Snowboard Lesson – Halfpipe Riding

As you progress through snowboard lesson after snowboard lesson, you may find yourself drawn towards the halfpipe. Before dropping in make sure your comfortable with free-riding other types of terrain on the mountain, switch-stance riding and launching airs. As usual, it is important to start of slowly, so set up your body position as you would for launching an air. Avoid letting your arms fall behind, as that is when most crashes happen.
Approach the wall at a 15° angle down the fall line, this gives you more hits and helps you maintain minimal speed. Visualize what you want to accomplish. Ride up the wall in a relaxed manner, start to tilt your snowboard from your edge onto your base. To turn, you must first up-weight, drive your forward shoulder downhill and rotate 180°. As long as your riding on your base, your snowboard will automatically follow your upper body movement. Put yourself back into that initial body position and aim for the next wall.
To get air, as you get to the top of the lip spring up and extend your body, and rotate through the 180° by turning your body as one unit. It is exactly the same as the snowboard lesson for launching airs, but your plane of travel has shifted to a vertical axis. Landing is slightly different. Whilst still in the air resume your initial knock-kneed body position facing the way you want to go, allow your snowboard tail to touch down first and have your upper body prepared to compress to absorb the landing.
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