Snowboarding Without Falls: A Guide by Yuriy Manuylov

Snowboarding is a notoriously challenging sport and pastime for beginners, causing many to give up after their first few tries. Fortunately, instructors like Yuriy Manuylov are working hard to train newcomers of all ages and conditions to love the sport as much as he does. 

As a snowboarder of 25 years and a professional teacher of 15, Manuylov has more than enough experience and expertise to go around, much of which he has included in his recent publication Snowboarding Without Falls (Well, Almost), a beginner’s guide to snowboarding. This guide takes an honest and realistic approach to snowboarding, helping newcomers realize that, although it will pay off, snowboarding requires an ample amount of patience, confidence, and practice. It also addresses the greatest challenge in snowboarding that beginners face: falling. 

Manuylov’s personal and professional journey also offers lessons in finding ways to innovate in a field where it can feel like everything has already been invented. 

Background and Early Athleticism 

Manuylov was born in 1968 in Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time. Before entering snowboarding, he competed in high jump, eventually joining the Ukrainian junior national team before pursuing an education in sports science at the University of Physical Culture and Sport to one day become a coach. He credits American legend Dick Fosbury as his inspiration, having won an Olympic gold medal in Mexico City the year Manuylov was born.  

He graduated with honors in 1992 but found himself unable to return to elite sports. Manuylov contemplated pursuing coaching or advancing his thesis into a PhD, but he came to terms with the fact that these options would not be able to support his family. 

By this time, the Soviet Union had collapsed, leading Manuylov to start a business in the candy trade. This business funded his first visit to the United States after he was inspired to find a way to make money like those in the U.S. do, without having to leave Ukraine.  

He recounts the time he met an American man at a train station, an experience that piqued his interest in visiting the United States. Manuylov helped him locate some of his relatives who had emigrated from Ukraine. The American left Manuylov $100 for expenses, $50 of which Manuylov sent back along with the information he found. To his surprise, he received a letter containing the $50 back and an invitation to the U.S. Growing up under poorer conditions, Manuylov was shocked to see this much money at once, not to mention in a letter that could have been stolen by the post office. His visit to the USA was a culture shock that sparked his interest in the American lifestyle. 

Shortly before starting his business, Manuylov experienced skiing for the first time in 1990 after he traded an old stereo for a pair of skis. He quickly fell in love with the sport, practicing it for ten years before picking up snowboarding in 2000 after witnessing snowboarders from the Baltics unsuccessfully attempt to snowboard at a local hill. He tried to follow suit, not realizing the difference between skiing and snowboarding, and failing as a result. It was at a slope in Poiana Brașov, Romania, that he tried snowboarding again, discovering his new love for the sport. He has since spent 25 years refining how snowboarding is taught. 

Evolution in Teaching and Methodology 

Once his business took off and required less of his attention, Manuylov became a co-owner of a small guesthouse at a ski resort. He helped promote it with a winter sports portal and website that quickly grew popular in Ukraine, leading him to organize a volunteer Ski Patrol founded by the resort’s vests and donations. With the support of the mountain’s management, the resort even went on to install a monument to its founder. 

Since the site lacked snowboard instructors and many people knew Manuylov, he received requests for snowboard lessons. He taught for free, planting the seeds for what would be the beginning of his 15-year-long professional instructing career. 

After leaving the resort for personal reasons, Manuylov participated in kitesurfing and snowboarding, leading him to meet his future wife while snowboarding on Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus mountains in 2007. She later invited him to help open a new ski resort about 100 miles from Moscow, where he could teach skiing and snowboarding. He agreed, staying to teach at the resort until its closure in 2022. 

Manuylov’s time at this resort was some of the best of his life, providing him with a stronger sense of purpose than he experienced managing his business. In the summer, he and his wife ran a kitesurfing school, the students of which then became the school’s winter students later in the year. Even at 40 years old, he continued to participate in competitions. He won the Russian kitesurf championship and was 2nd in Ukrainian snowboarding. It wasn’t just a sport, but a way to show students that anything was possible. It also provided them the chance to show their students how qualified they were to teach, a job that Manuylov felt brought him endless joy. 

It was during this time that Manuylov realized how often students failed to achieve the expected results, particularly in groups of more than four people. His studies and analysis of existing teaching methods showed him that these students, like many others learning how to ski or snowboard, wanted to learn how to stop and brake without falling, but they found it difficult to do so.  

As such, nearly 90% of Manuylov’s students did not return after the first lesson, even after he tried to modify many of the traditional methods like J-turns, S-turns, and the “falling leaf.” He found that students would leave after the lesson, attempt to ride on their own, fall repeatedly, and grow discouraged over time. 

Manuylov quickly recognized the need for a new methodology, one that emphasized how difficult learning how to ski, and snowboard is for beginners. This honesty, paired with a focus on the fundamentals, helped his students achieve realistic, incremental progress.  

