When summer comes around, the seasoned snowboarder often doesn’t know what to do with himself. Here are 5 activities that you gotta try this summer to keep your skills up to their prime for next winter. 

1. Wakeboarding

Wakeboarding is a great summer sport that uses necessary snowboarding skills. Wakeboarding will let the ultimate snowboarder extend his or her season, and will prevent them from losing any core strength and techniques that were developed during the winter months.

Once airborne, wakeboarding tricks and snowboarding tricks require the same coordination and board control. Practise makes perfect and why should practise stop in the summer months right?

You can improve your switch tremendously through wakeboarding. Transitioning to the switch stance and keeping your balance in this foreign position is much easier on a wakeboard than on a snowboard. Mastering switch on a wakeboard is a great stepping stone to mastering it on a snowboard. Plus it gives you a one-up on the other snowboarders next season when you go in comfortable with this new heading.

Okay Okay, there HAS to be a catch. What are the main differences?

The main difference we found between the two sports is the amount of board control required, and hence the strength of the muscles required to keep control over the board. Why is this? Well, wakeboarding does not require you to ride on an edge often as snowboarding does. Switching between toeside and heelside on a snowboard requires heavy duty calf muscles, whereas the task is a little simpler with a wakeboard. Be sure to do some additional calf muscle excersizes to keep yourself strong for next season.

2. Longboarding

Longboarding works similar techniques to snowboarding in a similar way that wakeboarding does.

A longboard ride is a little bit further from snowboarding than a wakeboard ride however. There are two reasons for this. First, your feet are not strapped into your board; and second, you need to master the abstract skill of kicking and pushing to propel yourself forward.

There is still plenty to learn from longboarding. This new strategy of pushing off the ground requires you to transition and replace your footing every couple of strides. Due to this, a snowboarder can gain a familiarity with different foot stances and will ultimately be more comfortable riding a new board or trying out a new binding positioning next time he or she hits the slopes.

Also, a snowboarder can improve his carving techniques through riding a longboard. Having a board disconnected from your feet requires one to be more wary when carving on a longboard. Carving with a longboard requires more caution and hip movement than doing so on a snowboard because your feet are not strapped in. This means that a longboarder leans less into his calves than a snowboarder would when trying to attain that desired swing form toeside to heelside. This added attention that goes towards your carving will force you to notice the different strategies you can use on your board, eg. more of a bend vs. straighter legs, more backfoot weight vs. equal weight distribution, hip swings vs. calf swings etc.

The closest replica to a snowboard that a longboarder can find is the Freebord. This longboard has footholds that mimic that of snowboard bindings. Check it out here.

3. Skateboarding

Generally, you’ll find that the avid snowboarder in winter, is a keen skateboarder in the summer. It’s not a surprise as to why this is, despite the fact that these two boardsports are vastly different.

So why do snowboarders love skating so much?

When you love the park in one sport, you love it in the other.

The tricks of these two sports are unbelievably different. What you can do with your feet strapped in on one board, you certainly cannot do on the other. A kickflip on a snowboard is impossible, while a heavy rotation on skateboard will rarely happen. Also, the air a snowboarder requires for a solid big air jump is basically a death sentence in the unforgiving concrete of a skatepark.

Still however, if you love the feeling of challenging yourself in the park, this feeling is undoubtedly interchangeable between the two sports. For sure one of the biggest similarities we’ve noticed between the two sports is the mentality that comes with it – once a snowboarder, always a skateboarder.

Skateboarding allows snowboarders to practise the mental skills required with trying a new stunt. It also gives snowboarders an added confidence in the park – If you land a 180 on your skateboard, your confidence in your snowboarding skills while skyrocket next time you give it a try on your snowboard.

You can practise the fundamental skills of steering a board, while becoming a gutsier park rider by taking up this rad summer sport.

If you are interested in learning essential skateboarding techniques and how to own the skatepark throughout the summer months, look into Evolve Skate Camp

4. Surfing

Surfing combines the unattached footing of skateboarding and longboarding with the water surface conditions of wakeboarding. What does this mean? It means that surfing is the furthest boardsport from snowboarding.

Still though, this addictive action sport undeniably uses some of the same fundamental board skills required to control a snowboard.

Surfing skills and snowboarding skills are interchangeable in the sense that you control your board using similar weight distribution. Using your back foot to ground your weight, a rider will then steer with his front foot in the direction he wants to head. While maintaining your balance on the board, carving on powder in the winter feels awfully similar to riding the waves in the summer.

This is a great way to stay in shape. Battling the waves is a full body workout while riding them offers a familiarity to the snowboarder in you.

Also the both snowboarders and surfers alike are heavy duty El Nino fans.

So why are they supposedly so different?

Well, surfing not only takes longer to learn, but also requires more practise to master. Surfing is not just about riding, it also has a huge focus on knowing how to catch a wave. Reading the waves the right way and knowing how to get up on a surf board requires much more expertise than knowing how to stand up on a snowboard requires.

Its also interesting the ways in which snowboarding allows you to retry a run over and over again, whereas surfing is different every time with each new wave that you catch.

5. Trampoline Jumping

This is one thing that every snowboarder HAS to do in the summer months. Trampoline training is a rad way to lean new tricks safely. Get comfortable with big air and big spins by jumping day and night on a trampoline.

Currently, companies are coming out with new training boards to amplify the trampoline training experience. These boards are also good to use on on balance boards if you don’t have access to a trampoline.

Check this out:

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So all in all, we KNOW just how tempting it is to stay in your basement all summer watching snowboarding videos – but really GET OUT THERE and take up a summer sport. It is key that we have the summer months to train our bodies in new ways and prepare for the winter sports. You could even say it puts us at an advantage. Some closing wise words from the great Shaun White:

“If you eat the same cereal every day it’s gonna get old. And if I had thought about snowboarding every day, I would have quit a long time ago” – Shaun White

“I totally forget about snowboarding in the summertime” – Shaun White

Get out there and try something new this summer!