Beginner Snowboard Lesson: Balance Twist Drill

 

Learn to snowboarding right with this beginner drill twisting the board. This online snowboard lesson will go over the Balance Twist Drill for proper steering technique. It really helps beginner snowboarders develop skills before getting on the snow and going up the lift. Learn to snowboard online with flowingfreeride.com and take a look at our YouTube Page for more free content and learn to snowboard right.

Flexing your board from edge to edge and not nose to tail is twisting the board. You’ll get the best performance from your board when using this movement to initiate the turn. Most turns you make during the transitions phase will be on both toeside and heelside edges. You need to start getting into the proper rhythm for turning as a beginner so you don’t develop bad technique. A lot of the times you’ll have to unlearn inefficient body movements and that can take a lot of time. Start snowboarding right at the beginning and you’ll excel quickly. Avoid injuries by using flowingfreerdie.com snowboard video tutorials.

I’m going to go over your body movements for toeside and heelside. Throughout the courses you progress and focus on multiple movements but at first you’ll want to really focus on your front foot and keeping all your weight on your front leg.  Before moving into all levels at once focus on L1 RAW. Movements will progress as you move up in skill level.  Focus on Lower Body Steering for now. Always think lower body first Ankle First. Let’s try something to help understand steering from the bottom up. Slightly bend your ankles, knees and hips so that you’re slightly squatting or sitting. First move is focus on your ankle, lift up your toes so your weight is on the balls of your heels. You don’t have to bend you knees or hips, just practice lifting your toes off the ground and then back down. After you’ve got that down progress to bending your ankles, knees then hips. This should feel fine because you use these muscles/movements to sit down in a chair.

The toeside stance is next. Slightly bend your ankles and knees but extend your hips. Lift your heel up so you’re on the balls near your toes. We still are focusing on front foot steering and bottom up- meaning first movement is in your ankle. The way our bodies are built on the toeside to lift your heel up your ankle and knee bend at the same time but you can bend your ankle more. Your first movement should be to bend your ankle on both toeside and heelside but toeside you have to bend you knee a little bit. To explore this more lets keep our legs straight. Try lifting up your toes which puts weight on our heels or the heelside edge. I can do this without bending my knee or hips. Now try lifting up your heel putting weight on toes or toeside edge. To do this you have to bend your knee a bit, it’s just how our bodies/skeletons are built. The higher you lift your heels up the more your knee has to bend. So always try to bend your ankle first to initiate your turn but on your toeside edge you have to bend your knee and ankle all at once but you want to bend your ankle more and focus on bottom up steering.

You can watch our snowboard videos and learn to snowboard online. It really helps beginner snowboarders to learn to snowboard. Do this drill off or on snow with your snowboard strapped on. It can even be done without your snowboard on. It will help to develop muscles memory for snowboarding movements. It’s your front foot lifting up and then your back foot. This takes sometime so be patient and keep snowboarding!