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4 Free Snowboard Flatground Trick Tip Tutorials

By Jedidiah Tan | Follow Him on Twitter

Sorry for the missing blog yesterday, but I’ve been up for 24 hours trying to fix a website bug that stopped me uploading videos. Thankfully it’s all fixed now and it means I can finally re-open our Snowboard Trick Secrets members area to new members 🙂

So firstly…

Want 4 Free Snowboard Butter/Flatground Trick Tip Tutorials?

Butter Trick Tip Lesson Example

As part of re-opening our members area, I’m giving away an entire set of snowboard butter & flatground trick tip tutorial videos. There’s over 30 minutes of instruction breaking down these 4 tricks:

  1. Nosepresses and tailpresses
  2. Ollies and nollies
  3. Sliding 180/360 presses
  4. Butter ollie/nollie 180 and 270 spins

I break down every trick step-by-step and the great thing about flatground tricks is anyone can learn them, even if you’re new to freestyle.

If you want these free trick tips, check em out here.

Oh and there are more snowboard lessons and trick tips…

As well as the butter trick tip tutorials, I’ll also be sending out free tutorials on:

  • The 5 Rookie Mistakes Every Freestyle Snowboarder Makes (and how to avoid them)
  • How To Pick The Perfect Snowboard Freestyle Board Setup

Oh and of course you also get to join our Snowboard Trick Secrets members area where we have a library of snowboard tutorial videos covering a large variety of snowboard topics from how to hit different park jumps to injury avoidance and spinning and rail trick tip videos.

So basically if you want a ton of snowboard trick tip tutorials and lessons, check out our Snowboard Trick Secrets training here.

Enjoy 🙂

– Jed

ps – For those inside the members area already, look out for an entire re-design of the members area coming next week, as well as more spin trick tip tutorials coming this weekend.

How To Land Backside 180 On A Snowboard

By Jedidiah Tan | Follow Him on Twitter

Today’s question:

I’m having problems with landing backside 180s. I over-rotate on landing and revert into a 360 on the ground. How do I fix this?

So the landing basically comes down to these things:

1) You have to land ‘blind’

With any backside 180, you need to look back uphill and between your feet as you land. Don’t look downhill for the landing or you will end up over-rotating into a backside 360.

By looking back uphill you force your upper body to stop rotating, which stops your lower body from rotating because your lower body follows your upper body when you spin.

2) Switch riding is crucial

You need to be very comfortable with switch riding if you want to do freestyle and in particular any trick which has a switch landing, such as a backside 180.

This means you should be doing some switch riding every day you ride on the hill, even if it’s just a few runs at the end of the day. You have to get your switch riding up to a solid level otherwise you’ll never be comfortable with landing switch and will end up reverting a lot.

3) Ride away switch for 5-10 seconds

One thing I see a lot is people who land a backside 180 (or other switch landing) and immediately after landing they consider the trick over and hop back to regular.

Don’t do this. You want to ride away switch and keep riding switch for a little bit after landing (usually 5 seconds is a good rough number).

This forces you to get comfortable with not just landing switch, but riding away switch, which is what will fight that feeling of needing to revert to regular after you land switch.

Hope that answers your question!

– Jed

ps – In other news, our snowboard trick secrets program is opening up again tomorrow, if you’re interested in getting some free trick tips and accessing our library of snowboard tutorial videos, make sure you’re on our waiting list here so you don’t miss out.

How To Get Confident With Snowboard Backflips

By Jedidiah Tan | Follow Him on Twitter

Today’s reader question:

How do I get the confidence to do backflips on a snowboard?

Basically confidence with backflips comes down to this:

1) Build aerial awareness (trampolines)

Backflips are actually a relatively easy trick and I’d go as far as saying they’re about as hard as a 360. However, they take more balls and most people aren’t used to rotating upside down.

So to build up your flip rotational awareness you need to get comfortable with flipping upside down while learning basic backflips, and the best place to do both of those is on a trampoline with the aid of foam pits/instructors/friends to assist you.

Make sure if you do it without a foam pit you have someone assisting you to make sure you don’t land on your head, but trampolines are by far the best way to learn and build up flip rotational awareness.

2) Powder jump

Once you’re comfortable doing backflips on a trampoline, you need to take it to snow and the best place to do that is off a powder jump where the consequences are minimal because there’s still a decent chance you’ll land on your head.

The backflip movement will still be a little different on snow vs. on a trampoline without a board, so you need to get used to doing it with a board strapped into your feet by hucking yourself off a powder jump.

