Intermediate Snowboarding Techniques

Snowboarding techniques for Intermediate Snowboarders

The transition from Intermediate snowboarding techniques to Advanced snowboarding techniques is a great problem to have…

It means you’re learning and progressing into the sport of extreme fun!

Although you may face some new challenges like speed, snowboard control and body isolation exercises, you will ultimately start to enjoy the sport a lot more.

You’ll have the ability to adjust your style of snowboarding so you can safely navigate through Treacherous snow conditions.

You’ll have the knowledge to apply stronger edge pressure, enabling you to control your speed more effectively and you’ll be able to access terrain that gets your adrenaline pumping more frequently.

Some of these intermediate snowboarding techniques will challenge your current style and in most cases, it will take a couple of days to master!

If you haven’t had many snowboarding lessons from the ski resort, chances are also high that you have created some bad habits that can be difficult to break….

Nevertheless, we will try and get you back to a position where we can break your snowboard stance down, and then realign the system. (By the way, Never ride like a Stiff robot)

Express yourself, try to relax and enjoy the moment!

Let’s start at our basic stance and go from there…

Your Intermediate Snowboarding Basic Stance

Our intermediate snowboard stance looks something like this:

Feet and knees slightly flexed and relaxed
Cowboy stance in the lower body
Hip in alignment with the snowboard
Straight back
Arms relaxed and to the side
Head looking in the direction of travel.

When you are beginning to learn how to snowboard, we encourage you to have weight forward over the front foot, this helps make the turning process easier and hooks you into snowboarding in a very quick way.

As we progress through the sport, we can start adjusting our snowboard stance setup depending on what intermediate snowboard technique we are going to learn.

Intermediate riding requires us to start slowly shifting our weight to a more centered position to help us pressure the snowboard more efficiently depending on the exercise I recommend.

The Right type of Turn shape for intermediate snowboarders

I want to touch on this topic, simply because when you start to learn these intermediate snowboarding exercises you need to learn from a platform where you can maintain speed control or worst case scenario, quickly lose speed if you do get caught and become out of control.

When you start riding steep terrain, it is absolutely vital you use a closed turn shape.

There are two types of turn shapes, we have an open turn shape and a closed turn shape.

I highly recommend using the closed turn shape most of the time when riding steeper terrain as a intermediate snowboarder.

By using this closed turn shape, you will be able to control your speed more effectively and also give yourself the best chances for not creating any bad habits that might put you on the back foot.

We also have to address the turn size we should ideally be making at this level as well.

There are 3 different turn sizes we can use when snowboarding

Small
Medium
Large

In most situations that we will be using for these snowboarding exercises, I would like you to use the medium size turn combined with a closed turn shape.

This will give you a very controlled environment to work with…

REMEMBER: If you are going to fast into a turn, slow down or pull out, if you think you could hurt yourself, there is no shame in resetting the exercises!

Why this Intermediate Snowboarding technique won’t let You have un-centered Hips?

What the hell are un- centered hips you ask? (This is what I was talking about before)

As I mentioned before, when you start learning how to snowboard, we teach you to keep the weight forward over the front foot.

This helps engage the nose of your snowboard and creates the understanding that pressure through the nose is essential for making progressive linked snowboard turns.

Now that we are intermediate snowboarders, we can start playing around with somewhat different types of Intermediate snowboarding techniques to enable us to pressure the snowboard more effectively.

And one way we can do that is by having a more centered stance.

Having even weight will help you pressure the entire snowboard edge and help with better pressure control when riding down steeper terrain.

So how do you keep your weight centered if you haven’t created that muscle memory yet?

Simple….

From now on, I want you to pretend you are a cowboy when you are snowboarding?

Cowboy? ‘Yep’

Imagine yourself riding around like you have a pair of holsters on each leg and you’re about to have a shoot off with the sheriff of the town…. (You can be the sheriff if you want too)

By seeing yourself in your minds eye like this, it will naturally force your knees out and automatically realign the hips to center.

Easy right!

Yeah, Na… This can be quite challenging for some, so take your time and make sure you speed is under control when you are learning this stuff.

It will feel a little awkward at first but you will quickly find that it will help your snowboarding and give you a more stable stance to work from.

Breaking at the waist will put you in Hospital.

This leads us into the next topic for the day which is MASSIVE!

Don’t break at the waist!

Breaking at the waist is when you are leaning forward rather than flexing down through the lower body (legs) to try and create the edge pressure.

Most intermediate snowboarders go wrong here, especially since they can’t see themselves doing it!

What happens is that you’ll find yourself riding down some steep bumpy terrain and you’ll need to pressure your snowboard to stay in control.

