Got no Steez….

Watch Nicolas Mueller and Terje Haakonsen in the backcountry, these guys have the most effortless style. From riding halfpipe they know exactly how to ride different transitions and backcountry features instinctively.

Throwing tricks into the mix doesn’t seem to affect Travis Rice or Jake Blauvelt’s AK lines in a negative way. Even Xavier De Le Rue has a nice bs7 on dial.

As far as useful application goes in the backcountry, apart from improving your switch riding which can be improtant, it just looks good.

Switch baby!

Not only is it fun, it can also save your junk in certain situations. :thumpsup:

@Powder_Rider wrote:

I was wondering what practical application freestyle has in the backcountry?

😆 that’s like asking what practical application gymnastics has! What’s the point of examining its practicality? It’s an art!

@Powder_Rider wrote:

What are the basics in freestyle that are helpful in the backcountry?

Grabs really help to stabilize you in the air too. Rolling up the windows is never optimal…

This has hardboot/softboot written all over it.

@Powder_Rider wrote:

This has hardboot/softboot written all over it.

While I am a hardbooter. I am being sincere in what I asking to improve my riding, this coming season. So this is not a hard boot vs. softboot debate, nor is it wanted in this thread!

Steeze and hardboots cannot peacefully coexist.

Let me qualify my answer by saying freestyle left my repertoire at the end of the eighties along with the cartilage in my left knee, so my experience is minimal. Particularly since freestyle then and now are universes apart.

But based on watching the likes of Rice, Tereje, and all top pipe and park riders I’d consider these skills quite valuable in the backcountry.

Flexibility
Spatial awareness
Body control

I came to snowboarding from skate background. I think style comes from years of riding sideways on a board, be it snow, surf, or cement. The more hours, days, months, years, decades you get, the more your movements get economized and refined, and style develops from there.
It also helps to try somewhat consciously to eliminate bad habits. Always attempting to keep ones arms low, for instance, is a good habit to develop.
Also, avoiding the Tony Hawk elbows out riding style is a good idea…
Surely, freestyle park riding can help, as long as you can stay injury free…
This summer I started riding the skateparks again for the first time in about 20 years… I am just carving around, doing some slides, and some kick turns. But I am sure this is going to help keep my agility and balance up, as well as the ability to deal with transitions, and 3D riding situations.
The best advice I ever got for board sports style and performance is the concept of “weight underside”. Hold your arm out horizontally and tense up all your arm muscles, then relax all the muscles using only what is necessary to hold your arm out still; notice how you feel the weight of the arm come to its underside. The best riders, think Craig Kelly, use only the muscles which are necessary, and hold very little tension in the rest of the body, this “weight underside” concept lowers the CG, and creates a relaxed and naturally functional riding style.

Getting air is one of the most fun things you can do in snowboarding, but extra care is required in the BC, especially if you don’t have a crew.

A cool use of freestyle would be this: you are riding along and come to a creek bed or some similar and it’s too big to jump but look there’s a broken tree spanning across – now you can jib it like a rail :thumpsup: