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Frank (Excerpt)

My Progress Apr 20, 2025

workon_20.04.2025

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Josh Brower

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Lift Notes

⤷ means “has the effect of…”

👌 Nice

Great awareness, great instincts and body control to try to counter rotate to align the board.

🛫 On the takeoff

1. Edge on pop bad, this is going to affect your rotation. Make sure to keep a flat base on the entire run in and keep the knees bent, loose yet strong.

Remember to think about "flattening the feet" on the pop.

2. I think you are using speed to compensate for lack of pop. Slow down the speed and increase the pop. ⤷ You’ll get more time on the lip and your body will have the time to pop harder. Going too fast is going to make that more difficult.

👁️ Head & eyes

Like with your singles, remember to look where you are going on the takeoff. Blind hucking as hard as possible into pow is fun but doesn’t get good results or build good habits! Like we previously talked about, throwing the head back feels like you are doing everything you can to generate more rotation, but is actually hindering your timing & control. ⤷ This reduces the effectiveness of the parts of your body that are actually generating the flip.

💥 Generating flip


For the wildcat, focus on your back arm starting aligned with the board and following through with it coming across the front of your body. ⤷ This is going to keep you aligned. Remember, the back arm sets your axis on wildcats.
I suspect you are opening your front shoulder right now in order to get more “huck”. By opening that front shoulder, you are throwing like a you're trying to do a double laid out backy when in reality you are aiming for a double wildcat. That front shoulder rotation is definitely contributing to the bit of frontside rotation that is causing the toe edge landing. ⤷ Focusing on following through with your back arm is going to get you that missing rotation, making the front shoulder opening up not feel like a necessity. ⤷ A bonus is that the arm ends up in the perfect spot to get the indy grab that you are looking for.

🏡 At home / off snow


On the floor at home, get very familiar with that back arm motion for setting the axis.


Or / after: on a trampoline or diving board, practice that wildcat rotation. Really using the back arm and bringing it in front of your chest. You'll also get to practice the head movements for spotting the landing.

https://storage.tally.so/b1578a5d-a158-41a7-b58d-ffa3b8061fe1/shipAsset-2-wildcat-huck-backarm.webp

❄️ When riding

Dial it back and really nail down singles. Get super comfortable, build good habits. ⤷ You’ll feel less “time dilation” and feel like there’s more time in the air for spotting that landing. ⤷ You will know how to adapt better in the air and be able to bring the same thing to doubles when you’re more ready. One mid-air thing I'd recommend keep working on is just to really bring the board into the body and get even smaller.
Doubles have much higher consequences, so we really want to have the fundamentals on lock before really starting to send doubles.

My Progress Apr 5, 2025

workon_05.04.2025

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Josh Brower

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Lift Notes

⤷ means “has the effect of…”

💪 Improvements since last time

A bit more stacked on takeoff and making a big effort to pop as hard as you can off the takeoff. You are going bigger and getting more amplitude as a result (but do watch out for trees!) Awesome.

⚡️ Continue...

Remember to continue working on the timing of the downwards push of the pop and push the board into the curvature of the ramp. Boost even bigger.

Remember to avoid hunching the spine on the pop! This will help you get even more stacked.

✋ Feel, don't look

You're having a difficult time spotting the landing because your eyes are staring at the toe edge and looking for the indy grab. Feel for the grab, just like how you’d feel the pedals of your car. ⤷ Your head is free to actually look for the landing.

I suspect part of the reason why you are looking for the grab is because you are doing the "stiffy" — with the legs straight, the board is so far away and you'd need to visually aim your hand just to reach the board. ⤷ If you really think about pulling the board into your body and flexing the knees to bring in the lower legs, and not purely relying on folding at the waist, it will be much easier to get the grab and you won't need to look for it.

🤏 Get smaller

As a continuation of the previous point, flex the core and get small.

Like you mentioned, smaller means you rotate faster, giving you more time to spot the landing. This will feel like you have way more airtime. It's as you hypothesized, it's about having a bigger difference in rotational speed between "tucked mode" and "opened up mode". And the faster you can react and transition into either mode, the more adaptive & precise your flip will be. AKA the faster you can get small, the faster you can potentially flip, giving you more time to spot the landing and open up early.This is how the pros seem to be able to nail these first try and look effortless doing it.

