How To Do A Butter On A Snowboard: Step by Step Process

This post will take you through step by step how to do a butter on a snowboard.

Not everyone has the same definition of a butter (snowboarding terms aren’t always consistent) but I’ll give you my take on what I consider to be a butter before taking you through how to perform them.

What is a Butter?

Whilst some people see manuals/wheelies as the same things as butters I consider them to be a whole different thing. Although learning to manual before learning to butter is a good idea as there are some similar principles involved but manuals are easier.

• How to do a manual on a snowboard

A basic butter, by my definition, is:

A turn which is performed by balancing on the nose or the tail and spinning 180 degrees.

How to Butter a Snowboard: Step by Step

Before you begin, learn how to manual properly (see link above). Once you are confident with manuals (a.k.a. presses, a.k.a. wheelies) then find a flat piece of ground to practice the spinning part of the trick.

Step 1:

• On flat ground (but still on snow): Raise the nose off the ground as if you were performing a stand still manual and spin around by twisting your torso and rotate your arms.
• Start out spinning in your most comfortable direction
• Then practice spinning in the other direction.
• You should be only spinning on your tail at this point

Step 2:

Now you’re ready to move onto the slope.

• Find as gentle a slope as you can – don’t be afraid to move back to the bunny slopes (as long as they aren’t too crowded!)
• Set yourself up into your tail manual and spin 180 degrees and land in your switch position.
• Ride out switch or spin back into your normal stance.

Step 3:

Repeat steps 1 & 2 above but this time practice on your snowboard’s nose. This is likely to be trickier and a little scarier. If you’re not comfortable doing this on the nose at first just stick with the tail butters. You can always try nose butters later on.

Step 4:

Once you are comfortable turning 180 degrees with your butters try rotating further

Variations

There are virtually endless variations you can do with butters. You can do full 360 degree (and more) turns – you can do a 180 off of a butter etc. Once you’ve learned the fundamentals play around and have fun with it.

Check out these videos for more variations and instruction

This videos are from Snowboard Pro Camp – they have heaps of great instructional videos for learning snowboard tricks.

Over to You

Thanks for checking out this post – I hope you are now more familiar with how to perform butters. Now it’s time to get out there and try them for yourself!

Also check out the link below for some more easy snowboarding tricks.

• Easy snowboard tricks you can start using right away

Note: I am not in any way a certified snowboard instructor and for best, fastest and safest results you should get lessons from a certified instructor.