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How Long Does It Take For Snowboard Freestyle To ‘Click’?

By Jedidiah Tan | Follow Him on Twitter

Today’s reader question:

How long does it take to feel natural with learning snowboard freestyle? Everything feels so awkward and hard right now. How long does it take to become like those locals who seem so natural doing everything?

The breakdown:

1) It’s hard (at first) to learn the basics

Everything will feel unnatural at first. This is normal.

When you first get into freestyle you’re learning a lot of basic skills that you’ve never used before (eg – popping, jumping, hitting rails, spinning etc. etc.) and you have to get used to doing those movements.

As your body gets used to these basic movements, that unnatural feeling will slowly fade away.

2) Once you have the basics it gets way easier

Snowboard freestyle is like lego. You have a whole bunch of different basic skills and tricks and learning each of those skills takes time, but once you have those skills you simply connect them together like lego blocks.

So instead of learning entirely new skills, you use skills you already have to put them together into different tricks. It’s really just a matter of learning all of those basic skills first, which is the part that feels awkward and unnatural.

3) How long does it take to get all the basic skills?

That really depends on you, how much riding you do per season and whether you have any coaching/instruction, but for me it took about 2-3 full seasons to get all the basics mastered and for that unnatural feeling to go away.

That’s how long it took to get most of the basics mastered, such as ollies, spinning, hitting rails/boxes, cliff drops etc. etc.

Now I’m not saying you’ll take that long to learn basic snowboarding, you can certainly learn the basics quicker than that, BUT it does take time for your body to understand and feel natural doing all the movements.

For example, I was doing 360s in my first season, but it wasn’t until my 2nd season doing 360s that I started to understand all the movements I was doing and really felt it all ‘click’ together when I did each 360.

That’s why whenever I always stress how important learning each basic movement is before moving on to more advanced skills, because those little movements may seem insignificant, but they are the foundation of every other trick you will perform in snowboard freestyle.

Hope that answers your question.

– Jed

One Thing Snowboard Companies Should Add To Their Websites

By Jedidiah Tan | Follow Him on Twitter

Every year I see all the snowboard companies update their websites and make them look all snazzy with interactive photos and videos, but I rarely see much change in actual useful information.

I love beautiful websites as much as the next person, but why isn’t there more focus on actually making the websites more useful to customers?

The breakdown:

Why no boot width measurements/scale?

Brannock Foot Measure Device

While you should never, ever buy snowboard boots without trying them on, I can’t help but wonder why no companies list the boot width on their website.

Every smart snowboarder knows that the best boot is the one that fits your foot and the only way to find that out is to try on a truckload of boots in the store until you find one that fits perfectly.

To do this you usually narrow down the selection a little by looking at boots that have the flex you like and with a width that isn’t too wide or narrow for your foot.

The width between two boots from the same company can be very different, so why not list width sizing and make it a little easier to narrow down your options to boots that at least have the right rough width for your foot.

While we’re on the topic…

I really don’t get why companies spend so much money/time on updating their websites to look snazzy without putting more focus on just making the sites more usable for beginner snowboarders.

When I look at the product pages for a lot of snowboard gear, half of the descriptions are just hyper marketing lingo that add nothing but confusion because according to their descriptions it seems that every feature on every product is the greatest invention ever.

How do you expect people to pick between two snowboard products with 2 similar features when both the features just say the equivalent of ‘this feature is awesome’.

That’s what leads to beginner snowboarders looking at products and having no idea which is better, which means they get confused and put off the decision and end up not buying your product because they can’t make a decision.

I’m not just saying this for pure usability either, it’s also good on a sales and marketing standpoint because customers who feel they’ve found the ideal product for them and can make a clear choice, have been proven to spend more money.

If they actually had useful product descriptions, snowboard companies would make more money AND customers would be happier because they could find the ideal product for them.

– Jed

5 Rookie Mistakes Every Freestyle Snowboarder Makes

By Jedidiah Tan | Follow Him on Twitter

Just a quickie update for you guys today, our 2nd free snowboard freestyle lesson is going out tonight (once it finishes uploading).

