Learn How to Do a Heel Side Falling Leaf on a Snowboard

Learning how to snowboard should be a building process. Each exercise will eventually be pieced together to give you your ultimate goal of linking several C or S-turns in a row. You'll want to use a toe side falling leaf on steeper terrain and a heel side falling leaf on the less steep terrain. The reasoning behind this is because on steeper terrain your heel edge will be farther away from "catching" than it is on flatter terrain. You would much rather catch your toe edge than your heel edge because it's a lot less dangerous of a fall.

They call it a falling leaf because when you go down the hill it's supposed to look similar to a leaf falling out of a tree. When you're learning how to do the falling leaf you want to start out with your board traveling across the hill, never straight down the hill as this will give you a lot of speed. To achieve this, subtle movements are crucial.

To start the heel side falling leaf you're going to be facing down hill doing a heel slip. Continue doing a heel slip until you feel in control enough to change directions and gain a little speed. Once you feel confident enough you're going to softly and slowly push on your toe in the direction you want to go, then lift that same toe to side slip, or in other words, control your speed.

So if you want to go across the hill to your right, you're going to push down on your right toe slowly until your board starts going in that direction. Once it does and you have a small amount of speed you're going to lift your right toe and slowly come back to a heel slip. Be sure when your board starts sliding in the direction you want to go you don't keep pushing on your toe because you'll catch your toe edge and fall. When you come back to the heel slip, make sure your knees are bent and your weight is even on both feet.

A few other things you can do to help this process is to first make sure your weight is always more on your downhill foot, this is more important when you're learning or when you up the skill level of the terrain. Don't look down at your snowboard, one of the cardinal rules of snowboarding for beginners is you're going to go wherever you look. So also don't look at trees, rocks, cliffs, people in the run below you, or bears because you're more likely to run into them. It's a weird phenomena but it almost never fails.