⤷ This is how you can spot the landing earlier and actually time your opening up. You'll get that rotational control you’re looking for.

🏡 At home

Work the core muscles. Simulate the tuck & grab with tuck jumps on the floor, bringing the knees all the way up. Get the tuck motion to be as fast as possible.

❄️ On snow

Practice grabbing and just getting as small as possible while doing it. Whenever straightairing, grab. Get those reps in.

My Progress Jan 13, 2025

workon_13.01.2025

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Josh Brower

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Lift Notes

⤷ means “has the effect of…”

👍 Hell yeah

You are riding in with intent and commitment. Especially when learning to go upside down, the mental game is so important. Good stuff.

🥞 More stacked on approach


Currently, not very stacked on the run in. Hunched upper body. This makes it tough to pop with a perfectly flat base. Try to get a more upright upper body with more bend in the knees, tucking the butt in and keeping hips over the middle of the board.

When you're more stacked, it’s going to be a lot easier for you to be laterally centred on the board (aka not even a little bit on an edge). ⤷ This is going to make it easier for you to pop, be more balanced in the air while popping harder, increasing confidence as a result.

🚀 Pop!

Theres not much popping going on right now when you flip!

If you’re not popping, you’re at the mercy of the jump — however the jump shoots you, that’s how much air you are getting. However the jump bucks you, that’s how quickly you're flipping.

⤷ If we pop, we get more airtime with the same speed, and you get to dictate your own rotation speed. I know you want to be able to lace backflips even when hitting a kicker for the first time. This is how we get that control & consistency.

🦶 How to think about pop

A very important note on popping: really focus on pushing your board into the ground, instead of just “jumping” right at the end. Try to “flatten the feet”. This means you push down on the board to shape to the curve of the lip.

The difference here is that you will push your board down over a longer period of time vs just trying to do an instantaneous jump at the end of the lip. This will cause your board to better mold to the curve of the jump. (Mikey Ciccarelli describes this very well in his video) Put differently, your pop starts well before you reach the end of the lip. Gradually push down as you go up the kicker with a snap release at the end.

This is important for for 2 reasons:

1. You have more time to get balanced and feel more control in the air since the downwards force from your legs is a bit more spread out over time, giving your body more time to read & react to the shape of the lip.

2. Your board is a spring by nature. By better molding your board to the shape of the jump (by giving it more time & force), the board will curve more. You are essentially loading more energy into the board, resulting in it springing more when released, giving you more amplitude.

When just riding, aim to pop constantly as hard as you can. This is how you teach your body the timing and ability to read the lip. Practice is key. If you think about Arthur Longo's pop, that is a result of years of going to the moon on every hit.

⤷ Boost bigger!

👈 Push hips to flip

Like many things in life, it's all about how you use the hips.

Your flip comes from pushing the hips forward, not throwing your head back. I can see you already use the hips a bit, but they stop halfway and there's no follow through. More!


⤷ Not only will this give you the ability to flip harder, it automatically puts you in the arched back position that is so good for spotting your landing early and adjusting your rotation in the air.


To train yourself to flip with the hips (rather than just riding off the jump and chucking the head back): try to not tilt your head back until you are fully off the lip. Since you get to look forwards for a split second, this has the added benefit of giving you a sneak peak of where you are going / how much air you are going to get, contributing to your in-air control.

👀 Spotting landing


I can see you have the instinct & awareness to look for the landing, just crane the neck even more! Really try to look for that landing.


A back arch is going to allow you to see your landing even earlier. Like you said, right now you are folding at the waist mid-air which is limiting how much you can see since your upper body is not letting your head tilt back as far.


Instinctively, it feels scary to crane your neck because of the fear of under-rotating and landing on your head. Your pop is going to give you more airtime, and this will allow you to be way more comfortable craning your neck. 

