Last Updated on June 28, 2020
How to choose equipment for Snowboarding: With the onset of winter, a huge number of extreme sports fans appear on the snowy slopes, a large proportion of which are snowboarders. Snowboarding captures with its beauty. Engaged in this sport, you can get a great shape and a huge charge of incomparable emotions.
Imagine how you go down these slopes on your own board. If you now have a desire to go in for such an unusual and exciting sport as snowboarding, you need to know how to choose the right snowboard and what parameters it should have.
How to Choose Equipment for Snowboarding
The choice of snowboarding boards is influenced by more factors: the level of your skills, your preferred skiing style, height, weight, and even gender characteristics. Boards for snowboarding differ in rigidity, length, flexibility, and some other parameters. In this article, we will tell you how to choose the snowboarding equipment, which is right for you.
Freestyle, Freeride or Racing: We Determine the Direction
Let’s start with the fact that the choice of a snowboard is an individual and not as simple as it might seem. Before choosing a skiing board, you need to decide which direction you plan to do: freestyle, freeride or racing.
Freestyle
Freestyle is fun, entertaining, and extreme. If you like tricks, jumps, spins, board grabs, and a huge amount of adrenaline, then this direction is for you! Freestyle involves ski jumping, flights over various obstacles, and another extreme.
Freeride
Freeride is a cross between downhill and stunts. This direction will be chosen by snowboarders who like to ride both in the wild mountains and on equipped tracks, jump from eaves, and snowboards. Freeriders are not limited to absolutely any framework, so this type of snowboarding is the most common.
Racing
Racing is a downhill, which, at first glance, is the easiest direction in snowboarding, but in fact, this style requires special skills and experience. To develop high speeds in wild areas is quite dangerous, and only professional snowboarders can handle this.
Board for a Snowboard: Dimensions, Shape, Rigidity
When you have decided on the direction, you must choose the snowboard itself. It is on how correctly you choose the length of the snowboard; its stability in turns depends.
Keep in mind that longer boards are more convenient for free-riders who prefer riding in deep snow. These snowboards are easier to manage at high speeds, but they require a lot of effort when riding.
Snowboard Width
The difficulty of managing the board will directly depend on the size of your legs that nature has awarded you. The narrower the board, the less effort you will have to make when riding. For this reason, the snowboard must be chosen as narrow as possible.
However, keep in mind that the correct positioning of the feet in the area of the fastening of the shoes should not go beyond the board more than 1.5 cm.
Snowboard Shape
The snowboard’s shape also plays a very important role in skiing and is selected individually not only for the snowboarder himself but also for his skiing style.
For freestyle, snowboards are designed with a shape called twin-tip – the tail and nose of such boards are equally rounded. They have the same stiffness and mount strictly in the center. Freeride boards have directional geometry: their nose is elongated and has a softer design.
Equally popular are all-mountain boards, or as they are called “dovetail.” They have a sharp nose and a forked tail and come in different lengths and stiffnesses. Such boards provide easy access to flat glide and good stability on the course. They allow you to ride in any style and on any surface.
Snowboard design
From the point of view of design, snowboards are divided into two types: sandwich and cap. The first type of boards is heavier, but their side wall at the same time serves as an additional element between the top coating and the edging.
This design of the board is the most popular both among manufacturers and among snowboarders. In turn, the cap’s design is much lighter than the previous one but inferior to it in durability and reliability.
In the manufacture of such snowboards, fewer materials are used, and the top cover of such boards covers both the core and the sides. With frequent heavy loads, such snowboards begin to delaminate, and repairing them is much more difficult than sandwich-type boards.
Snowboard stiffness
This feature of the board should be selected depending on which style of riding you prefer. If you consider yourself an aggressive rider, you need the toughest board possible that can give the most bang for your buck and acceleration.
In other words, hard snowboards are needed for high-speed skiing. For all other types, soft boards are more optimal. Such snowboards are more obedient and behave appropriately at low speeds, so they are recommended, including for beginners.
Course – Impressions: Sliding Surface Material
There are two types of snowboard sliding surface material – Extruded and Sintered.
Extruded
Extruded is a type of surface that is obtained by applying molten material. Such a snowboard is soft, inexpensive, maintainable, and glides pretty well, but it does not have a very high resistance to damage. A board with this type of surface is an ideal choice for beginner snowboarders.
Sintered
Sintered is a type of sliding surface that is obtained by hot pressing. Such a surface is more rigid, better resists damage, and does not allow water to pass through, but requires more careful maintenance and costs more to repair.
A Few Words about Boots
If you think that having picked up a suitable board, you can immediately go down the slopes and are mistaken because you definitely won’t ride it in your shoes.
In addition to the snowboard, you will also need to purchase special boots. The first thing you need to pay attention to when choosing shoes is their convenience. Shoes should not push or fall, and the leg should firmly “sit” inside.
In addition to size, snowboard boots vary in stiffness. For example, for slalom, it is better to use hard boots. The leg sits in them like a glove. Soft shoes are suitable for any other type of riding.
It is worth noting that they quickly wear out, and even if at first the shoes seem too small for you, in a few days, they will ideally “sit” on your feet. If you are a beginner, and still do not know what style you will ride, you can purchase medium-hard shoes, as you will not have to change them if they turn out to be excessively stiff or too soft.
Mount Features
The mount is selected individually for each boot and board. His main task is to hold the boot firmly and not to pinch his foot. The mount should fix you on the snowboard so that you think you were born with it. In order to choose the right snowboard mounts, we recommend that you follow the following table:
When choosing mounts, pay attention first of all to those recommended by the manufacturer of the selected snowboard. We do not recommend saving on the mounts themselves or on their installation. Better entrust it to professionals.
Conclusion
As you may have noticed, snowboarding equipment has a lot of features, and in order to choose the equipment that is right for you, you need to spend some time.
The quality of your skiing and the pleasure received from it will directly depend on how correct you make a choice. Do not save on equipment, and approach his choice responsibly. If you have any questions, ask them in the comments.
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