What makes a freestyle board "freestyle"?
Making your decision when buying a freestyle board is often dictated by the mountain and terrain where you ride. Bigger airs/bigger mountain = bigger board. More complicated tricks = smaller, wider board. Next, the freestyle board needs a soft flex with a springy tail for ollies. The mounting pattern works best if it's centered to make it easy for riding forward or backward. That also helps with bi-directional landings. Shapes today fall into a few categories - blunt, short noses, round twin tips or directionals where the tail may be a little shorter, are a few. Sidecuts range from shallow to deep. The deeper the sidecut the quicker the turn, but you'll sacrifice stability if it's too edgy.

What is freeriding?
Freeriding is the essence of snowboarding. It maintains the middle ground between other styles and then rockets off into its own direction. Simply stated, freeriding is to take the best line from the top of the mountain to the bottom. Sometimes [often] this means going off the groomed run, over rocks, through trees [very fast], in powder, on hardpack, through crud. It maintains the loosest definition because it is never to be defined. It's where snowboarding began and it's where it will go. Everyone who rides can do it, but some can do it way better. It will always defy organized competition and rightly so; it's not meant to be judged except by yourself. It is pure snowboarding. It is statistically the most dangerous type of riding because of its essential relationship with unmodified, natural terrain.

What makes a freeride board "freeride"?
The best freeride boards are hybrids of other types and technologies. It's the style that borrows the best of each design and makes it work perfectly in its environment. Freerides are generally longer than freestyle and slalom/carve boards, but they have characteristics of each. The nose may be longer than the tail; this is good in powder or crud. The bindings are generally set back a couple centimeters so the board will float in powder. The Relative Flex is somewhat firmer. The tail is firmer for control in deep powder and on landings and the boards have a high degree of torsional stiffness to insure good edge hold and snappy carves. If you have a need for speed, freeriding boards are where you want to go. If you don't want speed, stick to the groomed or the ground.

There are 2 main types of freestyle/freeride boards. Directional freeriding boards are best when going forward. They have a shorter, stiffer tail and a set-back stance. The stance offset varies from board to board. The further back the stance is offset, the better the board will be in powder and crud. Twin tips have identical noses and tails, with a centered stance, sidecut and camber. They can be mounted centered for pipe and park riding or can be shifted back of center for an all mountain directional feel.

Generally, Directional boards are best for carving and powder and Twin Tips are best for freestyle. Twin Tips can be adapted to big mountain freeriding applications by simply shifting the bindings back a couple of inches. So, if there's a big powder dump just move the bindings back and let it rip.