. Balancing on your snowboard. The bunny slope, that is available at every mountain, is the desired destination to practice riding your snowboard. For the first few tries your goal should be getting used to standing on a moving snowboard. I wouldn't recommend trying any actual technique moves at this point as all of your only concentration should be on not falling. However when you do find yourself falling try to fall on your butt, this can be accomplished by sitting back as you are falling. Wearing extra padded pants will save you the agony of not being able to sit the next day. The only other option is falling forward and in that case it will either become a face plant or a possible wrist injury, not recommended.

3. Carving and turning. After you feel confident about balancing on a moving board and find your self picking up speed before falling, it is time to learn how to carve. Carving reduces the speed at which the snowboard travels, allows for greater stability, and is the primary method of turning a corner. Carving can be summarized in two words heel and toe. Shift your weight slightly on both your heels and the metal side of your board will dig into the snow this will create a bit of drag, reduce your speed, and the snowboard begin to slightly turn the board. Next you will need to balance out the slight turn of the board by doing the exact opposite and shifting your weight to your toes. Falling is very normal during this whole process and the key is to not get discouraged. At first one successful heel could be a great success slowly build on that and you will be carving down the mountain on your snowboard before you know it. Turning is the same exact process without adding a toe or a heel to cancel out the turn.

4. Stopping with your snowboard. At this point if you are picking up some speed from carving it might be a good idea to learn how to stop. Stopping is basically a sharp heel or a sharp toe. A little bit more weight shifted to your toes or your heels, than you would while carving, will result in the snowboard turning sideways and the end dragging on the snow until the board comes to a stop. At first a slow stop is all that will be possible but as you get better and more confident a very sharp stop will become an easy move to pull off.

5. Putting it all together. Once you mastered the above techniques the next step is to practice riding your snowboard on a slightly harder mountain trail. After the bunny trail the next step up is the blue square trail, on most mountains, followed by the black square trail.