Snowboarding Trick Tips - The Ollie

It's time to get past basic riding and refine your skills.  With guidance from this author you'll be dazzling your friends with a newfound trick - The Ollie!

By Zac Bryson

One of the easiest, most basic, but often the most misunderstood tricks in all of snowboarding is the ollie.  Like its skateboarding originator, the ollie is the first trick any new rider needs to learn in order to progress in free-style riding.  Technically speaking, the ollie is an aerial maneuver in which the rider leaps into the air while shredding down the mountain, with the board along for the ride, without using their hands or any type of ramp or jump.  Unlike the straightforward technique of olliing a skateboard, the snowboard ollie often causes a novice rider some confusion. 

“Isn’t olliing a snowboard just… jumping in the air?” I’m often asked when explaining the ollie.  The short answer, no.  Although to the untrained eye the two may appear to be similar, there is definitely a technique to executing the proper snowboard ollie.  Snowboards are made the way they are for a reason, and if you’ve ever heard the terms “pop” or “snap” used when describing a board, they are referring to the board’s ollie ability.  Snowboards are made to bend and twist, and when one bends their board and releases that bend in just the right way, that, my friend, is a snowboard ollie.

Step 1.  The first thing you must learn in order to ollie a snowboard is how to “load up” the board.  Simply, loading the board means shifting most of your weight over either your front or back foot and pulling your opposite foot up, bending (loading up) the board. In the case of an ollie, you want to shift your weight over your back foot, when you’re riding in your natural riding direction (for regular riders, the right foot is the back, for goofy riders, the left). Crouch down like you’re about to jump,  and in one simultaneous motion shift your weight over your back leg and lift your front foot.

Here is a big time over-exaggerated
example of loading the board.

Loading puts the board under tension and compression, and for all you physics majors out there, a whole lot of potential energy.  The way to release this energy and perform an ollie leads me to…

Step 2.  Once the board is loaded, with all that energy just waiting to be released, you simply pop off your back foot, with a slight jumping motion, and lift your leg, allowing the board to snap you into the air.  Think of the snowboard like a diving board; you jump down on the diving board, (loading it up) and when the board springs back the other direction, you go flying through the air, with the board doing most all of the work.  A snowboard acts the same way during a proper ollie.  The board should do the majority of the work popping you up. 

Step 3.  Once you’re in the air, you want to suck your knees up to your chest as far as you can and try to level out the board, parallel with the snow.  This will allow you to achieve greater height on your ollies, and more importantly, is way more stylish.

Suck those knees up!

Step 4.  When you’re about to land, straighten out your legs, shift your weight back over the center of the board, and prepare for impact.  As you hit the ground you want to bend your knees to cushion the landing. 

Step 5.  Stomp the landing and ride away stoked!

Tips for Awesome Ollies:

• Practice your ollies off the snow.  Get in as many carpet ollies as you can at home to get the feel for it.
• Once you’re on the snow, really over exaggerate the load and the pop, separating them into two steps.  Once you get each of these steps down you can turn it into one fluid motion.  
• The best way to ollie is to be flat-based on your board, meaning you don’t want the board to be on its heel or toe edge.
• Set up obstacles to ollie over. This will increase the height of your ollies.  Gradually set up bigger and bigger obstacles.
• Really pop off that back foot for maximum height.

Ollies are super fun and will provide you with a strong foundation for progressing into other tricks. 

Zac Bryson's snowboarding career began at the age of 12 and is going strong after fourteen years.  He’s honed his skills in the park, the pipe, as well as the groomers and he’s demoed and reviewed a ton of gear.  Check out his blog at Hybrid Sessions.