Probably the most common injury in snowboarding, especially for those starting out are wrist injuries.  In my 21 years of riding, I've seen a plethora of injuries. Broken legs, rotator cuff separation, broken ankles, head injuries,and then some.  Wrist injuries top the list. 

I remember when I help to started the snowboard rentals some years ago at Stowe, Vt.  A family had come in to try snowboarding for their first time.  Both the son and daughter were excited to learn how to snowboard.  Unfortunately the two left with three broken wrists shortly after being on the hill.  Three broken wrists between the two of them!  Bum deal with those hospital bills.  All of the time and money spent for what would be an exciting weekend landed the two kids in pain and a not so great outlook on how much fun snowboarding could be.

Last year a friend of mine took his new girlfriend riding for the first time.  Lol..what a hottie.  Sure enough, she spent about a half hour on the hill before getting a concussion while also breaking her right wrist.  Haha she almost dumped my buddy cus it was his idea.

So I guess the moral of the story is to wear any type of protection available when you are starting out.  Who cares what you look like?  If you can wear some form of protection to get past the potential injury related falls, then by all means wear protection gear!  Helmets, butt pads, you name it!  I like to think of them as performance enhancers.

A particular glove that I've recommended to a lot of my carve buddies are called Flexmeter gloves- (sp.?) They are quite durable but what I like about them is that they have a built in wrist guard that was designed by a doctor. There was another similar glove out there that we tried but when purposely falling on them to see how they were, they kept jabbing on the wrist making them feel not so great.  The Flexmeter gloves were better designed in my opinion as you could feel the protection and not get that painful jabbing during a fall.  I guess you could just not fall to prevent any injury but they usually come when you least expect it.

I guess that I couldn't stress this enough. After all those years of riding, I know the fun and adventures that riding has brought me.  I've been wearing the Flexmeter gloves for some time along with a helmet and have never had an injury.

I used to have a pair of flexmeter gloves, they held up well and I'll agree that their wrist protection system is great. I'm cheap though and have been wearing RED wrist guards under my gloves for a few seasons now, might not be quite as good as flexmeter but they definitely help. I can tell you first hand that a broken tail bone hurts worse than a broken wrist, Azzpadz makes a good butt pad...I hardly ever wear it anymore because it feels kinda like a diaper, but it really is great for people who are still learning and falling on their asses a lot--it is really not that restrictive for the amount of tailbone protection it gives you.