Yoo Kyle, It's Colin. I took this from the trick tip cult.
https://www.newschoolers.com/ns/cult/home/id/1690/t/Trick+Tip+Forum/
First you really should get center mounted and boots that fit.
So first.. Get the basics down...
There are two main rules in skiing:
(1) Have fun
(2) Don't forget rule #1
If you forget those two ideas, then you have lost the entire purpose of skiing altogether.
I’m assuming you know how to ski if you're on newschoolers. You don't need much real turning or carving form to ski park, however, it DOES help. I suggest you don't spend all your time in the park and have some fun outside of jumps, rails, and other manmade features. Just watch Idea, a film by Eric Iberg, if you want to see how cool and fun that can be. Butters and cliff drops galore.
Trick Tips
To start out, you should probably learn the basics: popping, spinning, and sliding rails.
Popping
This is the most essential skill in park skiing. Ultimately, when you approach the lip of a jump…jump! Use your quad muscles like you would to jump off the ground to do a slam dunk. Then bring your knees up a bit, and there you go. Steeeeezin.
Why: This skill helps you center yourself for spins, and also to balance yourself in the air. It also provides an element of safety, as it sets you up with the angle of the jump and the landing, rather than the jump throwing you wildly and you losing control, and possibly overshooting. A bit technical, but hey! Might as well throw in a bit.
Spinning
Every spin has the same basic technique, especially after the 360. The basic technique is: wind up accordingly to how big your spin is, pop, spin, spot the landing, and stomp it.
180: The 180 is the easiest spin to do on small jumps. It’s just a half rotation, landing backwards. You might want to have some twintips before doing this (although I’m guessing you have some already.
When you get to the lip:
(1) pop, (2) look behind you to spot your landing, and (3) turn your shoulders that same way. Your skis should follow your shoulders. Keep on looking backwards until you stomp that 180 and then depending on how comfy you are with switch skiing, you can either turn around to normal stance again or stay in the switch position.
360: This has generally the same principle as any spin, although it is probably the most widely done “first trick” that a park skier, or any freeskier, learns.
When you get to the lip: (1) pop and tuck, (2) Turn your shoulders with your head, and try to look all the way back around you. Your skis should follow. Finally, (3) when you see your landing coming, straighten out your legs again and touch down smooth.
For going past the 360, you need to set your spins a bit harder. That means turning your shoulders a bit harder, and turning your head to search for that extra 180 or 360 degrees of rotation past the initial 360, to make a 540, 720, or even a 900. There are variations on spins too, such as corks and bios, which are off-axis rotations, and misties, rodeos, flatspins, and d-spins, which are all inverted spins.
After the basics start tryin hopin around on rails..
Front 270 off
Trick Tip: tiptap
Prerequisite: one of the things I found helped me out the most was practicing the motion off of snow (this is good for almost any rail trick). this is meant in the very simplest fashion: curbs. for this practice method of mine, you need a curb (not one that slopes, it has to have a hard edge. that’s it. jump from the street on to curb with whichever foot forward you wish. now, bring your heel of the front foot off the street side of the curb, so that your front foot rests on the corner of the curb and is at a 35(approx) degree angle. exaggerate it as necessary. (at this point, your weight should be evenly spread between your feet. I had a problem when I started fs 270s where I would weight my rear foot completely and wouldn’t go anywhere, no matter how hard I scissored.) now push, using mostly front foot, and spin 270 degrees off, landing both feet at the same time in a centered position.
Use that practice method for every trick you can. I sure do (and get funny looks at school because of it). it's fun (or should be) and generally if you can spin a 630 off of a curb, you sure as fuck can do it on snow!
Technique
1. Be prepared. as soon as you get on the rail (or box), you want to start your scissor. depending on the length of the rail, you may even want to consider landing in your scissor position. this will allow for greater combos on the rail down the road.
Edit by MADDECENT: Don't take the word scissor too literally. I call it digging, because scissoring, at least for me, buts the wrong picture in your head. Try to keep you back ski flat on the rail, and only dig with your front edge. This will prevent catching a back edge, wishboning, and ruining your nuts or tearing your groin.
