Establishing Your Snowboard Stance

Getting your snowboard stance right is vital in ensuring that you and your snowboard achieve optimum balance and timing while efficiently using your energy and muscle strength. By riding in a position that feels as natural as possible, the effort required to ride comfortably for as long as you want to is minimized.

Natural or Goofy?

These terms refer to which foot you will use as your front foot while riding. Natural footers ride with their left leg in front while goofy footers prefer leading with their right leg. While a slight majority of snowboarders are natural footers, there are both natural and goofyfooter pros and neither one will mean having better skills.

Determining which foot you'll prefer is easy if you surf of skateboard as they are similar to snowboarding since movement is in a direction that's sideways to your body. Even playing other sports such as snooker, baseball, martial arts or darts can help you determine which foot you generally prefer to use as your front foot for balancing.

If you're still unsure of which foot to use as your front foot, you can conduct a few simple tests to help you figure it out. Try sliding on a polished floor with your socks on or examine which foot you put forward first when climbing a set of stairs. In each case, you'll notice which foot naturally moves to the front.

When all else fails, just hit the powder with your board and go with whatever feels right. All will be revealed by then.

Stance Width

Your stance width is measured as the distance between the centers of both feet. As a general rule, use a width that's about the width of your shoulders or maybe just a little wider to begin with and adjust it accordingly after a few rides to the width that feels the most comfortable and natural.

If your stance width is too wide, you may find yourself using more of your muscular strength instead of your overall torso for controlling your board. As a result, you'll tire yourself out quickly and find it difficult to negotiate your turns effectively. Conversely, if your stance is too narrow, you'll severely limit the range of motion of your lower joints while noticing a deterioration in balance and stability.

Stance Angles

Stance angle is measured as the angle that your bindings are pointing to in relation to your board. These angles are usually printed on your snowboard bindings.

For freeride and freestyle riders, moderate angles of between 15-30 degrees for the front foot and no more than 15 degrees for your back foot should give you enough versatility to ride, carve and perform tricks in a variety of situations.

Large angles will help you with your carving but will hinder your ability to perform other moves while angles that are too square to the board will limit your use of your legs and lower body.

If you are a beginner and are still confused as to what stance angles you should be using, try using angles of 21 and 9 degrees for your front and back foot respectively to start off with. As with other aspects of your stance, you can fine tune and adjust them over time according to whatever snowboarding stance feels best for you.