SWITCH DOUBLE CORK PROGRESSIONS
How Elite Freestyle Athletes Build Toward the Hardest Tricks in the Sport
How Elite Freestyle Athletes Build Toward the Hardest Tricks in the Sport
If you’ve watched elite freestyle skiing or snowboarding and wondered how athletes are spinning four and a half rotations while flipping twice… (backwards?!) you’re looking at a switch double cork.
It’s one of the most technically demanding skills in freestyle sports. And it doesn’t happen overnight. It happens through intentional training, a foundation of coaching, repetition, and the right environment.
Coach Keith Shipman, SNÖBAHN’s Freestyle and Fitness Director, demonstrates switch double cork progressions here: starting at a 720 and working all the way up to a 1620.
What is a Switch Double Cork?
A double cork is two off-axis inversions performed within one jump, combined with horizontal spin rotation. The trailing number tells you the degrees of spin.
Switch means taking off from your unnatural stance: the opposite foot forward from where you’d normally ride. It’s the difference between writing with your dominant hand and writing with your other hand, then doing it while flipping twice.
Switch tricks are considered significantly harder than their forward counterparts. The takeoff is partly blind. You’re operating on your weaker side. And unlike a spin where you can open early and back out, once you’re inverted in a cork, you’re committed all the way through.
The Progression
Coach Keith demonstrates here: 720 through 1620. Each step adds rotation, builds on what came before it, and demands a level of air awareness and body control that only comes from putting in the reps.
Switch Dub 720 → 900 → 1080 → 1260 → 1440 → 1620
The difference between a 1080 and a 1260 isn’t just degrees on paper – it’s a completely different feel in the air, a different landing, and a different level of commitment required to get there.
The Facility That Makes It Possible
SNÖBAHN’s ecosystem is built around this exact intentional training: revolving slopes, performance trampolines, big air jump into a sloped airbag, and a high performance fitness gym. Every station. Every tool. Every coach. All under one roof.
If switch double corks are on your list, or if you’re just starting to build toward your first freestyle tricks, this is where that work gets done.
Watch the SNÖ Report video below to see every progression
Start stomping those corks! Learn from our Freestyle Coaches
How To Land Your First Switch Double Cork
The mountain isn’t where you learn switch double corks. The mountain is where you land them after you’ve already learned them somewhere safer.
The real progression happens off-snow first. Trampolines let you drill the airborne phase of a trick, the flip mechanics, the spin timing, when to spot, when to open, hundreds of times without the consequence of a hard landing. You learn what your body needs to do before you ever take it to a jump.
At SNÖBAHN, that progression is built into the facility. Performance trampolines for drilling mechanics and building air awareness. A big air jump into a sloped airbag for taking tricks off a real kicker in a controlled environment: where you can try something you don’t know how to land yet and recover safely. A coaching staff that guides you through each stage, making sure the foundation is right before you move to the next step.
“The goal is to learn the mechanics without equipment first – to understand what your body has to do to make a trick happen, and then add the skis or snowboard once that awareness is locked in.” – Keith Shipman (Freestyle and Fitness Director)
That’s how you build from a 720 to a 1620. Not by going bigger on the mountain. By getting better in the gym, on the trampoline, and with a coach who knows exactly where you are and what comes next.