He explains that, after one session, students would not be able to ride independently without falls. They avoided sliding drills as a result. He still aimed for students to ride with grace and skill, telling them directly that doing so would take more than one lesson. Manuylov also made certain to let students know they would not see turns or breaking in the first lesson. Lastly, he made a promise of satisfaction, telling them that if they did not like the lesson, they would not need to pay. 

The new approach helped many students find more confidence in their abilities, leading to a return rate of 40–50%. Now taking on more demand than he could handle, Manuylov trained some of his students to become instructors themselves, leading to the creation of a team of riders who went on to win several regional competitions. One of his students became a part of the Russian snowboardcross team. Some of his trainees continue to teach today, utilizing his specific approach to snowboarding in Ukraine, Russia, Poland, and Georgia. 

Transitioning to American Standards 

Manuylov eventually came to work as a snowboard instructor at a resort in Southern California after receiving an invitation from old business partners to change locations.  

He would soon come to find that, although the snowboards, students, and snow were the same, systems differed wildly between the U.S. and Ukraine/Russia. The first quirks he noticed came with pay and methodology; back home, he remembers, he only received a percentage of whatever students paid the cashier. Meanwhile, in the U.S., he was paid a full day’s wages even if he only taught one lesson. 

He also noticed the American instructors employed many of the classical drills and exercises he had done away with in 2010. In an effort to explain why these methods sometimes bordered on harmful, Manuylov wrote letters to the Association and the Universities of Utah and Colorado College, an effort he maintains today with the hopes that resorts and associations will adopt more useful teaching methods. He has compared the difficulty and apparent futility of this task to Giordano Bruno trying to publish an article in a church bulletin to claim the Earth was round. 

Although his colleagues welcomed him warmly, even providing his child with free gear and accepting his broken English, Manuylov felt some distance between himself and the American standards that dominated snowboarding instruction. Insurance largely depends on a strict adherence to these standards, not to mention that they are easy for less experienced instructors to adopt. Despite their mass use, Manuylov hopes to convince various associations and research boards to conduct comparative field tests of the classic methods versus his own. By doing so, he believes he could implement safer methods that could save insurance companies on claims, improving the likelihood that resorts would adopt his methodology. 

Over time, Manuylov has recognized the seemingly insurmountable task he has placed in front of himself. He observed that resorts and associations tend to be highly conservative and have strong inertia to embrace any changes. This realization moved Manuylov to take a new course of action. 

Snowboarding Without Falls: A Legacy 

Manuylov’s latest mission is a simple one: avoid losing at least half of those (up to 90%) of beginners who quit after their first day due to falls and low results. He notes that even traditionalists recognize how challenging the status quo of snowboarding education is, renaming drills like the “falling leaf” to “floating” to avoid their negative connotations. Manuylov sees this approach as a kind of patch job, ignoring the underlying issue that is falling. Beginners remain an exceptionally vulnerable population of snowboarders, which is why Manuylov now aims to reach them in a different way. 

Many resorts and associations still maintain standard methods of snowboard instruction, even after Manuylov’s efforts to help them see why his methods offer a safer alternative. In an effort to adapt to these circumstances, Manuylov wrote his book Snowboarding Without Falls (Well, Almost) to help teach intermediate snowboarders how to educate their less experienced friends or partners. 

Each exercise in the book includes clear instructions on how to perform it, common mistakes to avoid, checkpoints for progress, and specific goals to achieve. These exercises are purpose-made to help users develop necessary skills while largely avoiding sliding, leading to fewer falls. The gradual combination of these skills helps students avoid most crashes in the long term, leading to less discouragement and frustration. 

Manuylov does not claim that his specific approach to teaching is the best; rather, he firmly believes that any method requires continual evolution and improvement through rigorous testing and competition. This philosophy guides his continued teaching style, leading him to refine the descriptions of his exercises over time.  

He also plans to add new demonstration videos in the future that users can access via QR codes. Some of these videos showcase previous successes, such as a clip showing an 8-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl dancing together on snowboards. Another video has Manuylov waltzing with a beginner after her first lesson. 

Even the cover of Snowboarding Without Falls emphasizes this approachability. Instead of including an image of a snowboarder in mid-turn like similar books do, Manuylov features Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Both of these images stand as visualizations of exercises in the book; with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, for example, students can see how they are meant to lean without falling over. 

Forming an Emotional Bond 

Manuylov’s ultimate goal with his book is to help learners form the same emotional bond to snowboarding that he has over the course of his career. He offers a message of perseverance: even though he and thousands of others failed on their first attempt, many have gone on to love the sport and ride safely, comfortably, and beautifully enough to have others celebrate their success. 

He encourages students to build their education on patience and realistic goals. These guidelines have helped Manuylov teach a wide variety of students, ranging from a 65-year-old accountant to a 22-year-old young man with cerebral palsy. His methods have helped learners avoid the bulk of the pain and endless wipeouts that often accompany standard snowboarding methods. 

Manuylov hopes to help others see snowboarding as he does: a magical world where riders can become stronger, healthier, and better.