How To Get Moving On Your Training Board
We often get questions from our customers, asking how they should start using their Training Board (either the Jib Board or Tramp Board). Before you start doing tricks, it's important you get comfortable standing on your board and moving around whilst strapped in.
(Narrating/Rider: Duncan Mainland. Film/Edit: Vince Emond)
Where To Start
Stand with your knees slightly flexed, your back straight, head up, and your hands over the nose and tail of your board.
A beautifully executed centered stance.
You generally want to keep your weight stacked over your base of support, which is your feet and training board. From here, try a few small hops to test your balance.
4 Planes Of Movement
We have four planes of movement that we use when snowboarding:
- Vertical
- Fore/Aft
- Lateral
- Rotation
Vertical Movement
Try standing as tall as you can, then get as low as you can. Keep your head up and your back straight as you go down, it does feel more awkward than when someone takes your sarcasm seriously, but it's going to give you the most balance over your training board.
Repeat as many times as Duncan does.
This movement is great when jumping, landing or absorbing bumps in the snow.
Fore/Aft
This movement is where you move towards the nose or tail of your board, not into a press movement, but just moving your weight forwards or backwards. Try to move your centre of mass by using your knees and hips instead of just leaning over. This will keep you balanced and give you the greatest range of movement.
"Look deep into my eyes and do as I say."
"Look deep into my eyes and do as I say."You'll use this movement all over the mountain when doing turns, ollie's and presses.
Lateral
Lateral movement is shifting your weight over your toe or heel edge of your board. This can be easily practiced by undoing one binding and stepping forward with your free foot.
Get your Scott Stevens on.
This is what you'll need when jumping onto rails or even changing edges during a turn.
Rotation
You need to be able to rotate many different parts of your body to make turns and spin.
- Start by rotating your head as far as you can to the left or right, if you can complete a full 360, go back to your own planet you freak!
- Add a bit of movement with your waist.
- Get your hips rotating and look over your shoulder as far as you can.
- Open the door and let your knees and ankles join the party.
Once you've got the feeling of this movement, you can start spinning 1's.
See if you can look all the way back to where you started, if you combine an upwards movement with this rotation, you're well on your way to a 180.
Take some time and play with these movements because when you're snowboarding, you end up in all sorts of body positions. The movements and positions you can get into now will make you more comfortable on the snow.
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Alex McCann
Snowboard Addiction
Our Goal Is To Improve Your Riding