Tip Tricks With SnowboardAddiction.com

My brother found these freestyle instructional videos on YouTube - they're made by SnowboardAddiction.com.

The first one that I watched was Part 1 of the Advanced Spinning Lesson, which I'll embed below. I was immediately impressed. Some good tips that I haven't seen in other instructional videos. The presentation and attention to detail are excellent also.

I then watched the lesson on frontside boardslides, and again, was impressed. It will seem obvious to those who've got the fs bs on lockdown, but I really like the way they showed the counter-rotation of the upper body. They also cover good, practical methods of building up your confidence before taking it to a box, and then a rail.

And get this: there's the option to watch all of the jumping lessons in either regular or goofy! I'm not saying that providing both views is particularly difficult, but it definitely makes sense. It reinforces the effort that they've put into their productions, and again it's something I haven't seen before.

Addendum: I've just watched the goofy version and it seems it's actually the same video, just reflected. That's funny! I'm not sure whether it actually matters? Seeing the trick the way you ride it definitely helps with the association - so this probably works. I'll check it out next time before blindly singing praises :)

On the main website there's a big collection of lesson material. I think the idea is that you either buy their DVDs or download the videos; the second option being cheaper. I'm pretty sure I read that they're good for playing on your iPhone? And then there're the teasers and some free material - like the stuff I've been watching on youtube. I wonder how much more is in the purchased material?

I signed up for their newsletter which was supposed to unlock access to part two of the advanced spinning lesson. That didn't seem to work out, I still can't watch it.

But I'm still impressed. I'll be checking out more of their videos and might end up buying some downloads also!

Here's part 1 of that lesson...

Advanced Spinning Part 1 (Regular) from SnowboardAddiction.com on Vimeo.

Snowboarding Trick Tips

The last copy of Whitelines came with a trick tips DVD: Whitelines School, Volume 1. I've always been interested in trick tips video, as there's a full range of stuff produced, from totally awful to good. To me, trick-tips and instructional video, if done well, are probably going to be appealing to many people. Unfortunately a lot of productions are pretty poor...

...And this one was, well, pretty average. The DVD has a mix of different pros covering 2 or 3 tricks each. As you might expect, some of the pros are better than others at explaining the tricks.

And it reminded me of how difficult it can be to communicate learning a trick to someone else. In my experience, sometimes people are at a stage where they're simply not going to get what you're saying. At other times, all you need to do is give someone a single pointer and they get it straight away.

Perhaps though, the best way to receive help for learning a trick/technique is to have someone watch you. If they understand the trick/technique well, they'll soon spot what you're doing wrong. In which case, they can give you the particular pointer that you need.

For example, common pointers in trick tip DVDs are: stay centered over your board on take off, lead the spin with your head and shoulders, and, spot your landing. That's all well and good, but if you're struggling with a trick, even if you have the full set of tips to get it right, you don't always know what you're doing wrong...

And so how do you make a good trick tip video? Well, I remember liking elements of Jumping with Jussi and Riders Ed; it's been a while since I've looked at either of those. However, I have received a tip for some good videos on YouTube, or at least, part of the full material that's available to buy. That's what I'm going to look at next...

Riding Footage From The 2008/2009 Season

I keep leaving it later and later, but, I have at least stuck to my principle of editing the footage from one season before snowboarding the season after. I'm talking about the video I took last year in Morzine. Over the last week and a half I've been streaming it all, and then did a quick edit yesterday. It had to be done given that I'm going away next Saturday...

To be honest, maybe the reason that I've left it so long is that I'm not that keen on what I shot. I don't think it's bad or anything like that, and I do enjoy watching it, it's more that I had hoped to progress on some of the things that I did in Fernie, the year before; the snowboarding in Morzine/Avoriaz took a slightly different direction.

That said, there are elements to this video/riding that really interest me. I had a lot of fun riding The Stash in Avoriaz, which is where most of this is filmed. I'd like to return to some of those features and some of the things I was trying. For example, there's a bonk (sic) around 01:14 in, that was close to being good. I just needed to 180 out. It's definitely given me a lot to look forward to.

As for the things that were missing, apart from amazing powder shots :), I guess I just didn't go big.

