5 Simple Tips For Your First Snowboard Turn

Yo what's up everyone, today I'm up snowboarding at North Star and in this video I've got some advice to help you do your very first turn on your snowboard. The first turn is the hardest because you have to point your board straight, get a little bit of speed before putting the brakes on again. So I'm going to give you guys five tips so you can easily overcome this. So the first thing, if you don't feel comfortable letting your board run down the slope, what you can do is actually just stop, roll over, and practice your toe sliding. By practicing toe sliding, it's going to give you that confidence to let your board go straight and commit to your toe turn. I feel like as a new snowboarder, it's really easy to do heels, but the toes is like a whole other thing. So spend lots of time on your toes, then when it's time to actually go for that toe turn, you can just roll over again, start sliding, and now with all that toe sliding experience, you'll feel comfortable committing around to the toe turn. The second thing that will help you commit to that first turn, a lot of times it's hard just to like commit to going straight and what can help you is to actually reach your front hand towards the snow and lean your weight forward. Having your weight forward really helps to get your board going straight down the hill, then you can easily bring that toe slide around. So control your speed and if it's a bit steep, reach down towards the snow. That'll help your board go straight and then get onto your new edge and control your speed. Another thing that can help you commit to that first turn is to start sliding across the slope and into the direction that you want to turn. So I want to do a toe turn with my right foot first, so I'm actually going to start to slide across the slope and by sliding across, now there's less of an angle to let my board go straight and get onto that new edge. So if I try to do the turn from going straight back, then I have to fully commit to letting my board go straight down the hill, whereas if I start going on an angle, now my board is at sort of like 45 degrees and it's easier to commit to letting my board go straight. The next tip to help you commit to that turn is thinking about turning your shoulders to the top of the mountain. So this is really important for the toe turn because when you're sliding on your heels, it's really easy because everything is facing down the hill, you can see everything ahead of you. But to make the toe turn easy, if you think about turning and facing the top, it helps you to commit to that edge and now I'm on my toes feeling very balanced and I control my speed again. So if you have any issues with committing, it's really easy to commit for the heel turn turning forward, but if you feel like you can't commit to the toes, think about looking to the top. The final tip to help you with that first turn is to just really slow yourself down and control your speed ahead of time. By coming into it really slow, it can just help you to mentally visualize everything that's going to happen so that you can make your plan and then slowly come into it. So going across, letting your board go straight, facing the top and then committing to that new edge. And then once you're on that toe edge, again just controlling your speed, slowing yourself down so that you're prepared and you can really just think about everything you need to do. So I'm going a bit slower, now I can commit, face the bottom, get on that new edge and again slow yourself down. So when you're new to turning, by slowing yourself down after each turn, it's just going to help you to prepare for the next one. So I hope those five tips will help. Just remember, get onto the toes, practice your toe sliding. If you can't quite commit, reach down towards the snow in front of you. Start the turn by going on an angle so that you don't have as far to actually go. From your heels, when you want to commit to your toes, think about turning your chest and looking to the top of the slope. And then finally, before each turn, just control your speed so that you're not going too fast. If you guys have any questions about your first turns, let me know down in the comments. Thank you guys for watching. Be safe out there learning to snowboard and I'll see you in the next video soon. Are you guys okay? Okay.