It’s on ‘5 Rookie Mistakes Every Freestyle Snowboarder Makes’ and it also covers a few myths and lies that freestyle snowboarders get told.

1) If you’re already part of our free snowboard freestyle training

Check your email tonight/tomorrow morning because the link to today’s video on the 5 rookie mistakes will be in your inbox 🙂

2) If you aren’t on our lessons list and want free snowboard freestyle training

5 Rookie Mistakes Freestyle Snowboarders Make

You can sign up here if you haven’t joined yet and you’ll get lesson 1 right away (4 Flatground Snowboard Trick Tips) and lesson 2 a few days after that.

The lesson are 100% free and have been extremely well received by everyone so far, so thanks to everyone for the kind emails/comments.

In fact, so many of you guys watched the first snowboard lessons that I had to upgrade our video hosting because you ate through my entire month’s limit within 3 days!

Enjoy the free lessons,

– Jed

How To Build Confidence To Hit Your First Snowboard Jumps

By Jedidiah Tan | Follow Him on Twitter

Today’s reader question:

How do you get the confidence to hit your first snowboard jumps?

So basically it goes back to safe progression, just like learning any snowboard skill:

1) Learn the individual skills on easier features

The biggest mistake you can make is trying to jump straight to the jump instead of making sure you have the skills to hit the jump first. It’s actually not a good idea to learn to hit jumps by hitting jumps right away.

You want to work on the individual skills that are used in jumping and make sure you have them on lock-down first. So that means practice your popping, carving, general edge control and balance.

You can also work on basic airs and take-off/landings by practicing mini airs off cat tracks and mini cliff drops at resorts. Those are great ways to get used to spotting your landing and landing evenly on both feet.

Make sure you have solid control over your snowboard’s edges BEFORE you try to hit jumps. Edge control and control over your snowboard is crucial. Don’t be hitting jumps before you even know how to turn properly.

2) When you can do the individual skills easily, then you’re ready

So once you’re able to do basic mini airs and you have solid turning skills and you know how to pop properly while landing evenly on both feet from small airs, then you’re ready to start hitting jumps.

Find the smallest jump you can (preferably 5 foot or less) and put the skills together that you’ve been practicing individually. That’s how you build up confidence and make sure you have the skillset you need to hit your first jumps.

Remember, this doesn’t just apply to hitting jumps. You can do the same with any snowboard trick/technique you’re trying to learn. Always break down tricks and learn technique step-by-step before trying to do them all at once.

Hope that answers your question.

– Jed

Do You NEED To Wax A Snowboard?

By Jedidiah Tan | Follow Him on Twitter

Today’s reader question:

Do you need to wax or a snowboard? Or can I not wax at all and be okay?

So basically you’ll be okay. I’d still suggest waxing if you have the time for it, but you don’t *need* to wax if you don’t need the extra speed.

Why you don’t always need to wax a snowboard:

Look it comes down to the fact that waxing = more speed and in a lot of situations the speed increase you get from waxing isn’t a big deal. I’ve ridden boards that weren’t waxed for the entire season and still rode fine on everything from powder to 75 foot jumps without any issues.

In fact, I’d sometimes go faster than a lot of people who waxed regularly simply because my riding technique was better, so I wasn’t losing as much speed as them in turns.

The old theory is that waxing prolongs the life of your board, and it does and I’ve told people that before as well. However, when you think about it more, you typically replace or break your snowboard long before the base would wear out from not waxing.

When should you wax?

The times when you should definitely wax are:

  • If you’re a racer/like going really fast at max speed (duh)
  • If you ride a resort with a lot of flat areas
  • If you ride a park where you find you lack the run-in speed to hit each feature properly

Those are times when you need the extra speed that might come from waxing.

So it’s not that I suggest you don’t wax, I do still think it’s useful to wax regularly if you want to get the most from your snowboard, but it’s not a ‘do or die’ situation and you can still snowboard just fine and kill it in the park with a board that’s never waxed.

Hope that answers your question.

– Jed

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