I'm still using Movie Maker, which although isn't fantastic, I'd have to say it's doing the job for me. The rather awesome song is "Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe" by Okkervil River from their album The Stage Names. Here it is..

Having "The Fear"

So have any of you ever had "the fear"? You know, when you want to try something but the fear of failure sets in and you bottle it? I'm assuming some of you have, so maybe you can relate to this... I should also mention that I've been meaning to post this since last January, but haven't really gotten around to it.

Last season when we were in Morzine/Avoriaz, I was quite looking forward to hitting the kickers in Avoriaz's Chapelle Park. In my opinion, the kicker line there isn't big, not at all, but to me the kickers represent a useful size. For example, you will see decent riders spinning smooth 5s of them. If you can spin a smooth 5 that looks good, the kicker is useful. It's the type of size that I'd like to be able to nail 1s and 3s (and maybe 5s) on - and I'd be happy if I didn't/couldn't hit anything bigger.

So, the first day we went to the park, I decided I'd try what I considered to be a safety trick, a backside 180. In my head the kicker looked a little whippy, so I thought a smooth, back 1 would keep me on my toes and stop me getting caught out by any whippy'ness. Make sense?

I put in an extra speed check, hit the knuckle and slammed. Not a disaster, but I hurt my knee a little and smashed my goggles. One of those bails where you hit the knuckle and bounce half of the way down the landing. I decided I needed to put one down before leaving, so borrowed a mate's goggles, went back to the top and decided a straight air would suffice...

This time I had a little too much speed, or at least it felt that way as I was getting to the kicker. Unfortunately, this caused me to lean back (classic mistake), the weight went onto my back heel, and yes, combined with a little bit of whippy'ness, that sent me un-intentionally upside-down.

I won't say it didn't hurt, but to be fair, it wasn't that bad. The biggest damage was to my confidence. I've hit kickers bigger than this in the past, with relative ease. I've sessioned similar or slightly smaller kickers, and been comfortable enough to progress to trying different tricks, variations on tricks. I came away from the second attempt thinking I sucked at snowboarding...

Everyone asked me: "why'd you try a barrel roll, what's wrong with a straight air?" To which I replied, "that was supposed to be a straight air!" Not good. How did I mess it up so badly?

Before I go any further, I'll show you what happened :) Yes, lucky for those reading this, a friend video'd the attempt. It's pretty funny, but, by adding some visuals to the words above, you can see how basic the mistake was, how dramatic the effect was, and hopefully why it knocked my confidence so much:

And so the fear set in. I really wanted to work with this kicker line. It's totally within my capability, but I bottled it. I didn't hit it again.

There were a few things that got in the way: we had some powder days (not complaining), I was enjoying riding in the Stash (not complaining) and I had the wsg review to deal with, which meant I needed to go to all the areas of the Portes Du Soleil (not complaining, but I'll write about that soon). But the truth is, I bottled it, and made excuses to myself to not go back and try again.

I've had a couple of episodes in the past that have made me think "ooh, I messed that up and it hurt", or, "that was kinda scary". But nothing has stopped me in my tracks like this. Interesting. Normally when I come back from a snowboarding trip I'm thinking "gotta go bigger next time". Now I'm thinking "can I manage to maintain where I was at before?"

Any of you ever had the fear?

What's On Your Trick List?

Just about every time I go riding, I've got an idea of something I want to work on; a lot of the time that's some kind of trick. Over the summer just gone, I had a rather lengthy trick list, which unfortunately, was hardly dented at all. I guess I bit off more than I could chew.

I did make two tricks from that list, however. I landed a handful of clean backside 3s at the Chill FactorE, good enough to be proud of, but none were on film. I did record a sketchy effort, but you can't even see the landing. I also nailed the shifty-shifty at Halifax. That one is on film, but be camera work isn't great, the rider (me) is too small in the frame.

This film can be found in a recent, previous post.

So never mind about the lack of progress over the summer. I'm looking forward to Morzine, Avoriaz and the rest of the Portes Du Soleil. This time I'm gonna work with a more realistic list, just 3 tricks:

• Backside 180 stalefish
• Nose grab + any rotation except a frontside 180. Preferred options include fs 3 nose and bs 1 nose
• Any 5. Feeling now is a backside 5, but we'll have to wait and see

So what's on your trick list? What are you working on this season?