Beginner Freestyle Snowboarding Progression Guide
I’ve been snowboarding for five years, and this past season, I finally landed my first 180s off a jump.
To get there, I worked on a LOT of foundational skills first, both inside and outside the park. This progression guide will walk you through the ones I found most helpful. And I’ll also share my favorite YouTube channels that have also helped me progress.
Off-Park Drills
Riding your first box or sailing over your first jump in a ski resort’s terrain park will always be scary no matter what, but you can do yourself a big favor by first working on the foundational skills you’ll need outside of the park first. You can think of these as drills to keep you stoked when you’re on otherwise uninspiring terrain.
Riding With a Flat Base
When you’re just starting out, you tend to avoid riding with a flat base at all costs because you’re afraid you’ll catch an edge. But as your balance and edge control gets better, you can start to intentionally ride flat, keeping your weight perfectly centered on the board and trying to keep both the toe edge and heel edge out of the snow. You need to be able to ride completely flat in order to ride boxes and rails because as soon as you start to ride up on an edge, your board will fly out from under you because it can’t grip into the metal surface of the feature.
Riding flat is also critical for landing jumps. While it’s possible to land a jump on a slight edge, you’re much more likely to end up leaning too hard on that edge and throwing yourself into an intense carve or braking so hard that you fall. It’s much better to land on a completely flat base, ride it out until your balance is centered on the board again, and then smoothly lean onto one edge to cut speed or stop.
The only way to ride flat is to ride directly down the fall line of the ski slope, which means you’ll gain speed very quickly, even on relatively chill green runs. This gives you an opportunity to get more comfortable with speed and practice stopping quickly from high speeds. But it also means you might start very quickly angling toward the side of the run if the run isn’t perfectly straight, so be ready to shift into a turn when you run out of room.
Ollies
Every snowboarder should learn how to ollie. Ollies are fun, stylish, and can help you if you ever need to jump over an obstacle in the snow.
There are lots of great YouTube tutorials about how to ollie, so I won’t go into too many details here, other than to recommend that you first get comfortable doing ollies across the slope, and then gradually start doing them pointed directly downhill (where you’ll gain a lot more speed and benefit from all the practice you put in riding flat).
Working on your ollie will automatically help you develop the skills to handle the small drop at the end of a box (or any drop you accidentally encounter anywhere on the mountain).
Hopping While Strapped In (Penguin Walking)
Have you ever strapped in at the top of a run, only to realize there’s a large flat section in front of you before the slope kicks in? Instead of unstrapping and skating to the end of the flat section, you can try penguin walking, or hopping forward from one foot to another while keeping both feet strapped in. Yeah, you’ll fall the first few times, and it’ll be exhausting, but if you master this skill, you’ll feel a lot more carefree on the mountain because you’ll almost never have to unstrap mid-run.
This skill will also come in very handy whenever you need to jump onto the tow rope from a standstill.
Riding Switch
If you aspire to ever progress to doing a 180, then you should start working on riding switch now. It’ll feel terrible at first, like you’re completely starting over with snowboarding, but you’ll progress way faster than you did the first time you learned.
Once you’re comfortable with riding flat, getting a few inches of air on ollies (down the fall line), and hopping around, you’re ready to venture into the terrain park, ride your first box, and ride the rope tow.
First Park Features to Try
If you’re standing in a terrain park and surveying the features available, you can usually guess which ones are more beginner friendly simply based on how high they rise off the snow and whether they are flat and straight or have kinks and turns. However, as a total novice, I didn’t really know which features to start with and could have benefited from some recommendations. Knowing nothing, I picked a relatively short, banked box at the bottom of the hill. Immediately, my board came out from under me and I fell onto my hand.
Now I know that I picked a relatively challenging feature for my first ever foray into the terrain park. I now confidently ride a variety of flat boxes, but I still won’t touch a banked box. When I first tried park riding, I knew nothing about the proper way to progress or how to safely develop the skills you need to ride features out on the groomers.
Let me save you from making the same mistake.
Recommended Feature Progression for Beginner Park Rats:
The following list of common terrain park features is ranked from easiest to hardest to ride across, in my opinion.
Dance floor (a wide box, often built to rest completely flush with the snow)
Wide box (not as wide as a Dance Floor, usually elevated a few inches off the snow)
Skinnier, longer boxes
Rainbow or battleship boxes
Tubes
Ride-on-Rails (Start with a Flat bar, progress to a shotgun rail made of two bars snugged next to each other, and then progress to a single bar. Then consider trying rainbow rails.)
Boxes with a gap between the on-ramp and the box (these require you to ollie and land perfectly flat)
Wallrides
Jump-on rails
Kinked rails (these come in all shapes and configurations, such as flat-up-flat, flat-down, flat-up, etc.)
Curved rails and boxes (seriously … don’t underestimate these)
Of course, there are so many more tricks you can do on a feature besides just 50-50 ride them. Boardslides, back lips, spins — the only limit is your creativity. For more inspiration, check out my snowboard term glossary that defines all of the most common terrain park tricks.
YouTube Channels With Great Progression Tips
In the winter, I spend a lot of time on YouTube watching progression tips. Short of hiring a coach, it’s the best way to get ideas for drills to try on the snow to advance your riding.
Snowboarding Addiction
They have a great video to help you Learn to Ollie.
They have a Learn to Jump series, but it’s a fairly advanced tutorial (make sure you’re solid with riding flat and ollie-ing before you tackle jumps like the ones they show in this video).
Snowboard Pro Camp
10 Snowboard Tricks to Learn First. This video is pretty helpful once you’ve mastered all of the drills I covered in this guide and are comfortable with straight airs (basic jumping). I also don’t necessarily agree with the order he put these tricks in because the height you need to get on the Indy grab requires a lot of comfort with jumping. I was sliding boxes long before I was jumping that high. But everybody is different.
Malcolm Moore
Here’s a drill to try if you’re having trouble making yourself try riding switch.
