Skiing or snowboarding – the choice of real extremes
Quite often, a dispute arises between athletes and fans of extreme sports: what is more interesting – skiing or snowboarding? How to learn to correctly select everything necessary for these exciting sports and how to decide to go downhill? To solve all these questions, you need to carefully understand all the pros and cons of these types of active recreation.
What is more difficult to learn for beginners?
First of all, to determine which way of moving on snow is better, you need to consider the difficulty in learning to ski or snowboard. As a rule, all professionals advise to pay attention to what you are more prone to. That is, try both types of movement, and then decide which is better for you.
It is important that the snowboard does not give a chance for incorrect riding. You either ride or you fall. As for skiing, you can ski for a long time without apparent professionalism. Especially when there is no instructor nearby. This rule applies both to mountain descents and to normal movement in a straight line.
A serious question, which is physically more difficult. Here the answer is unequivocal – a snowboard. After all, success in snowboarding depends only on your legs, endurance, dexterity of movements and vestibular apparatus, while alpine skiing has poles that will easily help you control your body on the descent.
Regarding the speed of learning – as many could notice, you can go skiing after the first lesson. Not quite sure, but quite tolerable. And for a snowboarder, this training results in many obstacles in the form of “fall-and-stand”. Therefore, a week will be enough for skiing.
Summing up, we can safely say that you need to train and choose your way of moving through the snow by trial and error. But it will be physically easier to learn to ski.
What you need to know about security
What is safer for health – snowboarding or skiing? Each of these ways of moving on snow has its own vulnerable place, which will need to be taken care of as much as possible.
Snowboarding, first of all, can lead to wrist injuries, broken fingers and hand blows. After all, during skating, falls are almost inevitable. For greater safety, before skating, wrap your hands with an elastic bandage, wear special protective gloves. And also try to avoid transferring all your weight only to your hands when falling.
You can injure your knees while skiing. They are the ones who suffer the most during skating. After all, the sticks protect the hands, and all the emphasis is placed on the knee joints. Therefore, the protection is practically the same – an elastic bandage or special knee pads will reduce the chance of injuring the knees.
If we talk about falling as such, snowboarding seems less safe. But in practice, to get up with the board after a fall, a few training sessions are enough. There are difficulties with skiing. After all, no amount of practice will help you get up when you fall, if you have skis on your feet. It will be necessary to skillfully “extricate yourself” in order to get back on your feet.
Generalizing, we can say that skiers can be injured much more often, but the injury itself will be light and insignificant. If the question concerns snowboarders, then a necessary attribute for skiing is a helmet. After all, craniocerebral injuries and spinal cord injuries are rare, but extremely dangerous. A particularly problematic area is the coccyx. It can be injured when a snowboarder falls on his back. Then it is quite possible to break your elbows and back as well.
What to choose?
This choice largely depends on physical fitness. For the board, you will need more dexterity, endurance, physically strong legs. If you know how to control your body perfectly, then conquering snowy slopes is for you.
If you have more developed hands, then it is better to practice skiing. This type of movement requires careful work of the hands and the body, which coordinate your descent. Mountain skiing differs from snowboarding in that you can fully control the process and direction of movement with the help of your hands.
However, the main advice when choosing one or another type of active recreation will be to listen to yourself. What you like more will become your favorite activity. It will be easy for you to learn what you like more.