Bo’s Blog

Did my second snowboarding session today — first time back on a board in four years.

The first time was rough. And I mean genuinely rough. I came in with reasonable expectations of picking it up quickly: I'd been skating for years before I ever touched skis, and that foundation transferred well enough that I was on intermediate pistes on my first ski day and flirting with carving by the end of it. So I figured snowboarding would follow the same pattern. It didn't. That first session four years ago was just falling. Constantly. I couldn't even hold a basic edge side slip together. I've been in London since then, and I've been training more consistently -- gym, weight training, deadlifts, squats. Nothing snowboarding-specific, just building a base. Today, when I stepped back onto a board, something was noticeably different. I worked through edge side slips and got to the point of linking turns from one edge to the other -- things that completely escaped me last time. Same sport, same starting point on paper, very different outcome.

What I think have changed: the muscles were there this time. Early on today my weight distribution wasn't right, my centre of mass was off -- but my legs could hold the position long enough for me to feel what the correct movement was supposed to be. The strength bought me time to find the technique naturally, rather than collapsing every time I got it slightly wrong. When you don't have that physical buffer, every mistake is a fall, and you never get the feedback loop you need to actually learn.

Just a thought. If a sport feels impossibly hard, it might not be technique -- it might simply be that your body doesn't yet have the physical capacity to support the learning process. Build the base first. The skill follows.

The coach said I'm ready for the main slope next session. So -- next Sunday, let's go.