Take it to the Next Level
Take Your Snowboarding Skills to the Next Level with Andrew Boey's Professional Coaching & Discover Your Love for Snowboarding with Andrew Boey's Support and Encouragement.
backstory
My Snowboard and Ski Journey
Background (1978-2009):
My parents introduced skiing to me when I was 2 years old and I had the privilege of spending most of my December holidays overseas in winter weather. During my early days, we would travel to Canada, Switzerland and Austria to ski. I remember most of my Ski training was at St. Moritz, Switzerland in Kindergarten years and Bag Hofgastein, Austria for primary school years.
It was the most exciting thing to look forward to every year to spend time with the family and ski together. I reached a stage where I could go down 90% of the slopes on the mountain, all thanks to the lessons and practice I had over the years. As I grew up, I was in boarding school in Cambridge, UK for my O’s and A’s Level exams, so Europe was the easiest to go. In 1994, it was my last trip before I had to enter National Service, so I decided to try Snowboarding for the first time. Thanks to the instructor, I managed to grasp the basics within an hour and was snowboarding down the beginner slopes (with a lot of falls). Here is an old photo of myself and my sister’s boyfriend then. Now that I looked back, it was a hard boot snowboarding for racing, unlike what we use now for snowboarding!
After that life got in the way, like NS and University. In fact I choose my University because of winter too. I was accepted into Berkeley, University of Michigan and Washington State for Pre-Med. Since my father, Dr Boey Hong Khim, was a doctor and Godfather of the MRI (he was the one that brought in the first machine and introduced it to Singapore in the 1980s), medical field was the automatic choice.
I eventually choose University of Michigan, but decided to major in Economics. During my time at Michigan, we would drive up to the nearby slopes to ski and snowboard and we did do one trip to Blue Mountain in Canada.
Getting back into Snowboarding (2011 to 2015)
After going through the early days of life, working as an Investment Banker, Process Improvement Consultant, Entrepreneur, getting married and becoming a father, we finally set aside time to go on a family snow trip after many years. Our choice was Niseko in 2011, way before it was international well know now. The trip was so amazing that we were hooked to come back to Japan. No jet-lag, Onsen in the morning and evening, Ski-in ski out, excellent food, Japanese exceptional service and snow that is so light and fluffy. This trip has become one of the key highlights for my life. It was my own family first trip to the snow. Jean was pregnant with Alvina, Naomi, Dad and Mun all went together. Sadly it was also my Mum’s last trip as she passed away the following year in 2012, but as least we did have a trip together to have that amazing memory. There is also one thing that Naomi said that has motivated me, “‘why does Daddy keep falling down on his snowboard?”…..haha
For the next few years, I would bring the family on our yearly holiday and also take a solo trip to slowly enjoy and improve my snowboarding skills. Thanks to all these trips and the community, I have met so many friends and acquaintances throughout this journey which I am ever so grateful.
Starting my Ski/Snowboard Coaching Journey (2015-2018)
In 2015, i was approached by a fellow snowboarding friend who was starting a new business to provide an infinite ski slope in Singapore. I was super excited that we could have training facilities in Singapore. As I have been running a Digital Marketing and Web Development Company, Oroshin Pte Ltd for the last 15yrs, I helped them get a government grant for their marketing as well as be in the position to learn and become an instructor. I took this chance to go get my CASI level 1 at Hakuba and if there is one thing i learnt from my entrepreneurship journey, you only become good if you have completed at least 1000hrs in the field that you are in. So with that mindset in place, I took the opportunity to put in the hours shadowing, teaching, receiving feedback from the instructors that was hired.
At the same time I was training myself about 1-2hrs per day to keep improving my muscle control. I had to go through a lot of creative brainstorming because there wasn’t any curriculum out there specifically for the indoor ski slope. This is when I spent a lot time researching and studying all the various reference guide from BASI, CASI and NZSIA on their different approach to teaching. I then created and tested my ideas and theories with guidance from my coach mentor, David Murrie, who’s is a semi-retired Coach Educator of the highest level. We tried out and tested 2 versions of the curriculum with a sample size of about 300+ students and it was producing better results and stronger foundation skills compared to when we started.
All thanks to the curriculum change, the newer batch of students had a faster learning progression because their foundation was very strong and that helped with learning higher level skills faster and easier. The earlier batch had slower learning progression because they had weaker foundation. Hence as an instructor it is important not to rush through the progression but to ensure they have enough practice and mileage on learning the foundation skills as it will translate to better understanding and learning of higher level skills later on in their journey of improvement.
Within the year, I pushed myself everyday for 5-8hrs working on improving all aspects of my skills that included, teaching, riding, coaching and training new instructors. All this was to prepare myself for my CASI 2 exam. The owners of UrbanSki were super nice and said that they would sponsor my exam at Hakuba, Japan. I went for the exam and considering that it was my first time riding so many difficult slopes that was out of my comfort zone, I managed to pass my technical riding, but unfortunately did not pass my teaching part as my demonstrations was not up to standard. Looking back now, I’m very glad of the opportunity to retake the exam again. Once I returned back to Singapore armed with even more knowledge, I further fine tune the curriculum again and tested it out with my new students. Thanks to this revision, all my new students that went through at least 8 lessons or more could literally be snowboarding down a beginner slope confidently on day 1 on the mountain if it is their first trip. They would still need to go through the usual progression on the mountain, but because they already have the knowledge, they will progress very fast. I had one student who was linking turns within 2hrs on his first time on the mountain. You can check out the trip video we did when we went to Niseko below: