Sapporo Teine & Niseko – Snowboard Trip – Week 1 (Part 1/3)
There are 3 videos to this trip, simply because we did so much and we recorded close to 80 videos on this trip. This trip is a very important trip as it had four big objectives.
– 1) One of which was to verify the Snowboard curriculum for indoor slope to mountain progression that I came up for Urban Ski after taking my CASI level 2 course in 2017 and clearing 600 hours teaching at Urban Ski (indoor slope) works for the students.
– 2) The second objective was to improve my video recording skills and streamlining the video production workflow.
– 3) To level up my snowboard and teaching skills.
– 4) Prepare for future trips by Snowsports Club of Singapore (Official)
Overall, we completed 12 full days of snowboarding, with 2 full rest days and 2 days for travelling. Pretty intensive even for me.
Alvin (the other guy in red) did about 18 hours of lessons at Urban Ski and managed to reach about level 3+/4 at Urban Ski, before this trip and he has never touched snow before. Do note that Alvin is definitely braver compared to the usual students that we get so his learning progression will be slightly faster.
On his first day at Sapporo Teine, he still went through the Snowboard progression by CASI Quick Ride system. Within about 2hrs of hard work he was able to link turns confidently. It goes to show that the indoor slope is extremely good for fundamental training (especially for students who cleared Urban Ski 3). The indoor slope can never replace the real snow, but I believe it is an excellent tool for training. I like to call it our Ski/Snowboard Gym.
We started off with Green slopes to gain his confidence in practising linking turns and slowly increase the steepness of the slope. By end of day 1, we started on Red slopes (intermediate) to work on his speed control. The second day we mostly practised on the Red slopes and also went into the black slopes as an introduction. We were very satisfied with the outcome of just the first two days. According to Sapporo Teine map, we went through all the slopes except for one black slope, so I it was extremely productive first two days.
For the 3rd day, we took it as a rest day as we headed to Niseko and got ready for more intensive snowboarding. I won’t talk so much now, so enjoy the videos as we mostly just snowboard every day!
I believe this video production is probably my best work to date on understanding video recording in the mountains. The best part now, I can do the video compilation on my phone rather than transferring it to my computer to combine it. Only thing I have to sacrifice is the quality of it, as I usually like to record in 4k (30fps) but the Quik app by GoPro, only does 1080p(60fps), which is an acceptable compromise.
All I want to say is just put in the hours, learn from the right people, grab a lesson if you want productive improvement and most importantly never stop learning!
Equipment:
GoPro Hero4 Black
Sony RX100M4
LG V20
Feiyu Tech G4S 3-Axis Gimbal
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