Snowboard Instructing – Daniels by Design

Snowboarding by design

When, Were, How, Why?!

Well I can tell you all when I got a fascination for snowboarding ‘Neil Daniels 1996’

it began at College when a few of us would wander round town at lunchtime and there was a sports/outdoor shop that had the latest mountain bikes. In the back of the shop there was a selection of snowboards and you could pick up catalogues of all the latest brands and models. From this point that spark of interest took some time for me to do something about. However after unsucessfully trying to get people interested at University I found myself at Xscape a few years ago for my first lesson.

The intial lessons were spent building up the balance, confidence and understanding of how the board worked, when pressure was applied in different places. With a lot of falling and a lot of laughing at myself I became hooked very quickly as there was something about been able to slide down a hill on a plank of wood an get it to do what I wanted.

After completing all the lessons offered by Sno!zone and appreciating all the help the instructors gave me, I began riding at Castleford as much as possible, riding most weekends to get a few hours on the slopes. Slowly but surely over 18 months, I improved and got to know a few people that worked at Sno!Zone, who suggested I should look at an instructor course, to improve my riding.

This sounded brilliant and over the following summer I went for it and by the following January had completed both the teaching and riding assessments for the BASI level 1 snowboard instructor qualification.

Having continued riding and having several holidays away, the bug for snowboarding was firmly fixed and through the photography pages you can see some of the places I’ve visited while snowboarding. Having worked in construction for some years, I was made redundunt in 2010 and took the opportunity to work for Sno!Zone as a snowboard instructor for 2 years teaching many people to enjoy the snow as much as me!

Also this has not stopped me extending my qualifications and returned from Bulgaria in March 2014 after a gap course that consisted of 10 weeks riding, 8 weeks of which was training. 2 or 3 mornings a week, riding every other day of the week, with a 10 day assessment at the end of it, for the BASI level 2 Snowboard instructor qualification.

Having had some of the best conditions to ride for many years with fresh powder every few weeks, making the pistes good to ride, varied terrian, great tree runs with natural hits and awesome bluebird days and not to mention some great tution from a few guys at Snowboard coach. It turns out snowboarding, its not bad!