Snowboard Lesson – Balance

Balance is one of the most important tools you need for snowboarding, and this is one snowboard lesson you can do from home. Proper body position is the key to clean, powerful turns. You can practice getting the correct body position in a hallway or some other place where you can catch your balance. I'd suggest a carpeted hallway as your edges will quickly ruin a polished wooden floor, or may slip out from under you on pristine marble.
To begin your snowboard lesson at home, strap into your board, with your boots on, and stand in a relaxed position, knees bent so you could absorb terrain with your lower body. Now pretend you are making a turn. Your aim is to get as much angle on the board without touching the walls for balance and then hold it for as long as possible. To do this properly you must tilt the board with your knees and keep your hips and shoulders in a vertical line. This snowboard lesson works for toeside and heelside turns in soft or hard boots.
When you take this snowboard lesson to the snow, as you make your turn, the goal is to keep your hips and shoulders vertical throughout the entire turn. Your knees tilt the snowboard and your arms stay in a relaxed position facing down the hill.
Don't lay over the carve! Although it is fun it is not the best way to hold an edge and can see you eating snow more often than not. If your shoulders dip then it should be to the outside of the turn, not the inside. This is called counter-balancing and one of the best techniques to do this is to imagine that you're holding a heavy bucket of sand in your outside hand. Try holding it out as far and as low as you can. You may think your over-compensating, but you're really lining up your balance correctly. If your still at home doing your snowboard lesson in the hallway, your could use a real bucket of sand to counter-balance, just don't drop the bucket and spill the sand all over the carpet.
To learn more techniques and rapidly improve your snowboarding skills, all from home, click here and start your ultimate snowboard lesson.