How seriously do you take your snowboarding?

Hello,
I’m Jake, and i’m a snowboarding instructor from Ontario, Canada.  I just spent a winter out west in Whistler, BC, teaching and riding every day.  It’s a pretty sweet way to spend your time.  i met a lot of people, instructors and people who ride on their days off alike, and everyone seems to have slightly different views as to what snowboarding means to them.  of course, the underlying theme is that everyone shares a passion for this “sport”, but some people tend to take it more seriously than others.  i have friends who spend hours discussing the finer points of mogul riding, down unweighted turns, independant leg movement and the like, while i have other friends who talk about how sick their day in the park was, or how their new jacket is so sick cause no one has it yet… I’m not saying one view is better than the other, or that it is wrong to take something as simple as snowboarding and disect it into fashion and technical feedback, i’m just curious…
how seriously do you take your snowboarding?
do you get into arguments about how you should tweak your front boards, or how you should be steering your board with your back leg?  or do you go ride every day and not think about any of that stuff?
again, i’m not saying one way is better than the other, i just want to know how other people view snowboarding.

Asking the question about how serious others are is so subjective.
I may say I’m serious but only go 5 days a year, and wish I could go more, but I stare at my equipment in my bedroom all day.
I could say I’m serious and I ride 70 days a season but couldnt tell you a bit of knowledge about a down unweighted or up unweighted turns, or the difference between centripetal and centrifugal forces and how they apply to my turns.
I could say I’,m serious about snowboarding and I could care less about that stuff but straightlining it to the bottom really gets me stoked!

There is ‘no correct way’.
I dont want to twist your words, I know we are saying the same thing. and yes there is no one way better than another.

I miss the days of being in college and just living for the weekend so I can get to the mountain and ride. I would show up when the mountain opened and leave when it closed Sat and Sun both. But I’m older now and other things enter in to my life that determine how much time I can spend with snowboarding.
I view snowboarding as something I feel very fortunate to be a part of.
I’ve always been a snowboard instructor for almost as long as I have been snowboarding. This has allowed me to spend so much more time on snow than ever imagined and progress beyond ever imagined, and travel to places I could have only dreamed of, and it has been tone of fun, and if I had to pay what I should of payed to do all that stuff as a consumer from the general public? I wouldnt have been able to do it.

right on!
i’m worried this year that going to university will impact my riding.  i had a 125 + day season this year, and i know i won’t be getting anywhere near that many days on snow this coming season.  but i also recognize how fortunate i am to have had that opportunity.  coming back to “real life”  really isn’t that fun though…
so i guess i take snowboarding pretty seriously.  and of course it’s a subjective question, jubjective answers are always the best ones to read!

Super cool that you got 125 days in, you’re one of very few…

Know that you’ve had great opportunities. having the option of going to college is also an opportunity, make the best of it.
Thik ahead for your life and know that college is only a few years, get that done and get a decent job so that you may snowboard more in your future.

I`m not too serious abOUT anything really…

Life is too short…Seriously

I take snowboarding very seriously, but not because I want to be pro or anything… I take it seriously because it’s the funnest thing in the world. I like having serious fun. If snowboarding stop being fun, in my opinion you’re talking it too seriously (unless you’re pro and need it to put food on the table).

i think it differs during the year for me….during the summer i dont think about snowboarding at all…just want to hit the beach, so you could say i dont take snowboarding that seriously
but when winter rolls around its the opposite and snowboarding is the only thing on my mind (well not the only thing) and yeah i guess you could say i take snowboarding seriously in winter

so yeah for me it differs seasonally

even if you were a pro, taking snowboarding too seriously could be an issue.  you can ususally tell who’s just riding for money, they’re the ones who look like they’re not having any fun.
although i don’t really know how you could not have fun snowboarding.  while i was at whistler, a friend of mine came out to visit who hadn’t snowboarded for a couple of years.  i took him through the beginner park and some easy tree runs, and he was over the moon.  watching him learn butters was the funniest thing, and it was made even funnier by the attitude he had.  dressed in a massive hunting hat and a blue one-piece ski suit he found in his closet, as well as a pair of 90’s era oakleys he found in the village, he looked right out of place in the fashion-conscious resort.  but i’ve rarely seen someone smile that often.  it was one of the best weeks i had out there all winter

One element about snowboarding that make it so fun is that it’‘s a seasonal sport, very few of us can just go out on any day and decide to snowboard or not. We only have the option of doing it a few months of the year. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and this is true for our beloved snowboarding.

Snowboarding is and always has been an addiction for me. A physical dependence on riding to the extent that all the common symptoms exist; depression when i can’t ride, physical shaking when im riding up the lift cause im so excited, and constantly thinking about when im going to be able to ride again when my day is done. I need to snowboard, I need to feed my addiction!

That’s probably why when it turns to summer, i leave for new zealand for their winter and then come back to whistler for canadian winters… I just can’t get enough!

I’ve taken Snowboarding very seriously since I started 3years ago. Because I live in Auckland in NZ, its often hard to get out on the snow that often especially due to school etc, so when I do end up going to the resorts I take it as a treat, its mega fun. I ride at snowplanet ALOT though, but the feeling of fresh powder is never there.