The Time-Efficient Guide to Buying Snowboarding Gear

If you’re eager to hit the slopes as soon as possible and finally learn how to snowboard like a pro but still lack the essential snowboarding gear and equipment to get started on your hobby, here’s a quick shopping list so you can purchase everything you need from the shop in the shortest time possible!

A List of Snowboarding Gear and Equipment for Beginners

Snowboard – Let’s start with the most obvious requirement in snowboard gear. Your choice of snowboard will determine the quality of performance you’ll expect from yourself and from the snowboard itself. Your choice will also determine the level of agility and speed you’ll enjoy when you’re snowboarding.

There are three primary types of snowboards. Freestyle snowboards are short and most suitable for novice snowboarders such as yourself not only because of their size but for its flexibility as well. You’ll be able to control freestyle snowboards more easily than other types of boards.

The second type is known as freeride snowboards. These are best for snowboarders who are one or a few levels beyond the novice stage but can in no way refer to themselves as experts…for the time being. Freeride snowboards, incidentally, are arguably the most popular type of snowboard as it allows people to gauge their snowboarding skills and explore their talents without putting themselves in too much danger.

The last type is called alpine snowboards. Whereas freestyle snowboards are known for its flexibility, alpine snowboards are known for its rigid build. They are great for players with highly advanced snowboarding skills and enjoy the thrills of going downhill in incredible speed. This is also the right type of board to use if you wish to make perfect turns and curves.

Snowboard Bindings – Although they may appear flimsy and useless, snowboard bindings in fact play a significant role in keeping snowboarders safe while practicing their favorite sport. There are several types of snowboard bindings for you to choose from: strapped, flow-ins, plated, step-ins, and those without base (baseless).

Snowboarding Boots – Another equally overlooked factor when it comes to increasing the level of safety and protection that a snowboarder enjoys while he’s making all sorts of turns and jumps in the slopes are snowboarding boots. Besides offering comfort and warmth to your feet, they also prevent this area – which includes the ankles – from physical injury, or at least reduce the risk of encountering it. Again, there are several types of snowboarding boots that you can choose from – hard boots, soft boots, and those that mix the features of both. When purchasing snowboarding boots, make sure that you purchase those which are durable and you feel comfortable wearing for long periods of time.

Snowboarding Outfit – Just like boots, the right snowboarding outfit will keep you safe and secure from physical harm. It will also keep you warm and lessen the risks of getting affected by hypothermia or frostbite. When shopping for snowboarding apparel, important factors to consider are comfort, quality, and durability or protection against all the natural elements that it will be sure to be exposed to!

Snowboarding Goggles – Lastly, contrary to popular belief, snowboarding goggles are not used for aesthetic purposes only. Rather, they are worn by snowboarders to improve their sense of sight. It’s important to see very clearly where you’re going because there are a lot of dangers that you’ll encounter when you’re snowboarding.

Book Review: The Illustrated Guide to Snowboarding

Kevin Ryan's The Illustrated Guide to Snowboarding offers one of the most useful guides to snowboarding for people from any level, whether beginners wanting to learn more about the sport and get their techniques sharpened, up to instructors and professionals seeking to further hone their skills on the slope.

Reader reviews and feedback on this book showed that it has a lot of useful drills featured that helped them improve their game immensely after repeated practise. The drills are written in a step by step fashion that seems ambiguous at first, but makes complete sense once you actually try them out. Furthermore, the book's coverage is all-encompassing, including tips for beginning, to intermediate, to advanced skill levels.

The approach taken by the author is both humorous and scientific, employing small drawn illustrations to show drills and techniques. While there are few actual pictures involved, these hand drawn illustrations are funny to look at and yet maintain a good degree of accuracy in portraying the skills and techniques being demonstrated. The author uses a lot of jokes and quips interspersed with facts and the illustrations are likewise a mix of serious, factual ones and cute, cartoony renderings of snowboarding stuff.

Most professional instructors in snowboarding who read this book found new drills and skills they could teach their classes inside the beginner sections, so this book's coverage is quite extensive. Furthermore, the author knows that certain skills can ONLY be conveyed though actual practice and demonstration, so he goes out of his way to state when certain skills are best acquired through a snowboarding instructor.

One of the sections that a lot of readers will probably find useful is the chapter on snowboard care and maintenance. Where most how-to books devote footnotes or at best, a few pages to the care and maintenance of equipment, Kevin Ryan actually goes out of his way to write an in depth full chapter on tips for taking proper care of your snowboard.

There is even a section on the ergonomics of skateboarding, covering the proper way to carry and ride a board to minimize the physical strain on the snowboarder. This also includes explanations on the physics and mechanics of snowboarding. While not exactly necessary for most people, this chapter is useful for people who are more technically inclined, like say, industrial designers who might be out to design a new type of snowboard.

Unlike some instructional books, this book does not seek to replace the need for an instructor, but instead seeks to augment and expand on the knowledge gained from working with a good qualified snowboarding instructor. For those who insist on learning everything from a book and doing it themselves, however, the book's attention to detail and exhaustive explanations of the mechanics of snowboarding are actually enough to let them get by and teach themselves through practice and repetition.

This book is 336 pages long, and it's first edition was published by the renowned book company McGraw-Hill back in 1998. Despite being published 8 years ago, to this day it remains one of the most popular and sought after instructional books for snowboarders. No matter what your skill level, it's guaranteed that you will benefit from reading this book that is already considered a classic "encyclopedia" in the sport by avid snowboarding enthusiasts.