Wintersports
Snowboarding
8 new snowboard tricks to learn, from easy to ridiculous
Add some awesome to your freestyle repertoire with these mind blowing tricks from Marcus Kleveland to Mark McMorris.
Summer is here – time to learn some new tricks for next winter! One thing that never changes about snowboarding is how it embraces innovation. Today’s generation of slopestyle pros have such ridiculous control, they’re inventing and re-inventing tricks at a rate that’s as fast as any in the sport’s history. And it’s the riders below who are changing the game hardest of all. Enjoy!
1: Tyler Chorlton – Elbow Carve
Difficulty: Easy. The elbow carve is a direct descendent of the Euro carve, a stylised heel or toe side carve popularised by European hard booter Serge Vitelli back in the late 1980’s. Today, style meisters like Tyler Chorlton are taking things to the next level of creativity and the variations seem to be endless. All you need to get your elbow carve going is a relatively smooth stretch of slope, edge control and a decent set of core muscles – what are you waiting for?
2: Alek Ostreng – Andrecht
Difficulty: Easy-ish. Handplants are a must-have in any decent riders trickbag: not only do they look and feel great, they’re pretty easy too – at least, a lot easier strapped onto a snowboard than on a skateboard. Norwegian style boss Alek Ostreng can do them on both, and it shows: this classic Andrechthandplant is as smooth and stalled as it gets.
3: Rene Rinnekangas – Frontside Boardslide backside grab
Difficulty: Tricky. Rene Rinnekangas is a young Finnish rider you’ve probably never heard of, but will be seeing a lot more of. And this trick is something you’ve probably never thought of, but now you’ve seen it you’ll wish you could do it too. It’s probably not even that hard, if you do it on a long, widefunbox in the park. Unlike Rene, who’s doing it on a legit rail, with one of the sketchiest in-runs ever…
4: Marcus Kleveland – Backside 180 Rewind
Difficulty: Easy when you’re Marcus. The Rewind was the freshest move of 2017, and it’s pretty much the hardest trick variation you can do – basically it’s when you almost complete a full rotation – 360, 540, 720, whatever – then at the last minute reverse spin direction and ‘rewind’ 180 degrees. In this case, Marcus is sending a huge, inverted backside 3, but stalls, pokes and brings it back to 180. This is the easiest rotation done in the hardest possible way.
5: Niklas Mattson – Backside Lipslide to frontflip
Difficulty: Medium-hard. Niklas is a true rider’s rider – he might not appear on many podiums, but he’s as talented and enjoyable to watch as anyone in the world right now. So while this Swedish ripper is perfectly capable of blowing your mind with a backside 1620, it’s this silly, but incredible backside lipperfrontflip out that we’d like to draw your attention to.
6: Torgeir Bergrem – Switch Backside 540 late Method
Difficulty: Harder than it looks. Norwegian Snow God Torgeir Bergrem knows that triple corks might win contests, but style and creativity wins respect: this butter-smooth switch backside 540 to late Method might just be the most stylish trick ever performed on a snowboard.
7: Niklas Mattson – Backside double cork 1080 Rewind
Difficulty: Crazy difficult. Backside 3 Rewinds are soooo October ’17. Swedish creative genius Niklas Mattson brought this tricky rotation variation to the next level in April ’18 when he rewound a double cork 10. Better learn this one quick, it’s already getting played out…
8: Mark McMorris – Front Board dub 12
Difficulty: Ridiculous. Here’s one for the In-Your-Dreams wishlist – Mark McMorris has totally put last year’s heavy injury season to bed with this crazy NBD – we’re not quite sure what to call it, but it’s basically a backside 1170° double cork out of a front board.
