Snowboard Club UK FAQs (frequently-asked questions)

...is very important in the world of Snowboarding. The style you select will largely determine how you snowboard, what Equipment or Gear you will be using, and where you will be riding. Each style has its own group of fans, community and competitions. Once you have passed the beginner stage, you're bound to enter one of the following snowboard riding styles:

As the name of the style explains, Freeriding is about mastering an all-round style that will allow you to ride, carve and jump on any terrain On and Off Piste. This style involves riding almost any terrain while spending most of your time on the ground rather than in the air. Although it is not as much inclined to aerial tricks as the freestyle, freeriding does involve jumps and aerial maneuvers.

Freeriders generally love powder and will go off piste as soon as fresh powder hits the slopes. Freeriding is also called "All Mountain Riding" since this snowboarding style tries to utilize everything a mountain has to offer for this sport.

This snowboarding style is usually considered as the most suitable style for first-timers and beginners. Normally, novice boarders start out with a beginner freeriding board. As a result, the Freeriding Board has become the most popular board style, and most of the time, the boards that you will find in shops and on the slopes are freeriding boards.

There are various designs of snowboard for freeriding. To be able to differentiate a freeriding board from other variations, examine the following characteristics:
Often relatively longer boards with a narrower width, a deeper side cut, and more directional in their shape
Often the nose will be longer and the stance of the riders will be slightly positioned towards the rear of the board to make it easier to hang back when riding deep powder
Other Freeriding Equipement:
Soft Boots
Strap or Flow-In Bindings

Freestyle focuses on adrenaline rushes and is considered by many the most spectacular and wild style of snowboarding. It involves performing tricks both on the ground and in the air, in snowboard parks, Halfpipes and the natural obstacles a mountain can offer. Unlike freeriding, a lot of the tricks in freestyle are made in the air in the form of twists, turns, grabs and other radical aerial movements. On the ground, the common freestyle tricks are performed using rails and halfpipes.

The most popular snowboarding events are the freestyle competitions. These include halfpipe, quarterpipe, slopestyle, and big air competitions which are all performed on man-made obstacles. This isn’t to say that freestyle riders are necessarily the most advanced riders.

Some freestyle boards are designed specifically for the halfpipe or for the perfect rail slide. Although it would be nice to have a board for every occasion, keep in mind that these boards are not likely to perform well outside of that specific terrain which they have been designed for. General Freestyle Boards, on the other hand, are designed to handle well on jumps, spinning in the air, and riding switch. To be able to recognize a freestyle board check out its following characteristics:
Often shorter, lighter, fatter more maneuverable boards
Often the boards are twin tipped, meaning that the tail and tip are identical in shape
Other Freeriding Equipement:
Soft boots
Strap or Flow-In bindings

Carving or Alpine Snowboarding focuses on speed and is concerned with the ultimate carving turn. It's all about expending the full length of the mountain, and making impressive, high-speed slalom turns as you go downhill. Because of the high speed descent, the turns are often very powerful and demand a lot of strength. Consequently, the Carving Style is not as accessible to beginners as Freeriding and Freestyling.

Normally, skiers who cross over to snowboarding prefer this style because of its similarities with skiing. Snowboarders who practice Freecarving style usually carve powerful turns on groomed slopes and graceful curves in powder.

A FreeCarve or Alpine Board can be recognized by the following characteristics:
Longer, narrower and mostly stiffer boards that are designed to take a stronger angled stance which provides efficient and quick edge-to-edge turning during high-speed descents.
The boards are not designed for freestyling tricks
Other Freeriding Equipement:
Hard Boots
Plate Bindings

If you're not sure which style to choose, just start with freeriding to become accustomed to the feeling of snowboarding. However, keep in mind that before you drop your hard-earned money on a New Board, Snowboarding Boots, or Bindings setup, you must first know what type of snowboarder you are, or are interested in becoming. Manufacturers carefully design boards for specific types of riding. Hence, you don't want to make the mistake of buying an expensive big mountain board if you'll be spending all day in the pipe.

This is what we've labelled as "FreeCarve or Alpine Snowboarding" in this section.