For those looking to elevate their snowboarding and skiing experience, venturing into the terrain park is a thrilling and rewarding endeavour. The park offers a playground of jumps, rails, and features that allow riders to express themselves creatively.
Master the basics on the mountain.
Before entering the park, ensure you have a solid foundation in basic snowboarding or skiing skills. Comfortably navigate various terrains, ride switch, and execute controlled turns. This foundational skill set will provide you with the stability and control needed in the park.
Riding flat-based is crucial, especially when you're a snowboarder, as it’s the only way to gain speed and ride boxes safely. Concentrate on learning how to control your edges first. Do so by practising different edge angles on various slope angles – traverse across the slope and try to hop off your toe and heel edge.
Once you feel secure doing that, you can try and hop above your original track, you can try to ollie, nollie and pop. Doing so lets you learn different ways to gain airtime and better control of your edge angles. Work with pushing your toes down and pulling them up while keeping your knees bent and maintaining a strong core. Working on your ankle flex will help you progress in skiing and snowboarding.
Choose the right park section & obstacles for your skill level.
Small, medium, and large difficulty levels typically categorise terrain parks. Most parks have features for all skill levels. Start with the smallest features, such as small jumps and low boxes or rails that are easy to ride onto, to build confidence and progressively move up as you become more comfortable. You’ll see other people in the park, watch them and learn to gage where your skill level is at and what you can tackle next. Some days, you’ll feel more confident, whereas, on others, you might feel a little insecure.
Listen to your gut feeling!
Start small.
Begin with the most basic features in the park, such as small jumps, rollers, and ride-on boxes. Focus on getting comfortable with the sensation of being airborne and landing smoothly before progressing to more advanced tricks and features.
Practice jumps on flat terrain.
Practice the take-off and landing of jumps on flat terrain before attempting them in the park. Practice controlled ollies, nollies and pops to get a feel for the timing and balance required for jumps.
Learn tricks on the ground.
Before attempting tricks on features, practice them on flat ground. Work on your spins, grabs, and butters in a controlled environment to build muscle memory and gain confidence in your movements.
Once you’ve gained confidence training tricks on the flat, move to the slope and take advantage of little rollers and side hits to learn spins and easy grabs. You can also practice tail and nose presses and different boardslides. Just be aware that once you try these on boxes and rails, keeping your board flat is essential.
While skiing, your back foot is generally flat, whereas your front foot works as a pedal, controlling balance and rotation – switch it up, and your back foot will change once you progress.
Master the art of balance.
Freestyle riding relies heavily on balance. Work on your balance by practising tricks on the ground, riding switch, and incorporating balance exercises into your off-snow training routine. Knowing where your centre of gravity is, how your shoulders, hips, and board work together and how/where your head moves will help you learn how to keep your balance.
Once you learn how to spin, it’s essential to understand all your movements as a unity to be able to separate movements and land with your feet down. When you learn how to hit jumps and features, understand that the approach, take-off, airtime, and landing are separate phases that pull together into one motion. While you’re approaching, you set yourself up for your trick, learn the correct set-up turns and timing of your pop/ollie/nollie and be patient.
Learning how to pop off your back foot/tail is a pretty rad feeling; you can take advantage of the shape of your board and the kicker. By pulling up your legs, you’ll find yourself being more compact while enjoying the airtime gained. Spot your landing and extend appropriately to land centred and balanced over your board or skis.
Progress gradually
Progression is key in freestyle riding. As you become comfortable with small jumps and basic tricks, gradually move on to larger features and more complex manoeuvres. Set realistic goals and celebrate small victories along the way. Having access to a trampoline or gymnastics training can help build a strong foundation of aerial awareness and physical strength – freestyle skiing and snowboarding can be quite challenging on your body. Learning how to navigate through the air, maintaining balance and having a strong physique whilst being flexible are all cornerstones for a strong progression.
Sharing the progress with a good crew and community is magical. Don’t forget it’s all about the fun and sharing the stoke rather than a one-person show.
Embrace the falls and have fun.
Falling is an inevitable part of learning new tricks. Embrace it as a natural part of the process, and don't be discouraged. Learning to fall safely is as crucial as learning the tricks themselves. Training falls can set you up for a stronger progression. You will crash multiple times, especially when you push yourself. Some falls will make you more cautious and teach you some lessons.
When you ride park, you’ll take risks. Be aware of the consequences, and don’t just play it cool. Take injuries seriously, especially head injuries and take breaks or stop for the day if you feel like you’ve had enough. It’s a thin line, making the call of when to call it a day and be happy with what you’ve achieved vs. pushing yourself too hard and risking injuries.
Most importantly, have fun, embrace the progress, and enjoy the learning safari. Rome wasn’t built in a day either; it takes time, patience, resilience, and a truckload full of passion for success.
Gear up for safety.
Safety is paramount when entering the park. Wear a helmet, a mouthguard (to protect yourself from concussions) and other protective gear to minimise the risk of injury. It's also advisable to wear impact shorts, knee pads and wrist guards, especially when you start attempting new tricks. Riding Park can hurt. You’ll catch your edges, lose balance, and crash multiple times – protecting yourself is cool.
If your body is protected, you’ll feel a lot safer attempting new tricks, too, and you’ll progress quicker and will suffer less from injuries – win-win.
There’s a reason why the industry has invested in protective gear; you wouldn’t work on a construction site without wearing a helmet and steel-capped boots, or would you?
Take a lesson
Enrol in a freestyle lesson or clinic to receive guidance from experienced coaches. They can teach you the fundamental skills needed for park riding, including proper body positioning, balance, and techniques for approaching features. You’ll also learn about park etiquette and how to progress into new freestyle skiing and snowboarding dimensions. Investing in coaching can be invaluable – having a trained coach film you, give you tips and tricks and point out key inefficiencies can be your ticket to success.
