Snowboarding is a sport that can be hard for beginners to learn. While it has several similarities to surfing and skating, it also has some unique differences. It requires a lot of equipment and the right locations to practice. It also has a steep and sometimes painful learning curve. At first, it is easy to fall over, and with your feet strapped to a board, it can be hard to cushion your fall. However, when you get the hang of it your progress will accelerate.
Step 1
Familiarize yourself with your snowboard. Whether you are renting a board or own one, you need to feel confident riding it. Adjust your bindings on your board until you can stand in them wearing your snowboard boots feeling balanced and comfortable.
Step 2
Practice wherever you can, whether it is on the mountains, on an artificial slope or in an indoor snow dome. You can accustom yourself to the feeling of being on a snowboard in other ways, such as riding a skateboard or a balance board, but the best way to get used to the unique feeling of riding a snowboard is to actually ride one.
Step 3
Practice falling over. Regardless of how quick you pick up snowboarding, you will find yourself falling over repeatedly as you learn. The best way to fall is to try to tuck yourself into a ball, protecting your head with your arms rather than sticking them out to try to break your fall, as doing so can lead to injury.
Step 4
Find a shallow slope to practice on. Strap yourself into your bindings while sitting down. Practice simply standing up and trying to balance on the spot on your board.
Step 5
Practice sliding down the slope, which is called sideslipping. WIth your board facing across the slope, allow the board to slip down the slope edgewise by lifting the downhill edge of your board slightly upward. You will be sliding downhill facing either directly up or down the slope.
Step 6
Once you have mastered sideslipping on your heel edge and your toe edge, start working on traversing the slope. Traversing the slope entails allowing your board to slide lengthwise across the slope so that you are traveling more across the slope than down it.
Step 7
Start turning, both to the heel edge and to the toe edge. By now, you should have discovered that you are more comfortable facing either up or down the slope, that is to say being on your toe side edge or your heel side edge. Rotate your shoulders in the direction you want to turn so that your board begins to point downhill and you start to turn in that direction; stop by turning your board until it is again traveling across the slope rather than downward.
Step 8
Start linking your turns together so that you can turn from edge to edge as you travel down the slope. Eventually you will be able to travel with your board facing down the slope, switching from toe edge to heel edge and back again. Until then, you need to keep practicing and accepting that progress may be slow at first and that you will often find yourself falling, with potentially painful results.
Things You'll Need
- Snowboard
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