How to Avoid Injury When Falling on a Snowboard

If you are learning to snowboard or if you are trying to make progress in your riding, you're going to fall. Repeatedly. Knowing some techniques for falling safely will keep you on the slopes and out of the ski lounge.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Helmets
• Snowboard Bag
• Snowboard Bindings
• Snowboard Boots
• Snowboard Clothing
• Snowboard Goggles
• Snowboard Hats
• Snowboard Leash
• Snowboards
• Wrist Guards
• Helmets

1. Fight the natural reaction to straighten out your arms to catch your forward fall. Locking your arms puts a great deal of stress on your wrists.

2. Bend your arms and try to absorb the fall with your forearms. If you have a lot of forward momentum, you can tuck your arms and shoulders and roll through the fall.

3. Bend your knees to lower your center of gravity and try to land on your rear end if you're falling backwards. If you can't get your weight low in time, try to keep the back of your head from bouncing off the ice by hunching forward.

Tips & Warnings

• You'll normally fall forward when your toe-side edge catches, usually because you've dropped your toes too soon when transitioning from the heel turn to the toe turn. If you start to catch that toe-side edge, get those toes up quickly.
• You'll usually fall backward when your heel-side edge catches, often because you dropped your heels too soon between turns or because you hit a bump. Lift your heels quickly to try to avoid catching the edge.
• One of the most common places to catch an edge is, ironically, on the flattest ground. This is because you are riding along, not making turns, and your board is constantly side-slipping. To avoid this, concentrate on making constant, shallow turns so that you stay on a clean edge at all times.
• You can also rub down the steel edges on brand-new boards with a piece of emery cloth to de-tune them and make them more tolerant of mistakes in your technique.
• Broken wrists are one of the most common injuries in snowboarding, because people fall forward, lock their arms, and take the entire impact on their hands and wrists.
• Falling backwards on a snowboard, especially on hard snow, is dangerous, because the possibility of head injury is increased.
• Snowboarding is an inherently dangerous activity that can result in serious injury or death. We recommend that you seek proper training and equipment before attempting this activity.

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[jj12]

on 3/29/2009 Wear wristguards as when you fall your instant reaction is to put your wrist out flat, and your brain will nor react quick enough for you to clench your fists, trust me i broke my wrist and was so gutted as you wrk hrd to get out to the mountains so kinda ruins your holiday.

[lvlcaphoto]

on 1/9/2009 I just learned to snowboard at 53, I am small framed woman and could have easily hurt myself when I fell numerous times. Having full gear was the way to go! I also found myself some great slip on padding at a sporting goods store. They looked like Ninja Turtle shorts, but all that padding was a blessing! Also, if you do fall forward, try to use your fists not your wrists! Happy Snowboarding!!

[snowboardLT]

on 6/4/2007 Wrist guards that have been tested and proven to reduce snowboard injuries, like those at Flexmeters.com will help!

I have other recommendations for avoiding pain snowboarding in my article "You Don't Have to Hurt Yourseld to Snowboard" on my site at http://www.snowboardsecrets.com/secrets.htm

on 8/8/2006 Let me preface this by saying I'm obviously not an expert, and I can only speak to my limited experience, but for anyone who is just starting, some of the tips I gleaned below might help you get moving a little faster.

I just spent my first day on the slopes yesterday. I took it nice and easy the first half of the day on the bunny slope, in a lesson, learning some of the basics, and by the end of the day was having a blast going down some of the blue slopes.

I highly recommend taking a quick lesson to help you learn control as quickly as possible. As stated in other posts, the two most common ways to hurt yourself are;
1) Not knowing how to fall properly, and
2) Not being in control of your board, and so running into someone, or something because you couldn't stop or turn.

So the first thing to do is:

LEARN TO FALL

I've noticed in skiing that some of the worst falls I ever saw were caused by people who were afraid to fall, and so made things worse for themselves. They crossed their skiis, did splits, all sorts of things. So practice falling until you're not afraid to anymore.

Find a nice flat area, put on your board, and practice falling forward, and backward. In both cases, if you think you're going to fall, the best thing you can do is bend your knees and get as low to the ground as possible. That way you won't hit the ground as hard when you fall. In fact, most of the times I wiped out, it was a pretty soft landing.

