Projects: Hybrid
Cruise Power
Wide Slide
B ackside Wide Slide
Skate
Cruise Power
Reef
Gear
Surf
History
Non Google Sponsors
Psychological help
Having just broken down a slide into lots of technical parts, you may be thinking "how can I think of all this stuff in the middle of a slide?" The answer is, you do and then you don't. You break down a trick piece by piece, thinking about each piece, and gradually put it together. Then after a bunch of tries you drill it into your body until you don't think about it. The goal is to have the ability to turn your mind off, and just react to skating situations, while having enough tools and techniques to use quickly without error. Or you can use your thinking for creative expression, coming up with new ideas now that old tricks are automatic.
Big board slides have a purpose, in making something routine like stand up sliding much more challenging. When you go back to a normal street longboard, slides should be much easier. To do a wide slide, big shapes are needed in your body language; arms way out, wider stance, good speed, and solid twists and torques. Without going big, you wont be able to get it around. When you go back to a 46 board, you can shrink up your stance and arms, relax a bit, and you'll still be able to whip it around, now in much more control. You should be able to think a little less having drilled slide initiation and check technique under tough conditions. Your mind should be freed up when you go back to your street longboard.
The backside wide slide is a little different. Aside from being in the opposite direction, the feel is different. I tend to use more torque, or "throw" when I'm sliding backside. I can do a slow twist slide backside, as you can see in Arcs: Slides. But it's tough, because the twist is uncomfortable and it's very blind. Here, I put more torque into it, compensate by checking out of it more, and just expect a backside wide slide to be a little more wild. A snapping rebound check or slightly rough kind of recovery often happens at the end.
Backside wide slide sequence
The first two frames show the wind up. My back hand moves forward as I turn my shoulders to the left.
This little wind up is a subtle difference from the frontside wide slide. Frontside, I flow right out of a pump arc into the twist for the slide. Backside, I make an extra preparation step by winding up my shoulders before cranking them the other way. It's a torque rotation set up, not a twist rotation set up.
In this frame I start to bear down and rotate in the direction of the slide, to the right, or clockwise. Usually I style this with my back arm a little lower than the front arm, which is at shoulder height.
My front hand now comes in front of my body. Strong clockwise rotation has begun. I look to the side and not forward. I don't want to slow the rotation by spotting forward; if anything I want to look back. My backside slides tend to be blind. It's always good to make sure nothing is coming into your blind spot.
Here you can see how the "backhand" twist increases. The rail deepens which gives me a good angle on the board to push back against. The back wheels break into a slide. The rotation is moving fast here. This motion is more like swinging a bat than the frontside, which was more of a slow twist. There's more sudden force thrown against the board.
Well into the backside slide now. You can see the twist by the folds in my shirt. The back hand (my right hand) leads the turn and the thumb down, tense hand styling is used. I dont move my head at all, I just let it come around with the board. Some skaters will spot too much and their rotation is killed by their head moving against the rotation.
You can see that relative to the last frame, my arms stay in exactly the same position while the board has moved quite far, almost another 90 deg. My legs moving underneath me have caused my upper body to untwist. You can see the folds in the shirt have gone. When watching skaters and trying to figure out which way they are really turning their bodies to do a trick, folds in the clothing can often be a clue.
As the board finishes the 180, some pressure must be used to slow the rotation, especially if a lot of torquing was used to throw the slide. You can see that the folds in my shirt have reappeared, this time on the other side, showing that I'm now twisting to counter clockwise. This twist is done to check the rotation, but it causes some winding up again.
Here I have snapped around in a rebound from the wind up check. I have quickly come around to face forward. As I mentioned, the feeling at the end is a little more violent than the ending of the frontside wide slide. In rebound checks like this I like to put my arms squarely in front to regain balance. Scott, my photographer for this project, calls this the "Ninja stance."
