Speed check, sightline check, landing in the sweet spot: six stages to your first straight air in the park — and the list of when you deliberately do not jump.
A straight air is the plain jump over a built kicker: no rotation, no grab, just approach, takeoff, flight and landing. It is decided not at the lip but beforehand — through the speed check and through a proper look at the landing. The flight itself is the easy part. What you really learn here is a decision.
Why that is meant seriously shows in the statistics: in an analysis of ski-patrol reports from two ski areas in two western US states (2000–2005), 26.7 percent of the recorded injured people were hurt in the terrain park, and their injuries were more often severe (including fractures, head or spine injuries, ambulance transport), with elevated risk to the head (RR 1.31) and back (RR 1.96) [1]. The park is not a more dangerous sport, but it is a place where mistakes get expensive.
The good news sits in the construction. When researchers measured 23 kickers in three dimensions over one Swiss winter, the medium-sized kickers met the recommendations of the national accident prevention body: a low-impact zone over six metres long and an equivalent fall height below 1.5 metres across the entire table; at some sections, though, the values exceeded 1.5 metres [2]. Equivalent fall height means the landing impact matches a drop from that height onto flat ground — 1.5 metres, so roughly off a tabletop. A built park kicker forgives you a fair amount. A home-made pile of snow at the piste edge does not.
This list is not negotiable. Anyone who cannot tick it off is not jumping — just falling with a run-up.
Before anything happens, you walk around the kicker, not over it — precisely what the freestyle terrain code means by "Look Before You Leap" [3]. Learn the four parts: the in-run, the takeoff, the flat table behind it and the sloping landing, whose top edge is called the knuckle. Milestone: you can show your partner all four parts and name the point you intend to land on — upper half of the landing, not the knuckle, not the flat run-out.
This is the actual skill, and it costs you half an hour. Roll over the takeoff without leaving the ground and see where you end up. Then move your starting point uphill in small increments — fixed to a solid object, not to a feeling. Milestone: you hit the same point three times in a row at recognisably the same speed.
A straight air is doing nothing at a high level — and doing nothing takes practice. On a flat piste: extend from the legs, skis flat and parallel, hands in your lower field of view, eyes forward on the landing point rather than down. Milestone: ten small jumps on the piste without your hands drifting behind your hips.
Now put it together, on the smallest feature of the beginner line, even if it feels ridiculous. Approach from your practised starting point, quiet basic stance, and simply let the legs extend at the lip. Do not pull, do not resist. Milestone: three jumps landing on both skis simultaneously in the upper half of the landing, riding away.
The landing is the part that costs knees. In a video analysis of 20 World Cup ACL injuries, the back-weighted landing accounted for 20 percent of cases (4 of 20) as its own described injury mechanism [4]. Translated: land behind your feet and you have no chance to correct. Milestone: five landings with shin contact to the boot tongue, without catching yourself with your arms.
A bigger kicker or more speed or a new park — never two at once. Every new feature starts again at stage 1. Milestone: eight out of ten jumps in the sweet spot before you change feature.
The most important part of this guide is a list of situations in which you do not jump:
That is not timidity, it is the heart of the matter. In the US analysis, terrain park injuries were more often severe and disproportionately involved head and back [1]. In a review, a helmet lowered the frequency of minor and moderate head injuries but not the number of deaths [5]; an analysis of Canadian parks also found no link between higher helmet use and fewer reported head injuries [7]. A helmet does not replace a decision you make up at the top of the in-run.
The freestyle terrain code puts it in four sentences: make a plan, look before you leap, start small, show respect [3]. "Start small" is meant literally.
Then the FIS rules that bite hardest in a park: look uphill before setting off or moving off, and stop only at the edge and where you can be seen [6]. In a park that means concretely: never stand behind a kicker or in the landing, where nobody can see you.
And the clear boundary: what stands here is the progression to a straight jump on small, built kickers. Rotations, grabs, inverts and large features are their own progression with coaching, an airbag or a water ramp. This guide explains and motivates, but it does not replace supervised instruction.
Practise the bail-out before you practise the jump. Ride past the kicker deliberately at least once — planned, at full approach speed, peeling off only just before it. It sounds silly and it is the most valuable run of the day: anyone who has never ridden the bail-out will jump anyway when in doubt, because backing out otherwise feels like failure. Once practised, it becomes an option.
The second trick makes the speed check repeatable: mark your starting point on a solid object — a piste sign, a net post, a snow edge. "Roughly up here" is not a starting point, it is a source of error.
In a park the winner is not the bravest rider but the one with the most reliable approach.
Through repetition, not feel. First roll over the takeoff without jumping, note where you end up, then move your starting point uphill in small steps, marked on a solid object. Never change more than one variable per attempt. Other riders are a poor yardstick — different weight, different equipment.
Both have their own failure mode, but the short jump onto the knuckle is the harder impact, because you land on almost flat ground. Well-built kickers soften exactly that: on the measured medium kickers, equivalent fall height stayed below 1.5 metres across the entire table [2]. That is build quality, not a free pass.
Usually because you land back-weighted and the impact goes unsprung into your spine. That position is also documented as an injury mechanism: back-weighted landings made up 20 percent (4 of 20) of the analysed World Cup ACL ruptures [4]. Land centred over the binding, with shin contact to the boot tongue, and absorb actively through knees and hips.
Not mandatory, but sensible. In the US analysis, terrain park injuries disproportionately involved back (RR 1.96) and head (RR 1.31) [1]. The helmet is a given, the protector the obvious addition — neither replaces the decision to skip a feature.
Do not. A home-made takeoff lacks everything that makes a park kicker predictable: a measured landing, a long enough low-impact zone, a clear run-out and a view of what lies beyond [2]. On top of that, nobody expects jumping people there. Use the official park and its beginner line [3].
Skiing Switch: Learning to Ski Backwards, Step by Step