Ollie

Ollie –
     The ollie is the essential trick to getting your board into the air. The snowboarding ollie, just like the skateboarding ollie, as it uses a transfer in weight as well as your knees to get you in the air but unlike skateboarding the ollie on a snowboard uses the flex in the tail as a spring.

HOW-TO
1.    Start out by bending both knees so you are slightly crouched and clear your mind. You need to start this trick riding flat on the base of your board. It is recommended you start with minimal or no speed at all (doing it incorrectly is a lot less painful this way) and on hard pack/corduroy. After you get the feeling of how to do this trick you can do it with more and more speed and start looking for bumps or imperfections on the groomers and aiming for them. After some practice you can use these bumps as small kickers to practice olling off of. You can also look for imperfections or even snowballs that were kicked off the snowcats and practice olling over them (do this before you start picking obstacles that won’t move, like stumps and rocks). Eventually you will be using the ollie anytime your board goes into the air, basically anytime you do a trick.

2.    You start the trick by rocking your weight from being centered over your snowboard back onto your back leg and then into the tail of your board, kind of like a manual.

3.    Use the movement of shifting your weight backwards to raise up your nose and front foot of the snowboard by bending your front knee. Make sure to keep your weight centered over the back of board and not towards either your toe or heel edge because that will throw you off balance and make landing very difficult.

  4.    After the tail is flexed (due to your weight being shifted back) it will want to flex back to its original position. Use this pop to aid you as you uncoil your crouch and jump. At the same time that the board wants to flex back use your back knee to finish the jump. Steps 3 and 4 happen at nearly the same time.
5.   You are in the air, don’t freak out. Make sure you remain calm and don’t flail because you will look funny and flailing makes landings harder. Bring your knees back into chest so that you are in that crouched position in the air. Also bring your body weight and board back to being centered. This will make your landing easier and keeps you from going sideways in the air and landing on your bottom.

6.    Chances are if you ollie off of just flat ground you won’t have much time to throw a grab in but if you are olling off the lip of a jump then you are going to want to throw in some sort of grab, even if you are spinning or flipping, because it will help stabilize you in the air and make it look smooth. Style is everything in snowboarding and when you are smooth with any sort of trick you are perfecting your own style.

7.    After you have reached your apex or peak of the ollie (gotten as high up as you are going to) you need to start to spot your landing (make this its own trick).

8.    For the landing try and come down flat on your board. Catching a toe or heel side edge now will usually result in a crash. Use your knees to dampen the impact of coming back down to the snow and stomp (make this its own trick) your landing. Landing totally flat is hard and will take practice so if you have to land more on one edge then another go for your toe edge but make sure not to land fully on that edge. Also try and not land with too much weight on the nose of your board as it will then catch and throw you to the ground and make sure not to land with too much weight on your tail or your tail coming down first because it is easy to have the snowboard slip out from underneath you.

  9.     As soon as you land either go straight on ahead or onto your toe edge for a turn, DO NOT try and turn heel side because it is way too easy to butt check here and butt checking after a trick voids the trick and you have to go and try it again. After you have mastered stomping your landing then feel free to turn what ever direction you want but it is amazing how many less butt checks you will have when you turn toe side.

10.    Well done, you did it grasshopper! Now practice this a million times because it essential in the world of snowboarding and you will use it for everything.

- Lakes

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