| Learning the Coleman Slide, (aka heelside slide, frontside slide, Bert slide, layback, etc) Let's start by getting into the drop knee stance. sample pics of drop knee stance (pic 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) It's a deep crouch with your rear knee pointing towards your front foot. Your rear foot is resting on its arch, not just on your toes. Your ability to get into the drop knee stance smoothly and get down low is one of key to performing good slides. Notice your lower legs are triangulated, this put you in a stable locked stance. Learning the coleman, aka heel side slide 180 (You should be able to learn this on the flats. Remember, short wheelbase and harder wheels makes it easier to learn.) Push hard, get some speed and drop into the drop knee stance. Slap your leading hand on the ground and lean hard on your heel side. Lead the rotation with your shoulder and guide the slide with your other hand. Raise your 'guiding hand' for balance. Due to centrifugal force, you can drop you butt even lower and behind the deck. Did you slide ? Did the wheels break traction ? If you didn't slide, you need more speed or more rotation. But don't try to compensate for bad technique (read lack of rotation), by keep adding more speed. As I said before, you should be able to break into a slide on the flats. If you got pitched over, aka high side, put more weight on your supporting hand and less weight on the board. Get low and behind the board. Think low CG. If you landed on your ass, don't push out the board with your feet or reach out too far with your supporting hand. Use you kicktail to kickturn 180 back to regular. Note, some people like to slide with both hands on the ground. It makes for easier balance and takes more weight off the wheels. But, the advantage to sliding with one hand is more torsal twist allowing faster rotation and more twist control. Some also slide by rail grabbing which might feel more locked in. But beware of highsiding as you weight, aka CG, is higher and closer to the roll axis of your board. Also, if you yank too hard, you will tilt you deck on its sides. I usually try to steer riders away from rail grabbing. Once you get comfortable with heel side slide 180 to switch, it's time to try the pendulum slide, or basically two consecutive 180 heel side slides to get you back to your regular stance. For this you need more speed, slide into 180 switch, continue to weigh your heelside edge, you will slide 180 back to regular. You can also delay the 180 back to regular by riding switch in drop knee stance with sliding hand down. Also, I like to put my front foot near the front truck thus moving my CG closer to the front wheels, using it as a pivot point. There are more slide variations, toe side slide, toe side pendulum, sliding around turns, 360 slide, Cliff slide, etc. I will try to post more later about this other slides. |
| What about standing slides or check slides? Standing slides are quite impressive. They are harder to perform and involves more risk of injury when you fall. Watch great footage of standing slides done by Darryl Freeman in the Monkey and Slide Show. Also watch Sergio Yuppie for amazing standing 360 and 540 slides in the Flow video. In the Monkey video, you will notice that Darryl will slide to switch and ride switch for a bit and slide back to regular. If one doesn't like sliding to switch, you can do 'check slides'. (the Animal Chin video have good footage of this.) Darryl slides on a short deck with kicktail using Krypto green 82a ClassicK's and Indy 215's. Sergio slides on a new school deck with hard wheels. |
| More Sliding Tips (from the NCDSA forum) general tips - pendulum, drop knee misc tips wheels for sliding cornering technique footbraking technique |
| Cornering with Slider Gloves (sample pic from 2001 Gravity Games) The low crouch cornering technique with the slider glove down allows for greater stability and control for tight corners. Loss of traction can be controlled when the rider is in this 'tripod' position. Heelside cornering is easier and safer than toeside due to the lower CG of the drop stance. When you fall, you usually just land on your butt. Toeside cornering is more challenging as your cg is higher and you are more up on your toes. Loosing control usually results in highsiding. When riding in open traffic, be more conservative on toeside turns, as loosing control will send you into the oncoming traffic. (This is for you regular footers riding in countries where one rides on the right side of the road.) A great place to learn is the 180 bend in a parking garage. Once you get use to this, you can try faster corners. For super tight right-hand corner (left-hand corners for you goofy footers), Cliff slide is a great option. First, pull that first 180 slide to switch right before entering the corner. Go through the corner switch, often easier to drop two hands on the ground when doing this. When you round the corner, slide 180 back to regular. (gravityboarding.com have some footage of Cliff Coleman performing the Cliff slide) |
| Check out SurfaceMotion.com for good info on surf style skating and standing slides. |
| Sliding Techniques |
| Note, a tip for all you guys learning. Visual learning is the best way to learn. Get your hand on those videos that I mentioned. (Highly recommend the Future Primitive video) A vhs with slow-mo and frame-by-frame is one of your best tool when learning sliding or any other moves. |
| Foot Braking The traditional way to slow down is footbraking. While it might be a easy move to learn and do at lower speeds, it requires more skill (a balance act) to do at higher speeds. Some downhill racers can perform footbrakes up to 60mph. However, there is also the increase danger of a hard fall when you mess up from high speed footbraking. Notice that you will see more footbraking action amongst downhill and slalom racers, espcially in the shut down area due to the close proximity of the riders. |
