One thing that’s become more popular in snowboarding recently are asymmetrical snowboards.
What does this mean? And what are the advantages of an asymmetrical snowboard?
What are Asymmetrical Snowboards?
Asymmetrical boards, sometimes just referred to as asym, can be asymmetrical in a few different ways:
- Asymmetrical sidecut
- Asymmetrical contact points
- Asymmetrical flex
First let’s take a look at asymmetrical sidecut, which is the most common form of asymmetry in snowboards.
Asymmetrical Sidecuts
A board has an asymmetrical sidecut when the heel edge of the snowboard has a deeper sidecut – (i.e. smaller sidecut radius) compared to the toe edge. Technically it could be the other way around and you could still call it asymmetrical, but that wouldn’t give you the advantages, which we’ll take a look at further down the page.
For example, let’s take the YES Greats 156. The heel edge has a sidecut raduis of 6.3m and the toe edge has a sidecut radius of 6.8m. Note that a smaller number in sidecut radius means that the sidecut is deeper.
Asymmetrical Contact Points (shorter heelside sidecut)
This usually goes hand in hand with an asymmetrical sidecut. Basically what it means is that the contact point on the toe side is further along the sidecut than the heel side, which is closer to the center of the board, if that makes sense! The image might help. It’s usually only subtly, as is the case with the sidecut difference, to the naked eye.