More Boxes!

This might have been my last day of local riding. The conditions were slick in the morning, and soft by afternoon.

In the morning I went back to the little terrain park trail. It has a few jumps, a small rail, a pipe, and a flat rectangular box. Last week I tried going over the box, and only once had a clean landing. Today I had three in a row. I won’t qualify for the U.S. Slopestyle Open anytime soon, but hey, it’s progress.

The key to going over a box–or at least what I had to work on–is to stand with bent knees, but no bend in the waist. Bending over could make you slide off the box entirely before you really want to and it could also give you an awkward landing.

Check some speed before you slide onto the box, be centered from tip to tail, heel to toe, slide on and then off. A little mental trick somebody told me is to imagine that you have a flashlight on your belt buckle. Don’t point it into the sky, or at the ground. Just straight out.

As for the landing, I have had no trouble sticking the landing as long as I have good form on the box itself.