How to Butter on a Snowboard
Butters are where riding gets even more fun, and they’re harder than they look. In this episode of The SNÖ Report, Coach Joe [see video} walks through how butters work, how to progress into them, and how our students practice the movement before trying it in motion.
START WITH THE PRESS
Every butter starts with a press. The idea is to shift all of your weight to one side of the board or the other. Shift toward the front and you’re in a nose press. Shift toward the back and you’re in a tail press.
You want to lean your body all the way across. Once you get to a certain point, you can start lifting your pull foot, the foot opposite the one you’re pressing on. It’s a tricky move. It takes a lot of balance, as well as stability in the leg over your press foot.
FROM PRESS TO BUTTER
A press becomes a butter when you do it on an edge. On the heelside edge, that gives you a heelside tail butter and a heelside nose butter. The idea is the same as a press, just done on an edge.
ADDING ROTATION
From there, butters can be done while rotating. Our coaches work through a frontside tail butter and a switch frontside tail butter (which, ridden switch, is really a nose butter), then a frontside nose press and a switch frontside nose press.
THE DRILL: PRACTICE ON THE BAR FIRST
Our students usually practice butters on the bar with the carpet off, meaning the revolving slope isn’t moving. With the carpet stopped, they can hold onto the bar to stabilize themselves while they work the movement.
The goal is to shift all of your weight out and reach your body in the opposite direction from where you’re pressing, while also pulling. The bar lets you really exaggerate that movement, in both directions.
BRINGING IT INTO MOTION
Once you’re moving, there’s one more piece to add: a little lift on the edge, on top of the press and pull.