So what is it? Basically, a moving conveyor belt covered in white fake lawn, that is damp. Weird huh? So the belt moves up as you slide down, and you sort of stay in the same place. You can move up or down though, by digging in more or less. Because you are never completely stopped, you work the muscles pretty hard. If your board goes completely flat on the surface when you are horizontal, you sort of get stuck on and pulled up sharply, so it’s tricky. The idea is, you get 100% riding time as opposed to all the time you spend in lines and on lifts at the snow, so in an hour you get a lot of work done.
So Wednesday (which was last night) I went down and had a go. I am not as sore today and I thought I would be, after not being on a snowboard since last... February? My butt muscles are a bit sore but that’s it. At the end of the hour I was really feeling it and thought I was going to be in a world of pain. You are snowboarding for the entire hour, rather than 10 minutes, when waiting in line, then being on the chair ect, so it was pretty intense.
The place provides you with a board (or skis) and you can bring your own boots if you wish. So I brought my boots with me, and got a 145 board, which was quite nice, I didn’t recognise the brand but it was pretty light and rather flexi. I actually have a 143 and a 150, but when I rent I always get a 145.
I was actually really nervous about going on the machine, it seemed scary. The other guy in my lesson said he was a bit nervous too. Riding on the carpet (I don’t know what else to call it) was really hard and you kind of have to learn from scratch again. I thought I’d be able to jump on and just ride but we had to learn how to move around and by the end of the hour were only just starting to try C turns. I caught my board and fell a few times at the start, which was a bit embarrassing as I had declared myself to be of ‘high intermediate to low-advanced’ skill at the start of the lesson and my lesson buddy just called himself intermediate. If you fall they have to stop the thing, and you have to go back into board downhill position for it to start up, so I felt bad for messing up. You have to get used to it though. If you slip over you get a bit wet, and the surface is rough, I had my hand dragged over it. I actually hurt my wrist a little! It’s fine today though.
So you have an instructor with you, and he has a remote that controls the conveyor belt. The have a padded bar at the front of the thing, and another one about a metre and a half back, and we started by hanging onto the bar and learning to slide on our heels and balance, then turned around and held onto the upper bar and practiced on our toes. Total beginner stuff! It was tricky though. Once we had that we practiced traversing from side to side. The two of us were on there at the same time, crossing back and forth on one bar each. Later when we were using both bars and more space, we’d take turns. Which was fine, because it is tiring. So after we could traverse we learned to turn from horizontal to vertical, then from vertical to horizontal, then at the very end a complete C turn, which is from horizontal on your toes, around to your heels (or vice versa) and that was all we have time for. It was hard doing that in only 5 feet of space (between the two bars), I could have done it easier with a bigger turning circle. Although that’s as far as we got in the hour, the instructor seemed impressed and said we were progressing quite well.
I’m not used to having to concentrate on technique so much, so I can see that getting good at riding on the conveyor would be beneficial for real snow riding. You can see yourself in the mirrors in front of you, so you can see how your stance is. The things I’m not so good at were more obvious on the machine, like riding switch and doing heel side turns. I didn’t actually realise I was so poor in those areas because I can get away with not doing them. With the difficulty upped like that it was very obvious that my skills at turning on my heels are way below what they should be, I had no idea it was that bad. Once I tried to sort of cheat and kick with my back leg, which is a bad habit and on the conveyor doesn’t really work, so more training would be good for me. I also at one point tried to use my edges to turn and got caught. I guess that’s what I did, that’s what the instructor said. I got a bit more confident and wasn’t concentrating as much. He said not to try that yet, just turn keeping the board flat. It’s weird, it’s been years since I concentrated on turning, rise, drop shoulder, look, push foot. I don’t think about that stuff anymore.
Was nice to be able to ride a snowboard in my gym gear. Actually felt like a bit of a tool wearing my Mt Ruapehu t-shirt and Hotham hoodie, but those are my gym clothes and I came from work so that’s what was in the car.
Definitely want to give it another go. I’m only home for two weeks in October between NZ and Canada, so we’ll see. It was cheap because they are doing half off for opening month and I got a further discount because I have a concession card. Once it’s full price though it might be a bit of a luxury. Was interesting though!
