Snowboard bindings work overtime, performing triple duty for your riding setup. Not only do they have to keep you locked into your board via screws and straps, but they are also charged with efficiently transferring your motion to the edges, as well as being cush and cozy. Growing up as a young shredder in the early nineties, achieving this holy trinity meant a constant stream of modifications: adding padding, swapping out straps, and cutting and bolting were all done on the regular.

Luckily for the modern boarder, twenty years of snowboarding progression and R&D have gone down since then, and the 2010/11 list of binding offerings benefit from every year of innovation. Big on the agenda this season is flex and feel—the dynamic between softness and its counterpoint, stiffness, is being looked at from different angles, and both Burton and Technine have resurrected a binding tech with racing roots in the mid-eighties.

All these technologies have their pluses and minuses, and the best way to find out is to bring your boots and try ’em out.