My Snowboarding Online

By Joe F on Dec 9, 2008 | Reply

Freestyle is more for the park, so doing rails and jumps is easier, and freeride is for riding around the mountain, so it’s designed to ride in powder and go all over the mountain, even go in backcountry. So it depends on if you want to go to the park or ride around the mountain.

By bigreppin on Dec 10, 2008 | Reply

shape is the biggest differences. You’ll find that a park board has a more aggressive sidecut so it reacts quicker when you’re turning. They are also often twin tipped (same shaped nose and tail). F/R boards tend to be directional shaped so that they perform better at speeds. This directional shape will make them handle differently when riding switch.

Of course flex is important, but either style is available as soft or stiff as you like them.

By shortstuff on Dec 12, 2008 | Reply

Free Style is mostly Park (rails, boxes, pipe, and jumps) these boards will be much more flexable, shorter, and different edges.

Free ride is for all mountain (trees, steep, and deep) stifer, longer, and built for speed and agility on bumps.

By baz31 on Dec 15, 2008 | Reply

A freeride board will always have a directional shape which means the nose of the board will be longer and more angled than the tail which will be smaller and more rounded. They also will be narrower than other types of board and will have a long tapered sidecut and a dirctional flex which means the nose of the board will be stiffer than the tail.
You can also get freeride boards that are percifically for riding powder they tend to have a wider nose and a narrower tail so the board floats better on powder.
Some well known freeride boards are Burton Fish, Arbor Crossbow, K2 Eldorado, Palmer Honeycomb, Palmer Platinum, Ride Timeless

Freestyle boards will often have twin tip shapes which means the nose and tail will be identical in shape. Alot do still have directional shapes but they are far less extreme than a freeride board would have. They are usually quite wide so you can use flatter binding angles, and will often have a twin flex which means the nose and tail of the board have the same amount of flex in them. They tend to be quite light and are easier to spin and ride switch.
Some well known freestyle boards are Forum Destroyer, Nitro MFM, K2 Darkstar, Rome Agent, Ride DH.

Also Jib boards are a type of freestyle board which are very popular. They are used mainly for riding man made obstacles like rails and boxes.
Some well known jib boards are Ride Kink, Rome Artifact, Batallion Evil Twin, Burton Dominant, K2

All moutain boards are boards that can be used for both freestyle and freeriding. They usually have a directional shape, but the lenght of the nose and tail of the board will be similar in length to help riding switch and for spinning.
Some well known all mountain boards are Burton Air, Burton Custom, Gnu Carbon Highbeam, Rome Anthem

Paul G yeah your right about the nose being softer than the tail on a freeride board, i should have checked this answer better before summiting it. Thanks

By sexaddict69 on Dec 18, 2008 | Reply

Freeride snowboards are really for all round mountain use, whether being used to carve the powder, ride the ramps or just to descend the mountain on the pistes. Freeride boards are usually longer in length and are very good at high speed open turns.
Freestyle snowboards are alot shorter and very flexible and are specifically designed for use in the snowboarding park for tricks.

By Paul G on Dec 20, 2008 | Reply

Sorry to call you out on this Baz as you normally give very good answers but you missed it with this one.

A freeride board will usually have a directional shape and flex pattern, that was spot on. However, a truly directional board will have a nose that is softer than the tail (there was a board made by Rossignol that had a softer tail but that’s the only one I can think of that has a flex pattern like Baz mentioned). This helps with turn initiation and with handling cruddy/choppy snow conditions. I really don’t know what you were getting at with the more angled tip and rounded tails and not all freeride boards are tapered. Some freeride boards are designed more specifically for powder than for groomers and there are all sorts of designs to help facilitate this.

Many powder boards are tapered, which means they have a narrower tail than nose. Some have rocker, which means instead of camber these boards have their lowest point between your bindings and they bend up towards the tips. And some powder boards have different shaped tails, some have a swallow tail design which allows the tail to sink easier which in turn keeps the nose up and some have pintails which make the board faster edge to edge in deep snow.

Overall a freeride board will be stiffer tip to tail and edge to edge for a more precise and stable ride. Also, there are plenty of wide freeride boards on the market and there isn’t a trend of making boards narrower for this application. And finally, there actually are some twin tipped freeride boards out there, so it isn’t correct to say that a freeride board is always directional.

Now, freestyle boards have a lot going on to. Indeed, most of the best freestyle boards are twin tipped but there are still quite a few out there that are directional. The thing to keep in mind is that a directional board will pretty much always out perform a twin when moving forward. So, unless you plan on riding switch as much as you do forward a directional twin or a directional freestyle board may suit you better than that twin you’ve been eyeing. Freestyle boards will often have more sidecut as they generally see slower speeds than their freeriding cousins and they need to make tight turns to line up all the park features better. And then there’s flex . A lot of this is personal preference but generally, the best park boards offer a medium flexing board that flexes softer edge to edge. The reason for this is that a stiffer board will offer more pop off the lip of jumps and more stability when landing those crazy huge airs. However, anyone whose ever caught an edge when coming up short spinning that 7 knows that a bit more flex edge to edge will help you slide that last 90 degrees around without slamming. A softer torsional flex also helps on the rails.

And I prefer my park boards heavier and beefier as I tend to break stuff. It’s been my experience that the freeride boards tend to get the lightest tech and the park boards get the strongest tech. Speaking of tech, I haven’t even gone into magna-traction, slimwalls or skate bananas, I’m sure that’ll come up in other questions though.

By charlie b on Dec 21, 2008 | Reply

freestyle is for jumping and grinding so it has a thick middle section. wherease freeride is carving up the pistes and so it has a narrow deck.

By unbridledglory on Dec 25, 2008 | Reply

Freestyle snowboards are shaped specifically to be ridden in a park or pipe. Both the nose and tail of a freestyle snowboard are pretty much the same length to make it easier to ride switch (or fakie- which means riding with the opposite foot downhill than you would normally ride). A Free RIDE snowboard is an all mountain board and is shaped with the nose being longer than the tail to make powder riding easier by keeping your weight back. I own a free ride board and it is a lot harder to ride switch on a free ride board so i wouldnt suggest it for some one looking to ride park or pipe in the near future.

By iisasnowboarder on Dec 26, 2008 | Reply

Freeride boards are designed to go almost anywhere and do almost anything. They don’t specialize in a certain kind of riding, so they aren’t going to be as good at a certain thing, but they won’t really suck for anything. Freeride boards are probably the best kind of boards for beginners, because beginners don’t often know what kind of riding they want to do, so a freeride board will allow them to experiment with different riding styles.

Freestyle boards on the other hand are designed for a specific purpose, and that purpose is tricks. Freestyle boards are good for going off jumps and spinning and / or doing grabs, rails, tail and nose presses and things of that nature. Sometimes freestyle boards are even more specific, being designed for rails specifically, or or jumps specifically. The downside to a freestyle board is that It isn’t as good for other things, like racing.

Then they’re race boards. Race boards are extremely fast, but really no good for doing tricks. If you are a hardcore racer, you’d want one of these.

I personally ride a freestyle board, cause I spend most of my time in the terrain park doing tricks. So, different boards are made for different kinds of riding, so everyone can get the most out of their snowboarding experience.

Have a sick time tearing that mountain up.