2. Positioning. the scissor motion itself is much like this: (with minor variations allowable) knees bent, arms pointing ahead of the boots (not straight down at the feet) and slightly bent, one heel lower than the other (this may involve straightening completely the front leg), and keep your eyes on the end of the rail. until you get there. then spot the landing, stupid.
3. Rail it. with your scissor position is about staying forward. while you are doing the 'scissor' motion for real on a rail, you must remain forward-centered! I cannot stress this enough. you will either fall on your butt, or not spin at all if you are not mildly forward. the trick getting rotation is to push on your heel hard enough off the side of the rail that you start spinning because of it.
Edit by MADDECENT: Pushing your front ski against the side of the rail with your heel works, and a lot of people do it, but for me personally i feel it lacks control. I much prefer to dig my edge into the rail and let that intitiate the spin. It's all preference though.
4. Air out. as MADDECENT said, this part consists mostly of hips and shoulders. while your chief mode of spin must come out of your scissor (or you'll never make it around) you can adjust your rotation in the air. once you get the amount of scissor to spin off the rail, you will likely still have problems landing perfectly. adjusting spin in the air is a rather tricky technique to teach, and is widely debated among skiers (this section will likely be criticized) I’ll do my best. for me, much of the increase/decrease in spin comes from the head. if you keep your head locked in place, with your eyes straight on the landing, you will slow down some, and spreading your arms (think spread eagle) also helps. to accelerate, tuck in as tightly as you can so: hands to hips, feet touching, knees and elbows locked. you can also look around as far as you can in the direction of whatever spin you are attempting and you will speed up marginally.
that was tough. if you got through those giant walls of text in one go please go and watch your favorite JOSS edit/porn, then resume.
Back 270 off
Trick Tip: tiptap
Technique
1. Be prepared. From the moment you jump on the box (especially for beginners) you will either have it easy or hard to make it cleanly. what I highly recommend, is the tactic of going overcrooked (jumping on at more than 90 degrees; try 100-110). some people may call me a loser over this advice, but I really suggest it. not only does it make it easier to get into position, it means you have to spin that much less when doing your bs 270.
2. Positioning. Your standard position for BS270 is much the same as for FS; the difference here being that instead of dropping the heel, your leading foot now drops the toe. I sure agonized over this advice when I heard it: "I'm in a fucking ski boot! how am I supposed to drop my stupid toe?" So here's the secret, folks. it’s not dropping the toe, so much as bending the knee. That’s right. So essentially, you don’t even need a foot for this one. If you scissor hard enough, the rail isn’t even under your foot: more like on the front third of the ski.
3. Rail it. The same deal from the FS stuff applies here: weight forward, dammit!
4. Air out. Once again, this part is much the same as the FS section, but for backside spins, the spin comes from the hips/shoulders that much more!
Note: for your first frontside 270s, it is not completely necessary to get on the rail perfectly. For me, getting to drop my heel and dig my edge in was vastly facilitated by not getting on the rail with my skis perpendicular; instead, I would go at maybe 45degrees. Just be sure that if you are doing this, you do not avoid proper use of the scissor by going at a shallow enough angle that you can just hop the 270 around.
Frontside Switch Up
Trick Tip: MADDECENT
1. As you are coming at the rail, come at it slightly from the side. This will make gripping much easier
2. Pop off the lip and immediately be in the position to dig your edge. Have your back foot flat on the rail/box, and have your front foot out in front of you a little, with your tip up.
3. When you hit the rail, with your front ski’s edge digging with your tip up, load a little extra weight onto your front ski. This will initiate the spin.
4. With practice, you will get much better at digging harder, and getting your spin going faster. Dig as hard as you can
5. Turn your hips downhill. Up to this point, as usual, you should have been looking at the end of the rail.
6. As you start to spin the other way, pop off the rail a little, you don’t need much, and swing your body around the 180
7. Land back on the rail with your knees bent, in a strong position, as you will now be grinding unnatural. Look at the end of the rail until you get there. You will most likely come off switch, and won’t be able to come off forward until you are very comfortable with switch ups and are able to pretzel after the swap.
Next year at SR bro i can help you outt.