If you need a guide to building a powder jump, I have one here: How To Build A Snowboard Powder Jump

Once you’re comfortable with both trampolines and powder jumps, then you’re ready to do it off a park jump or mountain side hit.

So basically it’s just about building up your confidence and flip aerial awareness as safely as possible so that by the time you try it on a park jump, you already have the technique mastered 🙂

Hope that helps!

– Jed

When Is The Right Time To Replace Your Snowboard Gear?

By Jedidiah Tan | Follow Him on Twitter

Today’s reader question:

When is the right time to replace my gear?

I’ve answered this before, but it seems to come up a lot, especially right now since it’s just before the snowboard season starts, so here’s my answer:

So generally, this is when I recommend you replace your snowboard gear:

1) Replace gear when it’s broken/worn out

If your gear is broken or worn out, then go ahead and replace it. That’s a pretty easy one and I don’t think anyone will argue that you shouldn’t replace broken gear.

Don’t fall for the trap of thinking you have to buy a new board every year, you don’t. My favourite park snowboard is still the K2 Jibpan from many years ago and I’d still be riding it today if I didn’t break it.

Changing your gear too often can actually be a negative for your snowboarding because you’ll be constantly adapting to the different feel of each piece of equipment and having to change up your muscle memory a little.

eg – It takes me 1-2 weeks to really get used to a new snowboard before I’m able to ride it confidently and do most of my regular tricks again.

2) Replace gear for more specialized riding

Typically most riders start out with some sort of all-mountain board and that works as your all mountain slayer while you go through the early to intermediate stages of snowboarding.

However, once you get more advanced, you’ll start to have a better idea of what areas you prefer, what type of riding you like to do and what type of gear you like (eg – stiff boots or softer boots).

That’s a great time to look at new gear because you’ll know exactly what you want and you’ll be able to find gear that’s exactly suited for your needs while still keeping your all-mountain board as your backup/resort slayer.

Outside of these 2 areas, most people are just buying gear because they can, which is fine if they’re happy to spend their money, but you don’t really need to replace your snowboard gear all that often.

For reference, here’s how long some of my gear typically lasts and outside of that I don’t replace my gear (keep in mind I ride up to 200+ days a year):

  • Outerwear – 2-3 seasons
  • Boots – 1 season
  • Board – 1-2 seasons, but if I get a few unlucky crashes I might go through a few snowboards in one season
  • Bindings – practically forever if you replace the straps

Outside of that I do buy new gear once in awhile like everyone else when I want to check out some new tech that looks promising (eg – canted bindings rock), but those are luxury purchases and I obviously don’t *need* the new gear.

Hope that answers your question!

– Jed

How To Progress Your Snowboard Freestyle To Actually See Results

By Jedidiah Tan | Follow Him on Twitter

Today’s reader question:

How should I progress my snowboard jumping & jibbing? What’s the right order?

Basically when it comes to progressing your snowboarding here’s what I recommend and teach (it’s the same thing I teach inside our Snowboard Trick Secrets program, except I go more in depth inside our training):

1) Aim 1 step up

With tricks you always want to aim to move one step up from where you are, so that means if you’ve mastered small jumps, try a slightly bigger jump, or if you’ve mastered 180s, try a 360.

As long as you aren’t skipping steps in your progression (eg – learning small jumps then jumping to trying 360s on bigger jumps) you’re fine to pick and choose which path you want to take by moving one step up at a time.

You’ll find that with most snowboarding the next step up is pretty obvious whether it’s making the trick slightly more difficult (eg – 360s after 180s) or trying the trick on a more difficult feature (eg – going from a flat ride-on rail to a more difficult rail).

2) Stop trying to learn 500 skills/tricks at once

This is a huge, huge mistake people make and I’ve mentioned it many times before. Don’t try to learn to much at one time.

Focus down on just select skills and work on them until you master them, then move on to the next skill. You can also do this with individual tricks too by breaking them down into pieces (eg – for spinning you can work on carving, switch riding, spin initiation, pop etc).

For example here are some things I might do in the park on a typical progression day:

  • Just work on one trick all day
  • Pick 1 trick for each type of obstacle and just focus on them (eg – boardslide for rails, 540s for airs)
  • Pick a handful of tricks to focus on, but do intense blocks of really focusing down on just one of those tricks for a couple hours at a time

Don’t have snowboard A.D.D. and try to learn 50 different skills while constantly switching between different techniques before you properly learn and master one technique, that’s just going to slow you down and make you progress slower.

– Jed

ps – I go a lot more in depth into breaking down tricks and proper progression paths inside our members only tutorials. If you want to become a member, get on the waitlist here (we’re opening up sign ups again in under a week).

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