Conquer Your Fear And Stomp That Straight Air

We can all relate to jumps on our snowboard that look and feel like the above picture.

This article is going to give you a step-by-step guide to overcoming your fear and stomping straight airs with confidence and style, you can even practice it over the summer.

The most common remedy

If you’ve ever looked online for tips to improve your snowboarding, then you will have come across countless “trick tips” like this. These give you a good visual example of how to perform the trick. But they don’t show you how to overcome the fear.

Visual examples are useful for learning ground tricks (such as ollies and presses) because there is little danger involved. But once you progress onto jumping, fear increases dramatically (at least for the majority of us it does).

It’s all in your head

Fear takes control when you picture all the things that could go wrong with the trick, rather than picturing yourself stomping the trick. You are effectively pouring petrol on your burning fear. Training dampens the fear and unlocks your potential.

This article is going to show you a step-by-step guide on how to do this.

Confidence is key

Those of us not born with blind confidence in ourselves (like pros in trick tip videos seem to have) need training to beat the fear.

A large part of teaching people how to snowboard is giving them confidence, which helps them overcome their fear, which makes them more successful.

Training builds confidence

There is a lot of training that you can do which will minimise your fear, which is a major barrier to having a positive mental image.

A positive mental image supports an attitude of success, rather than an attitude of failure. Now which attitude would you rather have?

With that in mind we move onto…

The humble straight air

A straight air is the foundation for any other jumping trick. If you’re trying to learn spins before you’ve perfected straight airs, well, that’s just silly. Learn to walk before you run.

I spent a long time just practising straight airs before I tried spinning. I toyed around with spinning, but I wanted to be comfortable in the air first. I would advise that you do the same.

The following 4 steps will show you how to build a solid foundation, a solid foundation will enable you to be more confident.

Remember: more confidence = less fear

Step 1: mental training

This step will improve your mental strength, which will help you have more focus and composure.

The mental attitude that you adopt is as important as the physical act. Some people naturally have blind confidence in themselves, most of us don’t. I know I don’t, so I had to train for it.

Mental training has proved to be as effective as physical training in my experience.

To give yourself a strong mindset, you need a strong mental image. If you’ve never watched snowboarders killing it, then you don’t really have any positive mental images to use.

So this step requires you to watch lots of snowboard movies, which will give you some positive mental images to make your own. Positive doesn’t mean watching “50 of the biggest snowboarding slams ever: part 5″, that’s no gonna help.

Don’t worry about the fact that you can’t see yourself ever being that good, that’s just being negative. Remember, we are building positive mental images. If you don’t want to buy snowboard movies, you can always check out:

• Youtube
• Mpora
• Whitelines
• Cheese Killer

Now you have positive mental images to play with, start to imagine yourself actually landing straight airs for a change, rather than thinking about all the things that could go wrong. You’re much more likely to be successful if you have a strong mental image of success.

If you’d like to read more about this mental aspect, check out this post.

Step 2: train your muscles

This step will help you build muscle strength and muscle memory, both of which improve your awareness and timing.

If you’ve never tried a board sport before snowboarding, then your body has no muscle memories to call upon.

The more relevant muscle memories you develop, the quicker you will learn to jump, and the more confident you will feel.

Remember: more confidence = less fear

Here is an example of a simple training exercise that you could use to train your muscles to jump:

1. Stand on the spot and jump straight up in the air (bring your knees up towards your chest)
2. Repeat 20 times.

It’s really as simple as that. Now ask yourself: “how many times have I actually practised something like this?”

The answer is probably not a lot.

Simple exercises – like the above example – performed daily for a couple of weeks will improve your jumping on a snowboard.

There are lots of other ways to train your muscles if you can’t snowboard:

• Skateboarding
• Mountain boarding
• Wakeboarding
• Surfing
• Gymnastics

The more similar the movements required, the more muscle memories you will develop that you can use to snowboard. I see snowboarding movements in everything I do, but I am obsessed.

Step 3: Learn to “pop”

This step is required to ”pop off the lip” (of the jump).

“Pop” is the term used to describe the act of pushing yourself off the ground, rather than just getting kicked by the jump (referred to as “coasting”). ”Coasting” off a jump is OK when you are dealing with baby jumps, but as jumps get bigger, more “pop” is required to make the landing.

A good straight air requires solid “pop”.

Learning to “pop” first, then learning to hit jumps will build your confidence quicker.

Remember: more confidence = less fear

I’m not going to get into teaching you ollies in this article, but below is an example of a good trick tip video to demonstrate. Remember, ground tricks have little fear involved.

Once you know how to ollie, go practice jumping off, up and over stuff. It’s the building block for many other freestyle tricks and helps build, you’ve guessed it, confidence. If there’s no snow where you are then buy a skateboard and learn to ollie that sucker.

Step 4: practice, practice, practice

This is the step where you put all the pieces together

Bear with me, there is a visual example to come.

Go to a snowdome, dryslope or wait until the winter. But you need to get out there and practice. You can’t expect after 10 tries to have perfected it, it will take time and dedication.

The most important thing when learning to jump is repetition. The best terrain parks have their own lift systems, which enable you to keep your flow.

I found this out whilst riding at Northstar in California, such a sick park! The lift goes from the bottom straight up to the top. You get so many laps in per day that you can’t help but improve.

Step out your comfort zone

You can’t expect to improve if you are always snowboarding in your comfort zone. You have to constantly push yourself. A little higher, a little bigger, a different grab, a little tweak, a big tweak.

You now have the missing pieces of the puzzle

This article has shown you how pro’s get so good. It has shown you how to build confidence and crush that nasty fear. Pros don’t just watch trick tips on youtube, they live and breath snowboarding in everything that they do. They think about it constantly, they push it constantly, they practice constantly.

You are now ready…

Now you know how to train yourself for sucess, you are ready to take advantage of the following trick tip video (which is very good by the way):

And if you feel like it, why not write a comment below.

About the author: David Raybould is a Snowboard Instructor and Writer. You can connect with him on  Twitter or Facebook.

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