Nothing says ‘I’m legit’ more than having a solid injury story – all the pros have them – so to fast track you to potential sponsorship superstardom or, at the very least, a free schapps at the bar we have prepared for you this list of cast-iron guaranteed* ways to injure yourself snowboarding.
*’guarantee’ is not guaranteed.
As the slogan goes, ‘Once you pop you just can’t stop’. But Pringles failed to mention if you’re riding a transition and you pop too hard you certainly will stop… generally by missing the sweet spot of the trannie and landing flat, thus exploding your face, your knees, your arms, or a combination of all three.
Here’s Shaun getting away with not popping enough. Usually when this happens you’re launched headfirst to the flatbottom and a blind date with A&E, but somehow White only received a spanked anus. Had he undercooked his pop a little more he would have successfully pancaked onto the deck, which is an perhaps less surefire but equally painful way of spannering yourself.
Ahh, the Devil’s Frigid Nipples. Beware, with more experience snowboarding you might actually pull this off, so make sure to raise the chances of injury from 99% to 100% by doing it switch. If you manage the switch mogul straightline, send a sponsor-me tape somewhere you god damn rock star.
When you get to the park, don’t fall into the trap of watching where other riders are dropping from in order to gauge the speed you need to hit the sweet spot. Just wave everyone out the way and point it from wherever you are. Your chances of obliteration are doubled with this method – too slow and you’ll knuckle (or perhaps worse, land on the deck); too fast and you’ll soar past the K-point to explode on the flat. Pros like Fredi Kalbermatten here avoid park jumps for exactly this reason – they’ll often be the first person to hit a spot so they RoShamBo and the lucky guinea pig just guesstimates the speed… often with predictable consequences.
Nothing is more guaranteed to get you in physical distress than not being aware of your surroundings on the mountain. Be it idly cruising through kicker landings blissfully ignorant of people about to land on your head, to following tracks in pow that lead you to a flat-landing cliff drop, or even just snaking side to side on a cat track… without looking around and realising where you are and what’s around you, you’ll be upping the odds of a ride in the blood wagon.
Everyone wants to ‘get the shot’ these days. But to make sure you properly break yourself, you need to make sure you’re focussed more on filming you/your bro than you are about controlling your snowboard properly. Collision with bromies, trees, unintentional cliff drops of doom and edge catches of destiny guaranteed! To steal a famous Alan Partridge-ism, ‘Crash! Bang! Wallop! What a video…’
Got your back 3s down on the rookie line and know you’re a LAD? Head straight to the big shit and send it. To progress in snowboarding you need to be willing to push your limits, but nothing will ensure certain beat downs than stepping to tricks or hits you have no business looking at just because someone’s pointing a camera in your direction.
This dude used up all his nine lives and life’s supply of rabbit feet to come away from this unscathed. You won’t be so lucky. Not to mention that snowcats often need to be tethered to a winch when shaping, so not only could you clothesline yourself terribly if riding when it’s working, the cables have been known to snap… and you don’t want to be torn in half now do you?
The fabled half backflip is the most obvious result of attempting this method, but failure to commit to anything in snowboarding will often lead to a spanking. Not enough speed, failure to follow through with your desired rotation, deciding at the last minute to try and get off the rail rather than see it through… all of these and more will likely result in some form of pain. So decide to do it, start doing it, decide to not do it once you’ve started doing it, and enjoy the commiseration from your friends at the bar later.
“Not cool, bro.” Those are three words you’ll never hear should you attempt this. You’ll be too busy trying to swallow your teeth to work out he’s just said “I will eliminate you.”
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