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Snowboarding is a sport that involves descending a slope that is either partially or fully covered with snow on a snowboard attached to a rider’s feet using a special boot set into a mounted binding. The development of snowboarding was inspired by skateboarding, surfing and skiing. It was developed in the United States in the 1960s and the 1970s and became a Winter Olympic Sport in 1998.

Since snowboarding’s inception as an established winter sport, it has developed various styles, each with its own specialized equipment and technique. The most common styles today are: freeride, freestyle, and freecarve/race. These styles are used for both recreational and professional snowboarding. While each style is unique, there is overlap between them. See also List of snowboard tricks.

snowboarding

Freeride

The freeride style is the most common and easily accessible style of snowboarding. It involves riding down any terrain available. Freeriding may include aerial tricks and jib (any type of fixture which can be ridden with the board/skis that is not snow) tricks borrowed from freestyle, or deep carve turns more common in alpine snowboarding, utilizing whatever natural terrain the rider may encounter.

Freeriding equipment is usually a stiff soft shell boot with a directional twin snowboard. Since the freeride style may encounter many different types of snow conditions, from ice to deep pow down powder slope.

Dry Slope

Dry slopes are man-made slopes which provide an alternative terrain for snowboarders wanting to snowboard during the summer or for those who live too far away from a snowy mountain. They are constructed with a solid cross-hatched metal base which hold plastic bristles for riding on. Dry slopes are commonly found in England and parts of Europe but are rare in the United States. Equipment used is usually old or retired snowboards because of the wear caused by the metal base and plastic bristles over time.

Freestyle

In freestyle, the rider uses manmade terrain features such as rails, jumps, boxes, and innumerable other innovative features to perform tricks on. The term “box” refers to an objects with a slick top, usually of polyethylene(HDPE), that the rider can slide on with the base of their board. Like all freestyle features, boxes come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and difficulty levels. The intent of freestyle is to use these terrain features to perform a number of aerial or jib tricks. The term “jib” refers to the rider doing a slide or press on an object not made of snow. This most commonly refers to tricks done on boxes, rails, or even trees.

The equipment used in freestyle is usually a soft boot with a twin tipped board for better balance while riding regular or switch, though freeride equipment is often used successfully. The most common binding stance used in freestyle is called “duck foot”, in which the trailing foot has a negative degree of arc setup while the leading foot is in the positive range i.e. -9°/+12°. Freestyle riders who specialize in jibbing often use boards that are shorter than usual, with softer flex and filed down edges. Shorter length enables the board to be rotated faster, and a softer flex requires less energy for a rider to press a feature. Pressing refers to a type of jib where the rider leans heavily toward the nose or tail of their board- causing the opposite end of their board to lift off of the feature they are sliding on.

Freestyle also includes halfpipe tricks. A halfpipe (or “pipe”) is a trench-like half-tube made of snow. Tricks performed may be rotations such as a 360° (a full turn) in the air, or an off-axis spin like a “McTwist”. Tricks can be modified while hitting different features. Riders will also usually do a combination of a board grab and rotations.

Freecarve

Similar to skiing, this race and  focused style is still practiced, though infrequently. Sometimes called , or the ‘euro-carve’, freecarving takes place on hard packed snow or groomed runs and focuses on the ultimate carving turn, much like traditional skiing. Little or no jumping takes place in this discipline. Freecarve equipment is a ski-like hardshell boot and plate binding system with a true directional snowboard that is usually very stiff and narrow to facilitate fast and responsive turns. Shaped-skis can thank these “freecarve” snowboards for the cutting-edge technology leading to their creation.