If you feel pretty confident on a skateboard and want to give snowboarding a try (or vice versa), the big question is whether or not your skills will transfer over between the two sports. As someone who started skateboarding long before I ever touched a snowboard, I quickly noticed that the two sports weren’t as easily transferrable as I thought.

Skateboarding and snowboarding are similar in the sense that your stance will be the same, along with the balance needed for both activities. The differences, however, come with tricks, riding abilities like turning and carving, and increased environmental hazards from snowboarding to skateboarding.

To better highlight the similarities and differences between snowboarding and skateboarding, let’s break it down.

How Are Skateboarding & Snowboarding Similar?

– Riding Stance

One of the first things that transfer between skateboarding and snowboarding is your riding stance. Regardless of which activity you currently do, you would have figured out which way feels most comfortable to stand on your board. For goofy riders, that means your right foot is forward, while regular riders have their left foot forward.

This is something that a lot of newbies to either sport struggle with figuring out. By having a bit of experience with one sport or the other, you’ll already be ahead of the curve by knowing your stance.

With that said, the way your feet are positioned on the board does vary slightly between a skateboard and a snowboard. On a skateboard, your feet are typically positioned horizontally across your board. On the other hand, a snowboard usually angles one or both of your feet outwards slightly. This is a subtle difference that isn’t super noticeable since your feet are still shoulder-width apart regardless of which board you’re riding.

– Balance

Next comes balance. Both skateboards and snowboards require a similar type of balance for riding and rail tricks like board slides. Simply standing on either board and going in a straight line feels relatively similar, despite a skateboard feeling more wobbly since it has trucks.

Another similarity comes between skating on a snowboarding and pushing on a skateboard. Although the style of pushing is different, it still requires you to balance with one foot while pushing with the other. For skateboarders, this movement comes as second nature while those without that muscle memory tend to struggle when learning to push on a snowboard.

– Grab Tricks

Although a snowboard is obviously attached to your feet while a skateboard is not, basic grab tricks between the two sports feel very similar. If you can indy grab on a snowboard, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to do it on a skateboard too once you get the basics down.

This is because the movement of bringing your legs up to your chest to do a grab is almost identical between the two sports. Although it’s easier to find jumps and side hits to do grabs on your snowboard, airing out of a quarter pipe on a skateboard is a similar feeling.

The only difference with grab tricks comes with shifties and tweaked tricks that put your board at an angle. On a skateboard, this is naturally much harder since the board isn’t attached to your feet. On a snowboard, tweaked grabs are more common and much easier to do.

How Are Skateboard & Snowboarding Different?

– Cost & Accessibility

The most glaring difference between skateboarding and snowboarding comes down to cost. Getting started on a snowboard can set you back well over $1000 when you consider jackets, snow pants, helmets, goggles, and other necessary items for the cold. Meanwhile, you can pick up an average skateboard for under $200.

Besides the actual gear you need, skateboarding is completely free while snowboarding requires a daily lift ticket or a seasons pass. These tickets can set you back anywhere between $50 and $200 for a single day, or over $1000 for a single season. On a skateboard, nobody is going to charge you to skate on your street, go to your local skatepark, or session a few street spots.

Finally, most of us don’t live at the base of a ski resort, and getting out to snowboard is a much bigger commitment than it is to skateboard. You can easily go skate for 30 minutes while snowboarding requires several hours of your day just for a lap or two.

– Difficulty To Learn

Although there at similarities between skateboarding and snowboarding, there’s no denying that skateboarding is harder to learn than snowboarding. When I was a snowboard instructor at my local resort, I would see people who never touched a snowboard be able to sideslip and ride in a straight line within a day or two of riding. At the skateboard camps, I would run during the summers, that was a different story.

Many people would struggle for several days just to be able to push and balance on a moving skateboard. It often took even more time just to build the confidence to ride down a steep bank or up a quarter pipe.

Now although these are the most basic skills to entry in either sport, progression on a snowboard typically happens much faster than on a skateboard. On a skateboard, you have to learn different foot placements and techniques for ollies, kickflips, and 180’s all while learning to jump and land on a moving object. Since a snowboard is attached to your feet, popping a small ollie or doing a hop 180 is significantly easier.

– Hazards

Where you ride a skateboard versus a snowboard are two drastically different environments. On a skateboard, you are in a familiar area in the sense there’s hard ground, the conditions never change, it’s warm, and it’s easy to start and stop whenever you want. On a snowboard, you are now in the mountains which are constantly changing. Snow conditions vary day to day, sometimes revealing new hazards that weren’t there previously. Things like exposed rocks, small trees and bushes, cliffs, and ice.

While snowboarding you need to be more aware of your surroundings and keep an eye on the snow reports for up-to-date info on the snow you’ll be riding. On a skateboard, you don’t have to think about anything besides if there’s a big rock on the ground that will eject you to the ground.

– Types Of Tricks

The final major difference between skateboarding and snowboarding is the type of tricks. Snowboarding is limited to what the board can do since it’s attached to your feet. That means all tricks on a snowboard primarily revolve around spins and grabs.

On a skateboard, there are more trick options since your board moves independently from you. Tricks like kickflips, shuvits, and treflips all rotate or flip the board without your body turning. Meanwhile, you can still do spins out of quarter pipes or bowls, but admittedly, it’s much harder than on a snowboard.

With that said, there are some similarities here when it comes to rails. Board slides on a snowboard and a skateboard are nearly identical, just with a slightly different feeling since snowboards are wider.

Finally, snowboarding tricks are usually on far bigger features and at higher speeds than skateboard tricks. It’s easier to keep momentum on a downhill slope while riding a snowboard, with features often being machine built (like jumps), and much longer rails than anything you’d find at a skatepark.

So if you are a snowboarder who is hoping to get on a skateboard (or vice versa), both activities are awesome supplements to one another depending on the season. Although they are different sports, there are some techniques that transfer over between the two, making it much easier for you to learn. By getting good at both activities, you have access to board sports all year round!

Happy Shredding!

Brendan 🙂