Snowboarding Gear

The most essential snowboarding gear is a snowboard, boots, and bindings. Snowboards come in different sizes and shapes. The size of your snowboard depends more on how much you weight and how flexible the board is and not on how tall you are

You can ride any shape snowboard in any manner. However, certain shapes are made to make certain riding styles easier. For example if you like riding half-pipe, jumps, rails, jibs around the mountain, you should get a freestyle shaped board. Most freestyle shaped snowboards are twin tips. Twin tip means that both the nose and tail are shaped evenly so that it can be more easily ridden in both directions.

A Freeride snowboard is shaped with a longer and often times wider nose than tail. If you are riding a lot of untouched powder fields than a freeride snowboard would be better suited. The longer nose will allow the board to ride above the powder better. If you like making nice big drawn out turns a freeride shaped board would also be recommended. NOTE: Like mentioned above any and all riding styles can be done with any board shape, theses are just the general uses for each type of board shape.

Snowboard bindings are the next important piece of snowboarding gear. They connect you to your board and therefore you shouldn't go cheap on your bindings. Cheap snowboard bindings often times will break while your riding or strapping in. They make cheap bindings out of weak plastic that gets extremely hard and stiff when the temperature gets cold. When you go to strap-in the plastic bends and breaks. You should spend at least $130 on your bindings other wise the bindings you buy will be made out of the cheap plastic that breaks.

Snowboard boots are also very important. They help to direct the snowboard by transferring your body weight and movements to the bindings. Stiffer boots or hard shell boots are used for carvers or racers. They offer a quicker edge to edge response. Softer boots are more flexible and you can move your feet around easier and apply pressure to specific areas of the board. This is useful for doing snowboard tricks like rails, butters, jibs...etc. Expect to pay around $140 for a decent pair of snowboard boots.

This is just the most essential snowboarding gear. Technically you could go riding with just this gear, but I wouldn't. You need some snowboard pants, jackets, gloves, goggles, helmet. If you need more help with finding out how to buy the right snowboarding gear Snowboarders guide. Or if you want to read a review of the newest snowboarding gear Snowboard gear review. Snowboarding is about having fun. Having the right gear will only make your snowboarding experience that much better. For all your snowboarding needs check out www.bettersnowboarding.com