We had 2 AASI National Team Members Seth Johns and Eric Rolls run a training clinic recently. Seth led the clinic and 6 out of 8 riders were Level 3 Full Cert instructors in the clinic so we had a RIPPER snowboard crew. Riding with other RIPPERS really bumps up your riding level energy. What we focused on really brought back a lot of the excitement and passion I found when I first started snowboarding and that thrill is what got me hooked on snowboarding.
We met up and chatted about where snowboarding as a sport was heading. Big Air just became an Olympic sport and we talked about how snowboarding has become more like gymnastics on a board. The progression of spins and flips has become similar to Ski Aerials. Kids are chucking triple and quadruple flips and four to five rotations, yes 1800º! Most riders don’t ride this style at that level nor do they want to. I watched an 8 year old progressing from one back flip to a double and a lot of his crashes looked brutal and I thought he broke his back a few times. If you’re not throwing huge spins/flips then your perceived as not a good rider to a lot of folks out there because that’s what they see on TV. Snowboarding is so versatile with so many unique styles. Seth took us out to explore these styles.
We started by being asked to carve aggressively on one run and he gave us a video to watch of people carving. Pro Riders are blending in old school tricks by grab carving and hand plants. It gave us some ideas of how to carve throwing it back to the old school style. Myself and other surfers grab their boards when dropping in and it’s great to blend the two sports together. We partnered up every run, switching partners almost every run and chatting about what we felt in our riding. We started carving keeping our boards on the snow doing these old school carve tricks. By the bottom we were all sweating and breathing hard. Next run we did grabs while carving on our heelside and toeside. We felt grabbing while carving really locked our carve in solid just like grabbing while in the air gives you more stability. Then, the next run we carved and turned while grabbing the board so you had to grab the nose or the tail because you’d smash your fingers if you grab your heelsisde or toeside while turning. This really got us stretching and preparing for some freestyle tricks. We used the tripod position (putting both hands on the snow and buttering on your nose or tail) a lot as we rode. We then started letting our boards leave the snow and get some air using old school hand plants, tripods and hand touches while we grabbed our boards and threw in spins. We stayed out of the park the next two runs finding natural freestyle features to practice this throw back riding style. I heard some riders say that they had never done what we were doing and they were weathered snowboard veterans.
We then progressed into the park using hips and ¼ pipes making sure we didn’t disrupt others flow through the park because we weren’t using the kickers or booters to get huge air. We weren’t using the park in a conventional way. Since we were in the park we were able find tons of freestyle features and were able to go bigger than on natural features. After we finished the park we still kept this riding style going on natural features.
We wrapped up by taking some fun group pictures and I edited what footage I could get on the GoPro. We all had a blast and it brought a different style to our riding. It was great to get a crew of RIPPERS together which, amps up your riding energy level to expand and improve your riding!
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