How To Add Direction To Your Butters

Adding direction to your Butters is step number six in our six part Basics Of Buttering series. It's important you check the first five steps out, because we're going to take those fundamentals and apply it to learn your first real Buttering tricks.

If you take a look at step four where Adding Ollie's and Nollie's is taught, we're going to use the exact same technique learnt there, but this time add a bit of rotation with your upper body into the Butter to give it direction.  

(Narrating/Rider: Nev Lapwood. Film/Edit: Adison MacDonald. Filmed At: Whistler Blackcomb)

Frontside Butters

Start by doing a little Nollie into the Tail Butter position, then Ollie out. Easy right? So now, add Frontside momentum created with your arms and shoulders just like you would for a Frontside 180. Adding direction to your Butters is a combination of these components.

1. Create a little bit of Frontside momentum
2. Pop a small Nollie onto your tail
3. Let it slide around a bit on the snow
4. Then pop out to ride away Switch

Try and hold the press on your tail for as long as you can to style the butter out.

Backside Butters

This is another Butter where you can add direction and is a Backside Nose Butter coming out switch.

Remember to try this with your board off first to dial in the required movements.

1. Create a little bit of Backside momentum
2. Do a small Ollie onto the Nose of your board
3. Let the Backside rotation continue
4. Pop out clean to ride away switch

Trick Tip Time

When you're adding direction to your Butters, the only major thing you have to pay attention to is NOT catching an edge. What you DO to avoid this, is put a slight bit of pressure on the uphill edge as you're doing these Butters.

Lift those edges up or deal with the consequences. A broken face.

Now that you've got these two directional Butters dialled in, it's time to get creative! Because that's the great thing about Butters, you can do it on the Nose or Tail of your board, in the Frontside or Backside direction or you can do them Regular or Switch. So take your new found buttering skills to the hill, experiment with different variations and improve your riding today!

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Alex McCann 
Snowboard Addiction
Our Goal Is To Improve Your Riding