You can ride down a difficult slope. Your edges grip the snow. You stay upright. When you watch the video, something feels off. The snowboarding looks okay. It doesn't look great. It misses that easy style the top riders have.
This is not about learning things. It's a few snowboarding techniques that people often miss. These techniques can change the way you ride from being okay to really standing out. We will look at what makes the difference between getting down and riding like a pro, and how a few overlooked snowboarding techniques can finally make your riding stand out.
Three Advanced Snowboarding Techniques
Before we fix anything, we need to understand what advanced really looks like. Most people think that advanced is about snowboarding on really steep hills or making really fast turns, but that is not true. The thing that really makes a rider advanced is being able to see three things that have nothing to do with how hard the snowboarding is.
Smoothness. A good rider makes movements that flow into each other. There are no stops or sudden jerks. Every time you change edges or shift your weight, it is a move. Your snowboard carving technique might work, but if you stop for a tiny moment at the end of each turn, it does not look smooth.
Quietness. Watch someone who's really good at snowboarding from the waist up. Their chest is still, their arms are calm. Their head does not move up and down. This isn’t just about good snowboard posture; it means they are balanced. When your upper body is quiet, it means you are in control. Even people who do not know much about snowboarding can tell.
Timing. When you are a rider you have a rhythm. You do not wait too long to make a turn. You make turns at a pace like you know what the snow will do. When your timing is good, it looks like you are not even trying. The whole way down the mountain, it looks easy.
Start filming yourself and watch for these three things. You will probably notice that your smoothness is pretty good, but your timing needs some work. The biggest problem is usually that busy upper body of yours. The busy upper body is what we will tackle next.
Are You Still Survival Riding?
There’s a hidden switch that flips somewhere between intermediate and advanced. Let’s call it moving from survival riding to refined riding.
When you are snowboarding a bump can knock you off balance a little so you put your arms out to catch yourself. If the snowboarding speed surprises you, you lean back to adjust your position. You are always making adjustments without even thinking about the snowboarding. Each tiny adjustment is small. All these tiny adjustments add up and make your snowboarding look a bit shaky and hurried. You might feel like you are in control of the snowboarding. If someone is watching you snowboard it looks like you are just reacting instead of being in charge of the snowboard.
Refined snowboarding is really the opposite of what people think. This is when the way you move is more important than the terrain you're on. Your body already knows how the board is going to react, so you do not have to make any moves to stay safe while you are turning. The result of this is that it looks really quiet and smooth. There is no wasted movement. You do not have to make any last-minute saves. It is the rider and the board moving together like they are one thing.
Here is the hard part: most of the time people do things without realizing it when they are riding to survive. You do not even notice when your shoulder moves before you make a turn on your heelside. The difference between what you think you are doing and what is really happening is the biggest obstacle to making your snowboarding techniques look advanced.
Less Movement, More Style
If you take one idea from this article, let it be this: an advanced riding style doesn’t come from doing more. It comes from doing less, with complete precision.
Think of it like movement efficiency. A smooth rider isn't working any less hard than you. They put all their effort into the few actions that matter. They get rid of everything else. That flick of the arm is gone. The shoulder rotation that starts your turn is replaced by an ankle and knee movement. When you remove all the unnecessary movement, what’s left looks easy.
But to get rid of the things that are not helping you, you need to know what those things are. Your friends can say you look a little stiff. They cannot tell you which turn made you lose your balance or if your upper body was more still today than it was last week. Snowboarding has always been missing that kind of objective feedback unless you have something that can give you that information.
Heygo is something that can really help you out. It keeps an eye on how you move. Then it gives you tips on what you can do to improve. It does this through your headphones. For example, Heygo might tell you to keep your body quiet. It might say that you should change edges a little earlier. It looks at how you rode and compares it to how you are riding now, so you can see if you are really getting better or if you just think you are.
When you start riding with this kind of awareness, the idea of "less movement" is not something you have to guess about anymore. You will know for sure which runs were efficient and which ones had a lot of hidden survival moves. This is the thing that helps your style of riding get better and better. This is how your snowboarding techniques start to feel and look more advanced.
How to Develop Your Riding Style
Style is not something you can copy from a professional. It is something that you will find when you get rid of the things that are hiding it. Here are three simple ways to start your day on the snow.
Film yourself riding, and do not pay attention to the snowboard. A lot of people watch their videos and look at the path the board takes. You should look at your shoulders and arms instead. You will see a movement in your shoulders and arms before you make a turn. This little movement is what makes your style look bad. If you watch yourself like this one time, it is better than riding ten times with someone just telling you to try to ride smoother.
Slow down a lot. Go to a green run and ride at half of your normal speed. When you are not going fast, you cannot cover up the times when you are not riding very smoothly. All the extra movements you make will be very easy to see. If you can make turns and they look good, then you have found real control. This is also a way to get better at carving on your snowboard without being scared.
Just focus on one thing for each run. Choose one thing to work on, like keeping your body very still, starting your turns from your ankles, or keeping a good rhythm when you make three turns in a row. Do not try to fix everything at the same time. Spend the run working on just that one thing, then try something different on the next run. After a day of doing this, you will know what feels different when you ride. And you can watch videos to see what really changed.
These habits do not deliver a change you can see right away, but they help you develop something better: your own personal style that is based on being aware of what you are doing and doing things in a smart way, not just copying someone else. When you combine all of this with checking your progress on a regular basis, you will see that the way you ride is getting better a little bit at a time, from one season to the next. The goal is not to ride like someone else. The goal is to ride a cleaner, quieter version of the way you ride now, and to finally be happy with what you see when you watch yourself on screen.