What are some tricks in Skiing?

Answer 1

Kickers

• Spins. Anything from 180 degrees upwards, to 1800's.
• Unnatural. This relates to spins, everybody has a natural way to spin. If you usually spin left, but are spinning right, it is a unnatural spin.
• Inverts. These start with backflips and front flips, and are combined with spins to make corks, rodeos, flatspins, and other spins, double corks etc.
• Switch. This is jumping off a kicker backwards (with twin tips), or landing backwards.
• Grabs. There are many different grabs, such as grabbing the tail of your ski (Tail grab, True Tail), grabbing the front of your ski (Nose grab, True Nose), or pretty much anywhere else, in any combination (Eg Octopus grab, Double True Nose grab etc). Grabs can be 'tweaked', meaning they are pulled in a certain direction to accentuate it. For instance a mute is grabbing the front of the left ski with your right hand. If this is 'tweaked', the left ski will be crossed over the right ski. No Grabs are the absence of a grab, and there are many old-school tricks (eg Iron Cross, Backscratcher) that are a no-grab.
• Other. There are other newschool variations to hitting kickers. These include things such as Hand drags (Dragging your hand at takeoff), Butters (Leaning forwards or backwards on your skis at takeoff, bending them so you're balanced over the front or back of your skis), or Shifties (Turning your legs/ skis one way, often while spinning in the other, but maintaining your bodies direction).

Rails

• Railslide. The basic sliding of a Rail (or Box).
• Unnatural. Everybody has a foot forwards that they are most comfortable with. If you are used to sliding with the right foot forwards, but are doing the rail left foot forwards, you are doing it unnatural.
• Spins. You can spin onto rails from either side. You can also spin on unnatural. Spinning off a rail is possible too, and while on the rail. Spinning while on a rail is called a Switch-Up. Changing direction on a rail (eg spinning on to the left, and spinning off to the right) is called a Pretzel.
• Presses. These are the Nose Press and the Tail Press. Both involve getting the rail under the front or back of your skis, and shifting your weight to there, so that you are bending over the front or back of the ski.
• Other. These are things such as One Foot rails (or other 'Rollerblade' influenced grinds), 50-50's and other less common slides.

Any of these can be combined into almost infinite combinations, or runs (linking together the different features into one run), and even more with creative features such as Wallrides, C rails, Kickers to rails, Kinked Rails, Step-Ups, Gap Jumps etc etc.

Eg Hand Drag Unnatural Cork Seven Tweaked Rocket Air (grab) Shiftie Road Gap Disaster (gap to rail) to Nose Press, 450 Pretzel out to Switch.

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