Name: Snowboard Edge Control Drills (RANKED EASY TO HARD)
Uploaded: 2025-03-29T12:43:05.000Z
Duration: 10 min 40 s
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In today's video, I'm not gonna bore you with too much theory, well maybe just a little bit, but instead I'm gonna give you 10 drills ranked easy to hard that will improve your edge control on your snowboard.

Participle clauses

Number one is a simple edge hop, performed as you traverse across the slope on both edges.

Adverbs of manner

All you need to do is make a small jump, taking off your edge and landing softly on that same edge.

The board shouldn't be skidding, you should instead be leaving a thin line in the snow across the slope.

And this exercise tests your balance and posture, but more importantly, because you perform each jump whilst in a traverse, this drill will teach you to finish your turns with the board gripping across the slope.

Now this one is attainable for pretty much anyone who can link turns, but it's also gonna be worth doing if you're a stronger rider.

Put the board into the full line, step your back foot on the board, and make sure you can then bring it to a stop on both your heel and your toe side.

This should have been one of the first drills that you ever did learning to snowboard, and we use it because it encourages beginners to keep weight over their front foot and steer the board from that position.

However, it is a drill that many more experienced riders still struggle with, and that's because they've often developed a bad habit of kicking their back leg out.

I really rate the importance of this drill, therefore it also features as part of the progression in my online course, which you can find out more about via the link down below.

And if you can do that, then this next one is gonna be much easier.

That's it, no technical information required.

Just loosen off your back foot and try to ride.

And the idea behind this is that every turn should start from your front leg, by movements made with your front ankle, knee, and hip to pull you round and into the turn.

Now, if you already ride with your weight stacked over your front foot, then you'll likely find this an easy one to do.

But once again, if you've developed bad habits, then this isn't gonna feel good at all.

You can try and make different sized turns, but what you might find when doing this drill is that it's quite difficult to maintain grip at the end of the turn, particularly as you start riding faster.

And that's because the back foot is by no means useless, and you're for sure gonna need it in this next one.

I'm calling this one carving leaf, as it's a bit of an advanced version of the falling leaf exercise, here designed to develop better edge hold through the latter part of the turn.

But to begin with, it builds upon all the front foot steering skills that you've just practiced in the previous two drills.

So, you start in a skid, flatten that front foot to point the board down into the fall line, and then use that speed that you pick up to lean into the hill and have the side cut of the board pull you back up the slope.

You need to make sure that you have your weight centered with pressure going down through both feet to ensure the whole length of your board grips into the snow.

And you need to make sure that you allow the board enough time pointing down the slope so that you do pick up some decent speed because that speed is essential for you to balance against in order to get the board turning back up the hill.

And that balancing of your weight on the inside of the turn is what we're gonna be putting to the test in this next drill.

And this may be one of the simplest things to do, but just because it's simple doesn't mean that it's easy.

And any bad habits you have at that edge change, such as kicking that back leg out or counter-rotating, will show themselves up very clearly here.

So all you need to do is pass your center of mass over the board and rest into your toe side and then heel side positions, back and forth.

And think of your body like a pendulum rocking across the top of your board.

And if you rest your weight correctly against your equipment, then the side cut of your board will engage and pull you back and forth from one edge to another.

The turns are called open because we don't cut right across the slope, closing off that usual C shape of the turn.

And because of this, you will pick up speed quite quick with this exercise.

So it's gonna be best practiced on mellow slopes like this.

But for me, this next one is definitely much harder.

I've talked about it in other videos enough.

But for now, all you need to know is that you're essentially going from a toe edge side slip to pointing the board down the slope, making a small jump before slowing down in a heel edge side slip, and then going again.

Now, we're taking out any of that S shape that we normally look for in our turns, which forces you to use your feet independently to steer the board in a movement that I've talked about in many, many videos that I'll link down below.

And that little jump in the full line, that is the added challenge that forces you to slow down those movements and get comfortable in that neutral flat base position over the top of your board.

And then you perform a small jump, again, landing back in that neutral position.

And then once again, you use your lower body joints to then steer the board back around onto its new edge.

It sounds kind of complicated now saying it out loud, but watch the video and well, you'll get the idea.

Number seven brings us back to engaging the side cut of our board with an early edge change and back again.

All you need to do is rock the board onto your new edge and then go back to your original edge all before the board comes around to complete a turn, meaning that you end up kind of wiggling across the slope from one side to another, from edge to edge.

And much like the open carve turns, this drill works on the fundamental movement of passing your center of mass over the board at every edge change.

And by getting that clean line in the snow behind you ensures that you don't have any bad habits, mistakes at the edge change that will hold you back in your normal riding.

However, right now, that movement is gonna be done across the slope, which makes it more difficult.

And this is an awesome drill to do to make sure you aren't skidding out at that top part of the turn.

And if you can do this, you should easily be able to set your board on its new edge, meaning that effortless carve turns won't be a problem for you.

And you're also gonna have more success in making quick edge changes on steep slopes too.

This one has a lot of practical application.

Now, for the next one, let's make things a little bit more tricky.

This one is easy to grasp and easy to try.

Provided you can carve through the whole turn, you shouldn't find this one too much of a challenge.

This drill requires you to build a strong platform through the end of the turn.

And by that, I mean, not only is the side cut of your board pulling you through the turn, but you're also confidently balanced on it so that you can push back against it and hop up and out of the snow at the end.

Now, as with a lot of these drills, a bit of speed is gonna help.

And one thing you want to watch out for for this one is to make sure that the edge hop is right at the end of the curve of the turn and not simply done in that more static traverse across the slope like we did in the first drill.

In this one, the board is always turning through the arc of the turn from start to finish, connected by that small hop.

Okay, we've taken a serious step up in difficulty here.

I wanted to throw this one in as a real challenge.

But to be honest, it's probably the one that has the least amount of actual benefit to your everyday riding.

Still, if you like a challenge, then give it a go.

The goal is to carve on your heels and then pop a backside 180 around and then back in a heel side carve and then, well, just keep on repeating.

Personally, I find that popping slightly off the nose of your board is gonna help you pull this one around.

But really, no matter how well you set yourself up, both jumping and landing on your heels never feels that nice.

And the hardest part of this drill is when it comes to landing in that carve.

The blind rotation makes it difficult not only to spot your landing, but to get your weight in the right place for the next carve.

So don't ever pop at me if you hurt yourself on this one.

And potentially the most difficult challenge of them all.

Originally, I was gonna give you toe-to-toe carving, the much easier counterpart to that exercise, but I've already made a full video tutorial that I'll link down below.

Now, onto the most technical, it's number 10.

Perhaps less difficult, maybe more technical, but who cares?

I made it number 10 because I know a bunch of you will just skip to the end and I wanted to finish with something more useful than heel-to-heel carving.

This takes everything from drill number seven that adds in that ollie off the tail with that over-the-top landing on the nose.

And this dynamic drill is great for developing better coordination and timing between both feet.

And this is gonna be really helpful for navigating moguls, tight trees, bumpy terrain, but really that shift from nose to tail and back to tail again throughout the turn is just a complete over-exaggeration of the fore and after movements that you can use within your riding to manipulate the board through the arc of the turn to change your turn size and shape.

All right, all right, I promised I wouldn't go into too much theory, but what I can promise you is that if you can work your way through some of these drills, then your riding will no doubt improve.

I hope you enjoy trying out those drills on the slopes, wherever in the world that you might be.

If you've got any favorite exercises or challenges, let me know and who knows, they might make it into my next video.

As always, thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one.