Are Ski/Snowboard Lessons Worth The Cost?

Today’s question:

Are ski/snowboard lessons worth the cost?

Absolutely, but there is a catch. You must have a good instructor.

One of the most common complaints in the snomie survey was that people were taking lessons, but not seeing enough results. This is because the quality of your instructor is just as important as taking lessons.

If you’re not familiar with how to find a good instructor/training camp, you can check out our previous blog here: 5 Tips To Pick The Best Snowboard/Ski Training Camp

Why are lessons important?

Lessons are important for a few reasons:

You don’t want to pick up bad habits

Teaching yourself or having someone unqualified teach you, can result in you having lots of bad habits in your technique that will affect your performance. Not to mention, the longer you keep these bad habits, the harder they’ll be to fix later.

While teaching yourself can work well once you become more experienced, it doesn’t work as well when you’re newer to the sport and haven’t cemented in the basics yet.

You’ll be more likely to have fun

One of the most common reasons for those who never enjoyed skiing/snowboarding is that they didn’t have a good time as a beginner on the slopes. Being a beginner means you’ll be falling a lot and everything will generally be pretty hard for you.

A good instructor changes this. You’ll be able to progress quicker and get out of that un-fun, constantly falling phase of learning.

You’ll have a very strong base to build on

One of the biggest advantages I had when I was beginning was that I went through many, many training camps. My first few seasons on the snow involved 5 days of half day lessons every week. I found that having those lessons gave me a very strong base to built on.

Most snowboard/ski techniques share a lot of the same body movements and by mastering the basics better, you’ll find that it makes the rest of your snowboarding stronger as well.

Instructors are a wealth of knowledge

This is one of the biggest pluses. I don’t think I would have progressed half as fast as I did in my first few seasons if I didn’t have access to great advice from great coaches along the way. Experienced instructors have insane amounts of time on the slopes, which means a lot of experience in fixing problems you may be having.

One more thing

Good instructors can and will become your friends. Many of my friends and the people that I occasionally snowboard with started out as my instructors back when I was newer to the sport.

You want to know where I get most of my connections for pro interviews and industry people? Most of them I met a long the way, either in coaching camps in Whistler or down in NZ.

You’ll find that most experienced ski/snowboard coaches are in the sport because they love it. Who doesn’t like connecting with other people who love the sport?