Wed, 02/24/2010 - 12:36pmKnow your freestyle snowboard

Where most of the world will encounter snowboarding: watching a teenager launch themselves into the air from an icy pipe...

It doesn’t have to be that way, freestyle used to mean a completely different way of reading and riding a mountain to what had been done before. Just remember, it’s not about the taking part, it’s all about being first... hang on!

Freestyle DNA
Shape

Look for twins and variations of true twins. You’ll want to be able to land switch and have stability during rotations, so you can forget the swallowtails. Set back bindings and directional twin shapes will improve all-mountain performance (allowing a bit of powder float) while still retaining the ability to go backwards.
 

Sidecut Radius

A fair amount of variation from model to model here. Often multi radius and progressive sidecuts are used. If the board wants to appeal to the less experienced you’ll usually find a relaxed start and end to the sidecut radius helping with turn initiation. More advanced, aggressive decks will have shorter tip and tail radii to power the board into, and out of, turns.
 

Length and waist width

Ridden longer than a true jib deck to provide a more stable highspeed ride. Increased length also creates a stable landing platform. Increased length can impede spinning ability, so watch out for lightweight materials being used in tip and tail.
 

Camber

A large amount of camber makes for a more responsive ride, with greater energy transfer and increased shock absorption – good for icy landings. Reverse camber isn’t an amazing idea on kickers if you’re not used to it’s skittish nature. A good halfway house comes in the gull-wing type of camber. This employs regular camber between the bindings and kicks up from the binding out. See Capita’s Flat Kick, Atomic’s PopRocker, Rome’s Hybrid Camber and Nitro’s Gull Wing to name just a few.
 

Flex rating

Typically, your average freestyle machine is an aggressive beast, with energy stored within to launch higher and further off that kicker or out of the coping. Look for carbon stringers and a whole array of tech designed to transfer as much energy through the board to the edges. Of course, on the jibby end of things, the boards are a little softer and share more common elements with straight jib boards.
 

Topsheet

Almost anything goes. Depending on whether you’re looking for a super tech tech performance model or slightly softer number, you will find quad axial, triaxial and even a few biax models in here.

Base

Mostly sintered to provide extra kicker speed. Some softer, less tech models will have easily repairable extruded bases. Traditionally, a large amount of camber makes for a more responsive ride
 

But what is freestyle?

Freestyle is really everything but take a look at Shaun White’s winning run at the Olympics, Jenny Jones’ winning run at the X-Games, Jed Anderson slashing up a slushy park and Freddie Kalbermatten shredding AK to get an idea…

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Related stories:

Snowboards

• An intro to buying a snowboard
• Jib snowboards
• Freestyle snowboards
• All mountain snowboards
• Freeride snowboards
• Backcountry snowboards
• The shape
• The topsheet
• The base
• The sidewall

Boots

• Buying a set of boots

Bindings

• Buying bindings

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