5 Ways to Become a Professional Snowboarder

Pro Rider!

If you’re reading this, then you’re likely wondering what it takes to become a professional snowboarder. Who doesn’t want to be the next Travis Rice, Gigi Ruf, or Jussi Oksanen? Well I’m going to show you, step by step, just how to. Fair warning though, some of the steps might be a bit difficult, but rest assured, at no point do you need to actually hit up the slopes!

1. Become the “Accessory Man”! Go to your local snowboard shop and spend serious coin on the latest gear. If a shop stocks anything last season, get the hell out like you just saw Babe (hint: 1995) with an H1N1 sign walking around the store. Find the most expensive board, bindings, & boots combo, don’t ask questions, and buy them! The more buzz words you see on the packaging, the better. Don’t forget, you’re not buying a board, you’re buying marketing, packaging, and branding. As you check out, pick up 1 of each and everything you find around the cashier. If it’s within hands reach, it’s fair game baby.

2. Learn the lingo brah (that’s right, I used the slang of a slang!). Nothing says “I’m a gnarly rider” better than talking like one. Some must-learn words: brah, gnarly, dude, traverse, wack, rad, duuude (note ‘duuude’ expresses a feeling, whereas ‘dude’ is the subject), stealthy (e.g. that’s a stealthy setup brah), over-dude it (if someone uses ‘dude’ too often, you can call them out on it by saying: “Brah, don’t over-dude it, that’s just not cool”), fakie, vertical, boned out, bomb, butter, chillax, dirty (aka gnarly, aka rad, aka stealthy), gaffer,  pow, deep pow, pow wow, rip, shred, stacked, stoked, wonked (let’s get wonked brah). Learn them, practice them, and drop them in every damn sentence that comes out of your mouth.

3. Talk about vertical, back country, and fresh pow all the time. Riders are defined by these three things. Why worry about actually waking up early and catching the fresh back country pow, when you can just rave about the 5 feet of snow that got dumped on your local mountain the night before? And if you show up late to the game and your buddies are talking about the sickest back country pow they buttered through, just mention the 5 THOUSAND feet of vertical you did at Whistler 7 years ago!

4. Hit up your local dealer and score the creme de la crop. This is no time to cheap out on the stuff that’s going to transform you into the sickest rider ever. If you don’t know how to roll, just throw in an extra Jackson and ask your friendly dealer for 3 pre-rolled doobies. Now this is the important part… hit one joint before the lift, hit another on the lift (you get extra points if you get the strangers on the gondola to hit it with you), and hit the last one half way down your run. If you can’t handle all three, then you’re not ready to be a pro rider son!

5. Watch every single snowboarding video out there and rave about it to your friends, on facebook, on twitter, and just about anywhere else. Learn the names of the tricks and pro riders pulling off the tricks. This is crucial, because after you spend a few hundred hours glued to your screen, it’ll be time to go out and brag about the travis-rice-double-handed-chicken-salad-air-spin you pulled off last weekend (it might be easier if your friends don’t really snowboard). If you can afford a decent camera (if you can, then you messed something up in Step #1), you should have your friends record your tricks and post them on the youtubez.

Bonus: If you really want to become a pro rider, then it’s super important to start a snowboarding blog. This alone makes you a pro, and if you manage to talk about how to become pro, then sir, I salute you!

I hope this guide helps and if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions of your own, hit us up, or leave a comment!