How to get better at snowboard as a woman

On a random night at the peak of Canadian winter, I was researching how I could improve my snowboarding as a woman. You might be thinking “hey, there is no gender difference in snowboarding”. And in fact, there isn’t. But there’s a huge lack of representativeness for regular women out there, which doesn’t help boost our confidence.

I have been snowboarding for a couple of full seasons now and I am finally learning how to do mid-sized jumps, as well as becoming more comfortable at higher speeds and on steeper terrain. A few weeks into the last season, after I spent an entire day riding and continuously trying to land a medium jump, I kept slamming on my brakes and falling on my butt over and over again.

On that day, the conditions were hard: it was so foggy you could not make out what was a couple of meters in front of you. At the end of the day, I felt kind of frustrated.

As we walked back to our car, I told my partner about all my imperfections: I had not been able to land a proper jump, I was not great at turning in the steep tree run, and so on.

He stared at me and asked why I was focusing on what I could not do perfectly, rather than all the great stuff I had done: I was getting more speed than ever, dabbing at tree runs for the first time ever, and I was able to take off really well during the jumps.

That made me stop and think… Why is it that I put myself down? I already knew that my fear of getting hurt and the belief that I’m not as good as my fellow riders (all males) holds me back. And yet I managed to add another layer of self-doubt by diminishing all of my accomplishments.

So back to the story, on a random night I had googled ‘how to improve snowboarding as a woman’. I ran into this great blog post from Aoife and I could relate to it so much. Besides providing tips, she also mentioned the confidence gap.

If you haven’t heard of the confidence gap, here’s a brief overview:

Gender differences in confidence are quite dramatic. (...) Men overestimate their abilities and performance, while women underestimate both. In fact, their actual performance does not differ in quality or quantity.

Other studies have shown how women constantly seek to be perfect and end up holding themselves back, be it through refraining to speak up in meetings or to apply for a job they don’t meet 100% of the criteria.

It was so eye-opening and honestly saddening to see that the confidence gap is so significant in our society. I have learned from fellow female co-workers and friends about endless insecurities when it comes to asking for a raise, applying for a job, etc. Fortunately, this is something women can work on. This is something I will continue to work on myself and am very supportive in empowering other women to lessen this gap.

So these have been some of the biggest lessons I have learned from snowboarding: To believe in myself; to keep trying until I make it. Through accepting that I will fail, fall and hurt… But all that practice will lead to something just a little bit better -- until I finally get it.

Big or small, I can choose to focus on the positive and realize how far I’ve come, rather than what I cannot do yet or compare myself with others. Now, I take others as an inspiration, not as a threat. Oh, what a great feeling it is when you are able to do something you couldn’t before!

Here is some of what I could do by the end of the season: