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Olympic Hopeless: Jake and Mimi try to snowboard like the pros

Snowboarding isn’t as easy as Olympians make it seem. Jake and Mimi visited the Summit at Snoqualmie to get a few pointers about the popular Olympic sport.

SEATTLE — Snowboarding is back once at the Winter Olympics. While Olympians make snowboarding look easy, it does take a bit of practice to get the hang of it.

To learn how to snowboard, we headed up to Summit at Snoqualmie and met up with Bridget Saito. She's a snowboard instructor who has been snowboarding since she was 16.

Saito’s love for the sport and teaching others is infectious.

“Being able to use this tool that takes you to so many different places and different opportunities," said Saito.

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She taught us how to shift our weight from our ankles to our toes, which changes the direction of the board. It took us a while to get comfortable with the weight change.

Saito said the biggest tip for a beginner is to make sure “your ankles and knees are flexed. Making sure you can absorb whatever comes underneath your feet."

We only crashed a few times, and at the end of the lesson, we even made it onto the "magic carpet" for a slightly steeper hill. Saito said most beginners don't advance to that in the first lesson. We won't chalk it up to our skills, but instead, we give all the credit to a great instructor.

Finally, we ended our lesson by learning how to Ollie, the most basic trick in snowboarding, where you jump the board off the ground.

Watch the video above to see how we did, or click here to learn more about big Air snowboarding and freestyle skiing at the Winter Olympics.

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