A pitching machine is the fastest way to turn a parent’s arm into a spare arm. Instead of throwing four hundred warm-up pitches on a Saturday and feeling it in your shoulder on Sunday, you load a bucket, set a speed, and let a kid swing until the session is over. That is the whole … Read more
Buy a complete, pre-strung stick with a forgiving mid-depth mesh pocket, and spend in the mid-range rather than at either extreme. That is the short answer, and it is the answer most parents get from coaches. A complete stick arrives with the head, shaft, mesh and sidewall already installed, which means a first-year player can … Read more
Most people buying the best table tennis paddles for spin are actually shopping for the wrong part of the paddle. Spin lives in the rubber topsheet and the sponge directly underneath it. The blade underneath that is a multiplier, not a source, and a carbon blade can only spin the ball as hard as the … Read more
The best all mountain skis for intermediate skiers are not the ones with the most aggressive marketing copy, and the Blizzard Anomaly 88 is the ski I would put at the top of this list. It is the only model here that a manufacturer explicitly labels for intermediate skiers, it comes in eight size and … Read more
Choosing your first snowboard is the one purchase where getting it wrong costs more than money. A board that is too stiff, too cambered or the wrong length turns every green run into a fight, and plenty of people quit the sport before they ever get a turn down the hill. The best snowboards for … Read more
The Giro Ledge MIPS is the best ski helmet with MIPS overall, because it pairs real rotational impact protection with a self-adjusting fit system and a hard shell that shrugs off a season of rail hits and lift-lodge knocks. The OutdoorMaster ELK MIPS is the entry-level pick if you want certified MIPS protection without stepping … Read more
Quick answer: the MSR Lightning Ascent is our best pick for snowshoes in deep powder, because a 4.7 rating across 154 reviews, a 220 lb load rating and a 4.33 lb pair weight make it the rare technical shoe that also floats. The one criterion that decides powder performance is deck surface area, not crampon … Read more
Choosing your first pair of ice skates feels more complicated than it should be, because the word “beginner skate” covers three very different products. Figure skates have a long flat blade with a small toe pick at the front, hockey skates have a shorter curved blade built for speed and agility, and hybrid skates wrap … Read more
Ask ten skiers what to put their skis in before a flight and you will get ten answers, most of them borrowed from a forum thread someone read at 1am. Here is the short version: the best ski bags for air travel are the ones that protect the edges, hold your gear still in transit, … Read more
An avalanche beacon, also called an avalanche transceiver, is a radio receiver and transmitter you wear over your chest. Switched to search, it picks up the 457 kHz signal of a buried companion and guides you to them with a distance readout and a directional arrow. Every unit transmits and receives on that same internationally … Read more