5 Tips to Go Beyond Beginner Snowboard Turns

I'm going to give you the exact blueprint on how to go from beginner turns to intermediate and literally change your snowboarding so you have more control so that you can ride trees, cliffs, moguls effortlessly, which ultimately means you're going to have way more fun. When I first started snowboarding, I literally developed some of the worst habits because my dad, thank you dad, but he absolutely just dropped me off at the mountain and said, here, strap in, figure it out. And I did. I was able to literally go like this as a kid, an eight-year-old child, I could literally side slip. But then soon after I started learning to turn, what I learned in like the most bad fashion, I was turning like this because I was absolutely scared of my hands would go to the ground. So my beginner turns were terrible. Now, the problem with this body position is that my chest is so far down that I don't have really good field of view as well as all my balance is on my toes. So if I want to go heel, well, it's really long. It's really delayed and it's not as agile or adaptable as it should be. But now imagine I'm riding through the trees like this. Well, all of a sudden I take up such a wide path that I could easily run into the trees. I could be hitting the trees on my head or my butt. It's not awesome. Well, then shortly after I was like, okay, I was told I need to stop doing that. So I got into another bad body position, which means I had all my weight in the back foot. Now absolutely snowboarding like this. Now the problem with this is I don't have the same amount of ability to turn. Yes, I'm upright, but it's really slow. It's really tiring. And if I were to hit a bump, I have less control because all the weight is on one foot. So I became an instructor, snowboard coach, and really learned how to take my riding to the next level, which is what I'm going to show you today. So the number one thing that you got to learn and the first thing on the list is allow your weight to be 60% on the front foot. This is going to give us a better athletic position by having weight on a little bit more on the front foot. I'm going to be able to maneuver the board a lot better. I'm going to be in a more stacked position, but also notice how easy it is for me to turn. Notice that my spine is upright. And if I hit any bumps, all of a sudden my legs can handle all the chatter, all the bumps. Plus if I want to do tricks, jump, have fun. Well, guess what? I'm in a better balanced neutral position that makes my life 10 times easier. Do you ever struggle to know if you're in the right body position or not? Well, today I have an awesome solution for you. And that's going to be today's sponsor, which is Insta360 X4. This is a 360 degree camera, which is actually the perfect solution to know if you're in the right body position or not. Let's set up a scenario. Imagine you're snowboarding, you're in this body position, but it feels natural and you're not sure if it's right or wrong. Well, you can pull out the Insta360 and you can actually evaluate, am I in the right body position? Because this camera will film everything at all times and it's automatically going to remove the selfie stick so you can get a perfect angle. And what I like to do is actually move the camera around so I can get all these different angles to know if I'm in the right body position or not, especially relevant to this video, which is, can I make more awesome turns? Am I upright? Am I in the right body position? The other thing that's amazing about this camera is it's got an extra big battery, which allows it to A, function in cold weather, but B, actually lasts longer when you're in cold weather. Plus it has an 8K 360 degree view, which allows you to have really high quality, whether you're showing it off to your friends or exporting it for Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok, just like me. You don't want to do all the extra work. You can literally put it in me mode, which is a 2.7K mode, which can shoot up to 120 frames per second. So you can get all this slow motion and you can literally just point it. No matter where you point the camera, it's going to be coming back and it's going to be focused on me. Plus all you gotta do is upload it to your phone and then it's all ready to go. You don't have to do all the work. So if you're interested in picking up the Insta360 X4, check out the link down below because I have a special offer, which is going to give you a discount, a free selfie stick and a snow bundle. So use that down below to get all the special offers. Now back to making better turns. And tip number two to take your turns to the next level. You want to do this thing called knee steering. Knee steering utilizes that 60% over our lead foot. And on our toe side turn, we're going to press our knee over our toe. Now watch how I do this. And all of a sudden my board skids. Look how fast this board skids. Just like right now, if I want to skid slowly, I put less pressure, but I'm able to skid my board way faster, way more efficient, especially going in moguls, trees or steep terrain. But what about the heel side? Well, on the heel side edge, we want to have that weight still at 60% over the lead foot. But this time we're taking our knee and we're going to be rotating it out. Notice that my board is pivoting as if I'm smearing snow or smearing peanut butter. It literally looks like this. Now what happens when I combine them? Notice that I'm able to have my body and board work together. Notice that I'm balanced. Notice that I'm absolutely making incredible turns. Wouldn't it be nice if you could do turns like this and then I could apply that to moguls, trees or steep terrain? Pretty sick, right? Tip number three is make sure your lead shoulder is going in the direction of travel. If I want to go to my toe side edge, that means I need to allow that shoulder to go that way. Allows me to unlock the knee steering. If I want to go heel side, shoulders. That was a really bad example because I don't want to run over there. We're going to go this way. Now if I want to go to my heel side, I just make sure the shoulder is there. You're going to notice that my shoulders are not driving the force, but they're allowing the lower body to make the move. Now I can do these like really incredible turns. Tip number four slash the four steps on this blueprint is make sure you're anticipating where you're going by keeping your eyes up and allowing you to look ahead. By keeping our weight on our front foot, spine up, chest up, this becomes a lot easier. What's great about this is now I can literally have my head on a swivel because my spine's up. I can see what's going on behind me. I can look down here. There's two people on the catwalk that are there. I can now slow down and avoid them versus having my eyes down looking down here. Imagine you're driving a car and your eyes are staring at your steering wheel. That's the worst possible thing, but when we ski or snowboard, everyone's constantly looking here. That is not awesome. I got to be able to look and see what's going on. That's going to make your turns better. And tip number five to be way more awesome at turns, you got to understand the difference between open and closed turns. Open turns means you're going to have your board pretty much straight downhill, right? I'm going to pick up a lot of speed. Maybe that's what I don't want to do, but if I can close my turn, which means I'm actually going to get my board across the hill, just like this. When my board gets across the hill, notice how I'm able to slow down constantly. If I'm doing this, I have no problem with this steep blue-black run, but as soon as my turns start to go more downhill and I spend a lot of time down, all of a sudden I'm going to go really fast, which is not what I'm looking for. So I want to be able to close that turn. Now, if we remember earlier, if I point my shoulder in the direction I want to go, well, guess what? I'm here and I can still look where I'm going with my eyes, but I want to make that turn. Make sure your shoulders go in the right direction. A lot of people will make a turn and they'll go like this. Well, guess what? It makes life a lot more complicated. So if you're digging this style of content, definitely follow for more, subscribe to the channel. If you've got any questions, I do a live stream every single Tuesday at 3 p.m. You can literally come hang out, vibe, ask me any question. And if you're interested in picking up that camera, remember that link is going to be down in the description below. Cool. Subscribe. See you in the next one.