Balance Board Training - Part 2

A few months ago I did a post on using a homemade balance board to fiddle around with rail tricks or just master the finer points of balance.  With any homemade creation, and especially with training exercises, a visual demonstration is always much more valuable.

Braving the 110ºF heat, I managed to get a couple of minutes of footage showing both my homemade balance board setup and how I use it to practice tricks.  It isn't pretty, but training and learning new things rarely is:

So you can see what I mean when I said to try jumping right into tricks.  I also tried a variety of tricks, including 50-50s, boardslides, 270s, switch-ups, nollie on, and a few switch tricks.  My biggest focus with each one is keeping the board nice and flat.  Especially with boardslides, spins and switch-ups, I pay special attention to where I turn my head, and how I manipulate my arms, hips, and shoulders.

You can also see my homemade setup. The deck I have is old, beat up, and practically snapped; if you have friends that skate, or especially if you skate yourself, chances are you have one of these lying around.  The tube is just a 4' long, 4" diameter black PVC pipe I bought at Home Depot--I don't recall there being a choice, but make sure you buy thick so it doesn't buckle when you jump on it.

As mentioned in the first post, balancing these tricks is actually much easier at speed, and I can honestly say I owe a lot of my confidence and the successful outcome of many on-snow attempts this season to the time I put in with my balance board.

Hopefully having this visual example clears up any confusion about balance board training...at least my homemade version of it.  So go find $10 and give yourself something to do while you wait for next season.