linvillegorge

Disclaimer:
I am not nor do I intend to become a snowboarding instructor. These are simply the things that helped me teach myself how to jump as a park beginner. I just figured I would share my experiences in the hopes that it may help others.

First of all, start small. This seems obvious, but when you're in the park watching far better riders throw 720s and backflips, it's pretty easy to get sucked into or hype yourself into hitting something you're not ready for. All that is going to do is discourage you and possibly get you hurt. Just remember, those guys throwing those tricks that you (and I) hope to someday throw had to start out from somewhere too.

What I did was find a nice small jump and I didn't even fully tackle it at first. Get comfortable popping off the shoulder at a height of 2-3 feet, whatever you're comfortable with. Build you up some confidence doing this and once you're completely comfortable with that, then go ahead and hit the jump full on.

Now, when you're hitting the jump full on, realize that every being of your body is going to be telling you to face forward. You have to realize, you're sliding down a slope sideways and know you're about to be airborn. Your instincts will tell you to square your shoulders to the motion just like they did when you were first learning to ride. If you have an issue with this, point in the direction you're going, it'll help.

If you find yourself getting too much in the backseat and landing on the tail or losing balance and washing out on your heel edge on the landing, go for an indy grab. Going for indy grabs helped me more than anything. First of all, it gets your body weight going forward which keeps you from getting in the back seat. I think it also just helps give your conscious mind something to occupy itself with instead of screaming "Oh shit, we're in the air, what do we do?!" and trying to convince you to square your shoulders.

The last tip I have is to ride it out. I was washing out on some of my earlier attempts by trying to scrub speed immediately upon landing. Don't do that. Just ride it out and get stable before scrubbing speed.

These are some of the things I concentrated on doing and I went from popping off the shoulder of a jump like I described to hitting legitimate 20-25 footers in 3 days of riding. Now keep in mind, I was a solid intermediate rider, I had just never been in a park before. I was used to doing drops and hitting "jumps" on the slopes, but getting used to jumps with kick and the amount of air took some getting use to. I never felt the need to do a grab outside of the park, but I have found that grabs definitely help me stay more stable in the air.

Adrii

its nice to see ppl out there trying to help others!

Adam C

Next year if I remember this I'm going to try indy grabs if I'm about to wash out. Thanks for the tip, you've provided some good info here.

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Adrii

Get this kid a job as an instructor asap!!!!!!!! Haha

patongue

Thanks for the tips, I will try the pointing and indy grab next time since I keep squaring up.
practical stuff.

Leo

Excellent advice and this is exactly what I have been doing. Next season I might finally move up to bigger jumps again. I've never hit huge jumps, but I was starting to go bigger until I got hurt. It definitely does discourage you. Took me a whole season to get my nerves back up to start hitting again. I started back at square one on small jumps to build my confidence back up.

I also 100% agree with the grab thing. When I don't grab, I tend to roll the windows down which makes it hard to stay stable. If I do a grab, I stay completely stable. Indies were my first grab too.

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Leo

I'm trying the Method next time. I skipped it and went to a suitcase. Pretty much the same motion just different grab. I eventually want to tweak it out too. I wonder how a tweaked suitcase would look.

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Adam C

With that said, would trying any grab keep you more stable in the air?

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NYCboarder

This same method worked for me the past few seasons and i have progressed to spins off smaller jumps this season..

If I may add a little advide.... (im not sure if gorge called shoulder what i call knuckle)
If you get comfortable on the smaller stuff and start breaking out tricks dont think it will carry right over to the bigger jumps. Alot of the bigger jumps have such steep landings that it may catch you off guard and freeze you up in the air (BAD thing)..
A good transition into bigger size jumps is to just go to the side of the kicker and ollie off the knuckle and get a feel of landing on that steep landing (i would say ride off, ollie off, then try to ollie later and higher). Once you get a feel for that pitch you will be fine off the kicker.

Leo

If you are a beginner, don't just do any grab. You have to do grabs that come naturally like an Indy. If you try more complicated grabs right off the bat like a mute, you will have trouble. The idea is to not have to look for the grab. You need to be concentrated on your landing and with smaller jumps, you have a very small time frame to get a grab in.

Another way to practice grabs is to jump while you aren't moving and do the grab. Get used to the feeling until the grab comes on instinct. This is how I worked on my suitcase grab.

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