So I purchased the "learn to ride" beginner set as well as the intermediate set. Overall I think it's a good purchase but it seems to be missing some really important things.
Early on, the video starts out with some inside warm-up practice movements. Among these I recognized the down-unweight and the up-unweight, as well as the fore-aft movement that I'm only aware of from all of Snowolf's posts. They didn't actually use those terms to identify them, but I was glad to see that because I expected that the following videos would show how to apply those to riding. They never did! :icon_scratch: The fore-aft was later applied during the presses and ollie tutorials, but when they start to cover carving, it only really talks about how to create edge angle. There is no mention of dynamic turns at all in the beginner series.
The Beginner set has a fair bit of content, totaling about 25 minutes of board setup/equipment explanation and about 45 minutes of riding instruction. The intermediate set is a bit lacking in comparison. It has a 13 minute video of instruction and another 15 minute "challenge" video. The topics covered have good breadth and are things I wanted to learn about, as well as topics I hadn't thought of and was glad to learn. But the depth is not really there. It goes into bumps/moguls/steeps, but doesn't cover dynamic riding first. If you've already read Snowolf's detailed posts, you will be able to recognize that their riders demonstrating the steeps are using the fore-aft and dynamic techniques. I was looking for the unweight motions as well, but these must be too subtle to spot because I couldn't tell how/if they were being applied. As someone struggling to really nail dynamic riding in trickier terrain, it feels like this is probably the single most important skill at this stage, and I don't feel like this series got me closer to that particular goal. I don't have any real basis for that statement other than recognizing it as a barrier in my current progression and seeing it emphasized by coaches on here.
Anyway, they are a great visual aid, and they cover a lot of things that I didn't know, even in the beginner series. I don't regret the purchase but I still kind of feel like the Intermediate series missed the mark and doesn't have enough info on it's own to let you master the early-intermediate fundamentals.
And I do dislike the
negative option billing. Of course, it's used because it makes more money, but it's kind of a shady business practice and is probably gonna piss me off in 6 months when it auto-renews and I've forgotten about it.
For context, I consider myself an intermediate rider who was self taught and learned some bad habits. Actually after watching the videos, I'd almost want to call myself an advanced beginner. I don't have trouble on blue groomers but I'm weak in a lot of other areas that these vids highlighted. I've been reading a lot of the coaching threads on the forum to improve my riding but find it difficult to visualize certain techniques and hoped that this would help with that.
Short version: Really good videos, learned a lot, but really wish that there was more depth on the intermediate series. I'll probably buy the freestyle series once I feel like I've nailed everything here. If they release an update to the intermediate vids that cover the areas that I mentioned, I would have no real complaints.