🏡 Try at home

Practice the motion of the hips and feel the timing. Get comfortable with the feeling of using the hips generate flip. You're already somewhat doing it, let's nail down the follow through.

https://storage.tally.so/616a8956-6ce4-427a-8987-7bba182e42b3/rawAsset-11-hipthrust-steps.webp

💭 What to think about when riding


- More stacked on takeoff: push the hips a little more towards your toe side. (Careful not to overcorrect.) Your hips should be directly above the middle of the board.

- Pop instead of letting the jump kick you.
- When popping, think about “pushing the board down into the jump and flattening the feet”. Remember that your pop starts well before you reach the lip

- Aim to pop as hard as you can everywhere. This practice trains your body to read and time the lip, adapting over time. When flipping, this gives you the instinctual understanding of the interplay between pop timing / amount & your rate of flipping.

- Push with the hips to flip, not the head.

- Really crane the neck midair to spot the landing earlier.


- Eyes forward till you are fully off the lip.

My Progress Mar 30, 2023

workon_30.03.2025

Feedback from Dom

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Dom Oshanek

Evaluator for CASI 4 & Park 2, CASI National Technical Team Alumnus, 2023 CASI In ...
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Lift Notes

⤷ means “has the effect of…”

🦛 All in the hips!

All the points below are centred around hip positioning!

🔪 Setup carve

Currently, your hips are way inside of the carve on your takeoff AKA “sitting down”, with very high edge angles.

⤷ Your heel side takeoff carve is very aggressive & small radius as a result. A consequence and indicator of that is fact that you have a lot of lateral travel in the air.

Try to get your hips directly above your board. Visually, it should look like your butt is directly vertically above your heel edge, no further. It's important to pay attention to the first toe side carve. If you are super aggressive there, your heel side carve will mirror it. Vice versa.

🙎‍♂️ Upper body freedom

On heel side spins, your shoulders should be able to get to parallel with the lip (as max range of motion) when generating spin (even more on backside). Currently not getting to fully parallel.
You’d get much more range of motion / rotation & have an easier time / more mobility when your centre of mass closer to being on top of the board. Currently, being so far out, the legs jam up the hips and don’t allow it rotate freely.
⤷ This is how you can feel like you have a much easier time generating frontside spin.

🍾 Unintentional cork

Also, because your board is so far out to the side (to the right of the screen) relative to your centre of mass, that creates an additional lever (vertically CCW on screen) around your centre of mass. I know you’re into physics so in those terms: your accidental torque is causing your axis to precess.


⤷ This is how you feel more control over your spin axis and better in the air.

🦵 Free legs & knees → pop & grab

Hips over board also frees up your legs & knees to allow you to pop.


By the same token, it’s going to allow you to retract your legs much quicker in the air and get more compact (and get the grab).


⤷ This is how you get more pop & have an easier time grabbing.

🏡 Try at home

Try and feel the difference in your ability to rotate the upper body when stacked vs hips folded. You’ll see that you’ll have a much easier time with the former position. Stand on the floor in your riding stance and simulate being stacked over the board vs having a fold at the waist when standing. To simulate folding at the waist AKA “sitting down” over the edge of the board, just bend forward when you are standing (since you don't have the centrifugal force of a carve to maintain the dynamic balance in that position).

💭 To focus on when riding


1. Look towards the corner of the jump instead of straight off the lip. This is a trick to help with timing the opening / rotation of the shoulders, getting the hips over the board, and reducing edge angle. 2. Actively check your hip position relative to your heel edge.

3. On the setup carve, your first toe side turn is going to determine your heel side takeoff carve. Get your toe side carve to be way less aggressive and your heel side carve will mirror it.

4. On approach to the jump, get your hips over the board from the get go. Stand up a bit taller, think “do less”, keep the knees loose.

🎯 Target indicators


- Hip position: is it over the board? Even on the run in?

- Setup carve: is your toe side carve super chill?

- Edge angle: is it as subtle as possible while maintaining grip?

- Upper body mobility: do you feel free to spin the upper body?

- Pop & ease of grab: do you feel like your legs are free to retract and extend?

- Travel: how much lateral travel is there in the air?