Whether you're looking to go out and ride some park, make short turns on the steeps, or do some carving, these exercises will get you ready for just that.

Let's begin with this one.

You simply pop an ollie off your edge whilst traversing across the slope, make a turn, and then do the same thing back across the slope on your opposite edge.

This drill covers so much good stuff.

To be able to make the ollie, you'll need to have carving a thin line across the slope, and this is essential as it gives you a solid platform to jump off.

If you're skidding, you're not going to be able to pop the ollie very easily at all.

To achieve that thin line, you'll need good posture with your weight stacked over the edge of the board, and you need to make sure you're leaning into the slope just enough so that your board starts gripping.

To ollie, shift your weight longitudinally towards the tail of your board, whilst at the same time lifting up your front foot.

This bends your board like a banana, and then as you jump off your back foot, the board snaps back into shape.

This is known as pop, and it is that pop that enables you to spring up into the air.

As you land, flex down low and use your lower body joints to absorb the impact before making a turn, then doing it once more back across the slope in the opposite direction.

This is an amazing exercise to get you properly warmed up.

It works through a lot of your range of movements, and it tests your balance, which really readies your brain into a more plastic state that is then more able to learn new skills.

And it teaches you to find a clean line at the end of your turn, which as I mentioned, is necessary to perform the ollie across the slope well, but it is also something you should be looking to do at the end of every turn you make, particularly if you want to get into carving.

If you do this, you'll be better able to make an early edge change, which is essential to making smooth S-shaped turns, which should be your goal if you want to use your turn shape to control your speed and start snowboarding without just skidding all the time.

Damn, did I just radically improve your riding with one drill?

Well, let's see what I can do with the next one.

This one is going to work best on a nice, flat, mellow slope, and it works on the fundamentals of a good basic posture, where you have your hips stacked vertically over your edge, which sends all your weight down over your edge, giving you grip, and allowing you to carve these thin, clean lines in the snow.

All I'm doing is passing my hips across the width of my board to change edge, whilst also making a very slight lateral movement, which just means I'm inclining my whole body onto the inside of the turn just a little bit there.

When you ride a bike, you can lean into the turn, and well, we do the same thing on a snowboard.

By doing this drill on a flatter, mellow slope, it teaches you how to make open turns.

This just means I'm not coming right around across the slope, as I was doing in the previous drill, and that means I won't slow down so much because it keeps my board pointing down the hill.

Most importantly, it's going to show you that by simply crossing your center of mass over the board, you can smoothly roll the board from one edge to the other without creating any skid, which is a vital tool if you want to start carving clean lines across the slope.

Most snowboarders fail to make this movement at the edge change.

If you fail to pass your center of mass over the board, you'll most likely be counter-rotating to change edge, which always leads to skidding, and no one wants that unless we're doing the next exercise, that is.

Here we embrace counter-rotation at the edge change because, well, no movement is a bad movement.

Not only is this a great balance and coordination exercise, but whilst counter-rotation at the edge change might be the enemy of smooth carve turns, it is essential in many freestyle tricks.

You want to shift most of your weight over your front foot, and the goal is to pivot around that front foot.

You do this by twisting your upper body against your lower body.

To help, you can visualize drawing your back hand towards your front knee whilst on the toe side, and then your front hand to the back knee as you spin the board around onto your heel edge.

Upper and lower body twisting against each other to pull the board around.

You might hear a few cracks in your spine as you'll be pretty much rotating a full 180 from your feet up to your shoulders at times during this drill.

Another simple warm-up drill that I bet will put you out of your comfort zone.

Give it a go.

Now, I'm going to get a little bit more with you on this next one.

This is one of my all-time favorite drills, and for good reason.

That's right.

It's not the first time that I've shown this drill, and it won't be the last.

You want complete control of your board to be able to make quick edge changes without losing grip, to navigate through tight spots or around bumps?

Well, then you need to learn to steer the board with each leg independently and do what I refer to as knee steering.

Whilst this drill looks simple, and let's be honest, a little bit basic, it really isolates those crucial knee steering movements that will take your riding to a whole new level.

We're going to go from a skid to a skid, or to start dipping more into some snowboarding structure language, a heel edge sideslip to a toe edge sideslip.

If you simply cross your hips and your center of mass over the board, as we did in drill number two, from this sideslip, then you're going to catch an edge and eat some snow.

We need to pass your front knee and hip over the top of front foot first.

This acts like a lever over the top of your board, which rolls your foot and rolls the board from one edge to another.

