Having fun hitting some Big Airbag Jumps!
The weather is sunny, the conditions are great and the weekend looked perfect for some fun on the airbag!
Since I started snowboarding I wanted to one day learn how to perform some tricks. And one kind of trick that I always wanted to do is how to perform high jumps. It looks cool when you see people doing it but I’m very scared of hurting myself not knowing how to behave in mid air. So, a good way to practice a bit of air control without hurting yourself if something goes wrong is to hit the airbag jumps! Also, it can be quite fun to fly in the air without almost any worries about pain and broken bones. That’s why I headed to Kungsberget, just two and a half hours away from Stockholm.
The first time I tried one of these airbag jumps in the past I have to admit that I was pretty intimidated by it! When you’re at the top of the run looking down, the downhill section looks way more steep than it appears on the pictures! Also, being comfortable riding with the speed while pointing the board down can be quite a challenge. I tried to go for the jump so many times but ended up bailing out at the last moment after doing too many speed checks, worried about going too fast for it, and being worried about what would happen next.
That’s when I got the best advice I could ever get from an Australian dude at the slopes that was probably pretty tired of seeing me bailing out all the time:
Just send it!
And that’s quite it! Aim to the middle of the ramp and just go for it! Just send it! You’ll end up on the bag. It is pretty big, specially this big air airbag that I got to see this last weekend in Kungsberget. You really need to aim you way out of the bag to miss it. And, after the first try, the fear goes away and it is replaced by an addiction to do it again and again and again. Now, every time I’m at a resort with airbags, I always go for it for a few runs. It is quite a way to chill out and have some fun while enjoying the day.
About doing the run to the jump, one tip I could give you that I got from Snowboard Addiction’s tutorials is: try not to do any speed checks before hitting the jump. Side slip to a point on the downhill from where you feel comfortable running pointing straight down and go for it! This way you don’t risk hitting the jump at a weird board angle and also not hitting at a very low speed, risking falling in between the bad and the lip of the ramp.
You can watch their tutorial on jumps here:
Another tip is: put pressure on your front foot to coast out of the lip, or else, if you stay back because of being worried about the speed, you’ll end up backflipping accidentally. Backflipping is cool when we want to do consciously it but pretty scary when it just happens out of nowhere.
On the topic of being scared, let’s talk about safety. One thing to keep in your head during the jump is to try to not land in your head. Doing crazy air movements is fun and the airbag is quite bouncy but heading head first over 40km/h can maybe cause some neck injuries. So be prepared to land in a way that you won’t break or strain anything.
So that was it for the day. To end this article, what about a nice video montage from the jumps?
Have you ever tried practicing jumps on an air bag? What was the craziest trick you tried to do? Share it on the comments below.
Cheers and have a good ride!