If you're falling forward, land on your inner forearms, not your hands. You can break, bruise, sprain, or otherwise damage your wrists by landing on them. You also diffuse the impact by spreading it along your forearms. You can also turn your head sideways so not to smack your face into the snow.

If you're falling backward, do not put tour hands back. Instead, just sit down, roll onto your back, and tuck your chin to your chest, so you don't smack the back of your head into anything. Again, don't try to cushion your fall with your hands, keep them out of the way.

Most of my falls were pretty pleasant, actually, with me just sliding across the snow. Not being afraid of falling meant that most often, just by realizing I was going to fall, and going with it (not resisting), I bent down and didn't fall as hard, or as far.

STANDING UP

If you're sitting down, and strap on your board, you may have trouble standing up. One trick is to grab the center of your board, right between your feet, with one hand, and push up with the other. You can push up, and pull yourself at the same time. It's still not always easy, but it's easier.

If you're on your knees, it's pretty easy. But you're not always facing uphill, so if you get really stuck, and can't get up when facing downhill, straighten your legs, grab one leg, and flip over onto your stomach, using your hand to pull the far leg over.

BOARD CONTROL

Here's a few quick hints:

Keep your weight toward the front of the board. Many people's natural reaction is to lean back on the board. It feels a little unnatural to lean forward, down the hill, because you feel like you might fall forward. But keep in mind that snowboarding is a kind of controlled fall.

If you lean back so that you don't feel like you're falling, you also give up control of the board. This is because leaning back puts the weight on the back of the board, which is a problem because, you steer with your front foot. You need to keep your weight on your front leg to steer. You are actually steering with the first couple of inches on the front of the board. You have to put pressure on those inches, or you can't steer. So you lean forward, and turn by putting pressure on your front toes, lifting your heel, or the opposite, putting pressure on your front heel, lifting your front toe just a little.

You may feel like the back of the board slide a little when turning. This is natural, and is how the turn takes place. The front of the board catches, the back of the board slides a little. This is a lot of fun when you get used to it.

For more advanced boarders, there's a more advanced concept here, which is that if you lift your front toe, you lift your back heel, torquing the board a little, creating a better turn. But for beginners, just focus on your front foot at first.

Every once in a while I would have the sudden feeling of not being able to steer. I would realize I'd shifted my weight to the back of the board, and would frantically have to get my weight forward or I'd fall.

FEATHERING

Have you ever watched a feather fall? It falls in a sort of left to right rocking motion. This is a lot like the first exercise they had us do. With your back to the hill, you can glide across the hill at a diagonal, then turn up toward the hill, which will arrest your movement, leaving the back end of the board facing down-hill. Then shift your weight onto your now-downhill leg, and glide back across the hill the other direction. Then turn up toward the hill again arresting your movement, and repeat "feathering" your way down the slope.

Once you've tried this a little, you can try the same exercise, but instead of facing downhill, you can face the mountain, doing the same exercise.

I spent most of my time learning to do this. It's very normal to be much better at once side, and find the other side harder. Once you've got control of feathering, you can probably try some slightly more challenging slopes. The longer slopes give you more time to practice what you're doing and you don't spend as much time in line.

As you get more comfortable, you might even try to...

SLALOM

Instead of feathering, where you turn back up toward the mountain, you can turn downhill. You'll instantly pick up speed, so you can counter this by continuing to turn until you're facing the opposite way that you started.

For example, if you were looking down the mountain, you'll now be facing up the mountain. Or vice-versa.

In feathering you constantly have to shift weight to a different leg. In slaloming, you don't, because one leg is always the downhill leg. You'll quickly notice that one leg is much easier as the downhill leg.

This is what I was working on when I left. Hope it's useful. Happy, and safe boarding!

on 2/21/2006 Good tips from everyone! First off, either your butt or wrists will get a little banged up at first and probably both. Suck it up and go for it. Most people fall because they get scared, get off balance and fall. The more you go for it the more balanced you will be. Learning to turn is kind of required though. I would try the falling leaf method to start off. Learn to use both the toe and heel edges. Then find a nice wide, easy slope and work on linking a few turns.