By only going in first with the front leg, you torsionally twist the board, releasing pressure on the edge under the front of the board, but keeping it at the back, which creates a pivot point and allows the board to rotate on the spot and start pointing down the slope.

At this point, the back leg, the back knee and hip, then pass over the top of the board, which allows you to complete the edge change and pull the board around across the slope into another sideslip, into another skid.

The end posture you're in for the sideslip is the same as it was in drill number two, but here we are crossing over the top of the board one leg at a time.

Imagine your body is divided down the middle on either side of your jacket zipper.

Front knee and hip goes first, back knee and hip follows.

This pedals your feet over the board from one edge to in this next exercise.

Here we have another drill that's good to do on a mellow slope.

It is in fact the exact same movement pattern that we just practiced, albeit greatly sped up, which leads to a very different look and turn.

Rather than starting in a skid, I begin in a traverse across the slope.

Now I'm really looking to pull my knees over the board, one, two, one, two.

In this drill, as soon as one knee is across the board and one foot has rolled the board from edge to edge, the other is already moving.

I'm constantly working my knees back and forth over the top of the board.

I'm keeping my body somewhat upright and not leaning into the turns, which keeps my center of mass pretty still at the center of each turn.

You should have a sensation that you're pulling the board around you.

There's not nearly as much skid as what we're having in the previous exercise, but there's still an element of skidding to get the board around this quickly.

You can see my tracks in the snow resemble that of a crescent moon, pinched at the top and the bottom where I change edge, but wider through the middle as the board rotates throughout the turn.

This drill is a great exercise to help you check that you're really able to use your lower body to pull the board from one edge to another and through the turn.

In this next drill, I'm doing nose rolls across the slope.

Turn your board up into the slope.

As you do, drive the nose of the board down into the snow.

It's like the board stops and you should almost feel like you've crashed into something.

This is going to send your weight forward over the nose of the board.

I want you to lean into that movement.

Push up off your back foot, rotate your shoulders around in the same direction.

This will help you pivot around the nose of the board in a 180.

The nose really does almost come to a stop.

Everything is going to rotate around that point.

You can do this drill in both regular and switch, and also in frontside and backside directions, giving you four different nose rolls in total.

When you're on your heels, that sets you up for a frontside nose roll.

When you're on your toes, you are set up to do a backside nose roll.

You'll notice how this is basically two different drills.

I either practice the frontside nose rolls across the slope in both regular and switch, and then link them together with a toe-to-heelside turn, or I practice the backside nose rolls in both directions, now linked by a heel-to-toeside turn.

Because of this, you get to mirror a regular turn at one side of the slope with a switch turn at the other, which means that by doing this drill, you'll really get to work on your switch riding too.

For this next exercise, I want you to push your knees out as wide as you can so that you feel the sides of both your front and your back leg pressing into the outside of your boots.

This is a simple one to help you center your weight equally between both feet.

The stance is a bit exaggerated from how you really need to ride, but if you're somebody who tends to lean too much weight over the back foot, then simply pushing both knees out as wide as you can will keep both knees equally bent, and therefore keep your upper body perpendicular to the board at all times.

Therefore, have you stacked pretty well over the top of your board.

I've made a whole video dedicated to correct weight and body alignment over the top of your board that I'll link down below, as well as some other helpful videos for you to check out.

Now, let's get on to this final fun drill. 360s across the slope.

Here, as I come around onto my heels, I have the frontside 360, and then as I come around onto my toes, I've got the backside 360.

You can take the momentum from the turn straight into that 360.

You can wind up your shoulders to help spin the board around, or you can push out your back foot to start getting the board rotating.

Honestly, just try and spin the 360.

It's not actually that difficult, and I don't want to over-explain it.

You just need to feel them out.

If you can ride a bit of switch, then you'll probably be pretty close to doing these already.

That said, if you do want me to break it down in even more detail, then I've got a video on how to ride switch that also goes over how to make these reverts or how to make these watch.

Obviously, being able to do these is going to be a good start for learning some basic ground tricks, but again, this is also actually a really good drill for centering your weight between your feet.

Plus, it's good fun.

Do a spin, make yourself feel cool.

Trust me, you're going to have way more fun doing this than my side-slip to side-slip knee steering drill.

Thank you, as always, for sticking around right until the end.

That really helps me out.

I hope you've been having a great winter, and if you're still riding, well, lucky you.

If not, don't get the summer, and it won't be long until the next one comes rolling around.

Cool.