The best snowboarding bindings can be extremely hard to find. Why? Because there are so many factors that go into the perfect fit, size, and style of the bindings to provide the perfect performance.
The feeling your snowboard produces while riding can vary greatly depending on how you set up your snowboard bindings. Your personal height, weight, and riding style should all be taken into great consideration when setting up your snowboarding bindings. When it comes down to properly setting up your bindings, there are a few major points to keep in mind. Your first decision to make is whether you will stand regular or goofy. "What does this mean?", you may be asking. Well, if you ride with your left foot in front of you, you are riding "regular" style. "Goofy" style, therefore, would be with the right foot in front.
Riding "regular" or "goofy" surprisingly doesn't have much relation to your dominant hand. It ends up being a simple personal preference.
This may leave you wondering how you will decide. If you are unaware of which style is more comfortable for you, think about what stance you create when you are sliding in your socks on a hardwood floor.
When standing on your board, you will want your feet to be spread wide. A wider stance gives you the greatest level of stability while a narrower stance lets you make sharper turns. Going with a wide stance is the safe and preferred route to take here.
A good method of finding a nice stance is by standing with your feet shoulder width apart and move them outwards until you find a comfortable position. After, you can measure the distance between your feet.
Then, you can mark the dimensions of your chosen stance next to the set of holes by stretching your measuring tape between the inserts. Always be sure that the distance to the tail is longer than the distance to the nose!
If you still have no idea what you are doing, then you are in luck because most boards give you a reference stance point that you can use to start.
In regards to how far you should be backwards or forwards on the board, this is once again a personal preference thing, but usually if you want to ride powder, then you want to set your stance backwards by about an inch. For riding park, you want a nearly centered stance. You could even go as far as completely centering it if you want.
For more information on setting up the best surfboarding bindings, check out Burton.
One mistake commonly made is putting the snowboarding bindings on the wrong way: buckles on the inside. Before you attempt to fix the bindings, be sure that they are placed on the board the right way.
Since it can be so tricky to get the best snowboarding bindings perfectly fitted, here is a short video to help you out!
Still unsure what this all means? go here to learn more!