Instead of using timing techniques and correct pressure techniques

Attention INTERMEDIATE Snowboarders:

Get the best out of your snowboarding by watching these Proven intermediate Snowboarding tutorials…’Master the Turn’ Snowboard Execution Plan

Transform yourself into an advanced snowboarder who has complete control and the confidence to ride any terrain feature on mountain!

Click the Image below or this link to get instant access!

Most riders will flex their legs a little then compensate at the waist for the rest…

This doesn’t work and will lead to you transferring the weight off the snowboard edge, (that you needed) to create the edge pressure and then transfer it right onto the snow.

And this my friend is where you crash and burn. (And sometimes go to hospital)

Here’s a Tip: Try and think about clenching your 2 back shoulder blades together when riding. This will help you maintain a strong pelvis and keep you centered and up right!

Getting Rid of the straight Leg Junkie

RED ALERT…Never try and snowboard with straight legs!

You’ll suck and fall a lot more than what you actually should be.

SO how do you get rid of those nasty straight legs when learning how to ride at this intermediate level?

Let’s help you understand the reason why first?

I must admit, when you do see some snowboarders riding down the hill with straight legs, sometimes it looks cool.

but in most Riding situations I do not recommend this!

If you understand this concept in its entirety, then I guess it’s ok to do so but when we are in the correct intermediate snowboarding technique Learning mode, then I do not want you to have straight legs.

Start thinking of your lower body as car suspension

Each wheel has its own suspension spring.

Now I want you to imagine if that suspension was just a solid straight bar, instead of a energy absorbing spring.

Your car ride would not be very enjoyable and you would be thrown around the car every time you hit a pothole or bump in the road.

The Same concept goes for snowboarding.

If we don’t start to learn how to become relaxed and flexed in the lower body, we will always be thrown off balance in most situations that we encounter in the hill.

Especially true for tracked out bumpy snow conditions.

Now that you have this focus in your mind, we now need to know what our range of movement is in our lower body.

This will greatly improve our stability, control and steering when learning how to ride black diamond trails as an intermediate snowboarder.

Your Full Range of movement for the intermediate snowboarder!

Standing in stationary position, I want you to be strapped in to your snowboard and then slowly flex down on your toe edge. (You might want to hold onto something)

Keep flexing down until you can flex no more without breaking at the waist. (Keep weight over the snowboard edge)

Now extend up to the point where you are maintaining your basic stance with slightly flex legs, knees, feet etc…

This is your Toe edge range of movement!

Now try it on your heel edge…

This will be your heel edge range of movement.

Notice that you don’t have the same range when you are on your toe edge?

This is just basic human physics with our skeletal structure.

The trick is to know your range and then adjust your timing accordingly… (Pressure control)

learn more here:

Attention INTERMEDIATE Snowboarders:

Get the best out of your snowboarding by watching these Proven intermediate Snowboarding Techniques and tutorials…’Master the Turn’ Snowboard Execution Plan

Transform yourself into an advanced snowboarder who has complete control and the confidence to ride any terrain feature on mountain!

Click the Image below or this link to get instant access!

Remember to stay light and flexed, use your complete range of movement and maintain a solid basic stance.

NOTE: Keep your arms out to the side for extra balance. (But not like a robot, try and be cool about it!)

Your intermediate Counter rotation Snowboarding Technique is a major problem.

Good old Counter rotation on the snowboard….

This is another MASSIVE BAD HABIT a lot of intermediate snowboarders make with their riding technique!

Do you have a case of Counter Rotation?

I suspect you do if you’ve never had a snowboard lesson after your beginner lessons!

So What is it?

Counter Rotation is basically twisting your upper and lower body in the opposite direction when you go to make a turn.

This makes it ten times harder to steer your snowboard through the path of the turn and will always make it feel like, turning one direction seems easier than the other!

In most cases, going from the heel to the toe edge…

What’s happening is that you are leaving your front shoulder behind when you go to make the turn, this generally seems to be an unconscious decision and people find it hard to detect.

This can be the difference between you mastering these intermediate snowboarding techniques or you continuously struggling with the entire Intermediate snowboard progression.

How do you fix it?

Simple, well, kind of….

Next time you are riding, I want you to glue (pretend) your back hand to your back leg/hip and have your front arm pointing exactly to where you want your snowboard to travel!

This will help pave the way for realignment between the upper and lower body.

NOTE: It will take time to fix this bad habit so practice riding like this for an entire day! (At least)

NOTE: Want to learn how to stay balanced and controlled when Riding steeps on a snowboard? Simply download this bad habits cheat sheet to gain an unfair advantage on the hill. Learn what bad habits snowboarders make so you can AVOID them to progress faster and maintain balance and control easier…check it out now!

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