Frontside Boardslide

Hi, Anyone got any advice on how to do frontside boardslides (facing up the hill). I can do backside boardslides and am currently trying to learn how to do frontside without much success. The way I am doing them at the moment is to go along the rail 50:50 and then turn to fs bs. However, I am finding that I seem to always have to much weight over my leading foot and go of the grind pole that way.
I`ve read at skateboarding websites that you are supposed to keep your shoulders inline with the rail (which I haven`t tried yet). Anyone got any good advise that might help. Cheers Cocoa Monkey

First thing, you say that you want to do a boardslide facing up the hill. Well, that would be a BACKSIDE slide (aka Disaster slide). Unless of course, you are actually sliding UPHILL on the rail, then your description would be correct, but somehow I doubt that is what you`re doing. 8^) Anyway, back to FRONTSIDE slides: What is most likely happening to you is that you are a little apprehensive about transitioning from a 5-0 to boardslide so you start to move only ONE foot off to the side (in this case your front foot). That causes an unbalanced situation and you will quickly come off to the front foot side (but it`s also how you do a tail press slide, but your body had to lean way over). You must commit to the change and make a quick hip-based rotation to get BOTH feet to straddle the rail at the same time. It takes a little determination the first few times but keep trying. IMPORTANT TIP: Keep your body bent forward slightly at the waist so that you maintain weight on the board (of course not enough to catch the toe edge in the rail). If you stand too straight or lean back, you may end up with the rail permanently wedged between your butt cheeks. Ouch! (|) You can also do a 90 degree surface rotation just as you`re getting on to the rail IF the snow connects to the rail end. Otherwise you can do a little 90 degree jump onto the rail, but for now I would stick to the 50-50 to boardslide transition that I described above. -Ed

Hi Ed, Cheers for the message. However, I thought that with grinds whether something was frontside or backside was different to normal rotations. Something to do with skateboarding and the way you approach the grind pole (don`t ask me). Whatever it`s called do you have any advice about the grind where you face up the slope and not down it. Cheers Cocoa Monkey

will say two things: 1. I have never heard of a downhill facing boardslide being called backside. 2. There are many people on this newgroup who insist that they know what direction simple backside and fronside air rotations are and they have them backwards, so I will take any advice contrary to what *I* know with a grain of salt and say, fine, whatever. I will also say that terminology can get complicated when you do a 270 onto a rail. You can do a backside 270 into frontside boardslide (MY terminology). And you can do a frontside 270 to backside boardslide (again MY terminology). MAYBE this is what you guys are referring to. Maybe not. By the way, I have NOT ever done a 270 to railslide, but Kevin Jones does it all the time. OK, to the original poster. All my advide about making the move both feet at once would still apply if you are facing UPhill. Just don`t lean too far uphill or you might end up eating steel. Keep your body upright and just ever-so-slightly bent at the waist towards the uphill. Look back for the rail end and try to 90 just as you leave the rail to a ride away landing (usually for me, 90-ing to a switch landing works best but it could be diffeent for you). -Ed

technically you can`t do an indy grab off the frontside wall of a halfpipe (it`s call a frontside air, it`s only called a indy air if you do it off the backside wall). Anyway, I`m just repeating what I`ve been told as I was corrected twice by people who are more knowledgeable than me. Once by my friend who is a skateboarder (and darn good snowboarder) and later again by Preston Strout, a friend of my and pro-rider for Airwalk. In case you`re wondering about Preston - here`s an article about him in Transworld and a movie (889k) of him doing a corked 7 in competition.
So I totally understand your reasoning - in fact that`s what I thought before I was corrected. I`m still not sure if I have it completely right, but it was what I`ve been told and I`ve looked it up on the web and there appeared to evidence support this definition. Did someone specifically explain to your how the tricks are defined or did you try and figure it out by yourself - because apparently it is very hard to figure it out just by watching someone do it and seeing what people call it. Anyway, I`ve prepared a little evidence to support my case. Here are some website that use the same definition I`m using: http://www.wakeboarder.com/tricks/glossary.phtml http://gallery.consumerreview.com/snow/gallery/Forum/ message.asp?MsgI...
Here`s a really sweet skateboarding clip of someone doing a "backside boardslide", notice he is facing "downhill." http://www15.brinkster.com/footclansk8tes/ boardslide.htm
Here are some photos I found on the website. As you can see, here is an example of someone facing downhill on a backside boardslide (which you said you`ve never heard of): http://www.cps.msu.edu/~dunhamda/dw/sc/index.php3?pic=pic182.jpeg
FS BoardSlide http://ca.geocities.com/mt_snowboard/ fs_boardslide.html http://www.xgroup.net/andreas/erikjuhlin/pros/ pennyfsboardsld.jpg http://www.popcornskate.co.uk/fs-boardslide.asp confused at what happens with in that case. Here is a video of a fs 270 to b/s boardslide. Anyways, I`m just saying I used to think the same way as you Ed, but then I think I learned the "mostly correct" definition of it... sort of.

have a case. It would appear from your examples that you could look at the approach to a rail (from the side) just like an approach to a pipe wall. If you are regular, then slides approached from the left will be frontsides. Slides approached from the right will be backsides. Reverse all that for a goofy footer. Now here is a monkey wrench (which is shown in your example at http://ca.geocities.com/mt_snowboard/ fs_boardslide.html If you approach the rail from DIRECTLY behind it, go up 50-50 then rotate 90 BACKSIDE, why would it still be called a fronside boardslide? That makes no sense to me and that guy`s picture sequence supposedly for a backside boardslide links to the rail nosepress, so he may not be someone to trust on this either. At the least, if the skateboard terms are supposed to be used for snow slides, then it should be something like 50-50 to boardslide, with no approach orientation mentioned (since there is none). Anyway, good info and examples, I will ask others about this too. If you think about it, it seems really stupid to name 2 different tricks the same. According to your rules, if you approach a rail frontside, it would still be a frontside boardslide whether you slide down backwards or rotate to slide down forwards. Either case, it`s a frontside boardslide according to you, right? Doesn`t that see weird? -Ed

influenced from skateboarding terminology (as are a lot of snowboarding terms like cab/halfcab). There were some snowboarding links http://www.boardingphotos.co.uk/ksc08.JPG
In the photo sequence for the link, for me it looks like he`s a tiny bit to the left of the rail. However, I agree it gets muddled when you approach the rail from directly behind it. I repeat that while I think this is the way some people name these tricks, I`m only working on what people have told me - I could be wrong too. Or it could be this is just what people with skateboarding backgrounds call the tricks, there might be a snowboarding unique version of railslide tricks.
I definitely encourage you to do more research and ask people about it, that is exactly what I did the first time someone challenged my definition of the tricks and it`s what you should do whenever you are unsure about something. This is a big grey area of knowledge as few people seem to know what`s going on. where the tail goes over the obstacle first is called a "lipslide." So if you are rotate to slidedown forwards, you are probably doing a frontside lipslide. However, if you are directly behind the rail, again the terminology breaks down because BOTH the nose and tail cross over the plane of the rail at the same time.