For the takeoff, we want to use a heel to toe approach, approaching the jump on our heels on the right side (if we’re regular), and switching to our toes while we’re going up the ramp.

When we get close to the takeoff, we want to start spinning our head, shoulders and arms, backside to initiate the spin.

As soon as our head gets over our back shoulder, we’ll be able to see the landing, and float the rest of the trick.

Our head is basically going to be ahead of our board the whole time, which can sometimes look like a shifty on this trick, where our board is fighting to catch up in the air.

Now, I have the bad habit of bending over, touching the snow, pre-spinning and generally leaning in to the spin too hard.

With backside spins it’s ok to lean in a little more than most tricks, but if you do it too much, something like this will happen (digging in too hard off the mogul 360)

You want to make sure you stand up straight off the jump, keep your head high, and wait to spin your board, especailly off bigger jumps. Your board should be completely straight, and you only need a slight pressure on the toe edge. DOn’t dig in too hard.

Alex forgot to do that here, and he almost landed right on me. That’s because he leaned in to his toeside edge too hard and pulled it off the lip.

If you don’t go off straight, you’ll drift, which is also part of the reason Tara Dakides fell off the side of the Letterman ramp on a backside 360, that and not enough snow on the takeoff so when she turned her board, it threw her even more than usual.

You can use a little bit of windup, like a top with this trick, but the bigger the jump, the less windup is needed.

Now most people make the mistake of spinning on the same axis in which they took off, which causes you to land in the backseat.

The way to counteract this is to put the weight of your body over your back foot when you’re 180 degrees through the spin. At this point this foot will be in front, but this is your back foot when you land.

If we spin our weight over the back foot, and look down your back shoulder for the SECOND half of the 180 we’ll come around and land nice and even. Looking over our back shoulder is going to give us a perfect view of the landing.

If you find yourself landing in the backseat, try putting your weight over your right foot in the air in the second half of the spin (if you’re regular, and your left foot (if you’re goofy).

If you still can’t fix the backseat issue, practice your half cabs.

Chances are, if you can’t land the back 3, you aren’t very good at haflcabs. Again, it’s ok to cork the backside 360, you don’t have to flatten out the spin entirely, you just have to learn how to shift your weight to the landing gear. The easist way to learn that shift is practicing half cabs which simulate the landing of a backside 360.

Like most tricks, the spin is all in your shoulders on the takeoff.

After that, it’s just floating down to the ground, and since you can see the landing, it’s incredibly easy to land as long as you have the right weight. A lot of times, people will land on their heel edge, which is perfectly fine, but if you want to keep your speed up for the next jump, try to land as flat base as possible on this one.

I would never recommend that someone intentionally land on their heel edge.

But.. The other cool thing about the landing on this trick is, if you come up short, you can lean back on your heels and scrub around the rest of the trick. Just make sure that’ if you’re coming up 270 that you’re on your heels, and not your toes, otherwise you could faceplant like Ben here.