Switch Straight Air

A switch straight air means approaching and launching off a kicker while riding switch. Everything is mirrored: your pop, your balance, your landing. This is a prerequisite for switch spins and for trick combos where you land switch from a 180 and immediately hit the next feature.

The weirdness of switch airs is that your sense of timing has to rebuild from scratch. You've spent hundreds of runs calibrating exactly when to pop off a lip and how compact to stay mid-air, but all of that muscle memory is keyed to your regular stance. In switch, your "wrong" foot is the one on the tail doing the pop, and until you've done it a few dozen times, the pop feels early or late, never quite right.

The fix is unglamorous: hit the smallest kicker in the park, over and over, switch. Don't try to catch air; just practice the approach, the rollover, and the landing. After about a dozen reps you'll feel the timing lock in and it stops feeling alien. Once switch straight airs feel boring, you're ready for Cab 180s (switch frontside 180s), which land regular and feel like coming home.

Learn more here:

Video by Snowboard Addiction

Key tips

• Get comfortable with switch riding on the slope before hitting kickers
• Approach with a flat base in switch stance
• The pop timing feels different. Practice on smaller kickers first
• Land switch with knees bent, weight centered
• If you can land frontside 180s (which land switch), you're halfway there