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How to Frontside Standup 180 Slide

This is probably the eaisest standup longboard slide going, and as such, it’s a good one to start with as a first standup slide. It’s easy to learn at very slow speeds, and it’ll give you a feel for controlling your wheels without putting a hand on the road.

Once you get faster with this, you’ll find that this is one of the easiest slides to do at high speeds – partly because it’s very easy to run out of it it goes wrong. If you’re going too fast to run, you can just bail to your knees and slide it out… just make sure you have some good hardcap kneepads on!

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Get Ready

Start with your weight centered over the board, knees bent, relaxed. You don’t need to be going too fast at all for this, you can even practice on flat ground! Learning on a steeper hill will make it easier though as the body movements are less pronounced.

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Setup

Carve across to the other side of the road, ready to pop the slide.

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Get Low

As you approach the slide, start to turn in the direction that you want to slide. Bend your knees, keeping both feet flat on the board, and start to turn your head in the direction that you are rotating.

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Initiate

Start the slide off by carving hard over and popping your weight upwards to unweight the board. Keep your front arm low and relaxed, and swing your back arm around. You’ll feel your shoulders and body “open up” down the hill as you do this.

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Slide it out

Control the slide by leaning into your heel edge and balancing as the wheels slide across the road. At first, you might have a tendency to pivot around your front truck, with only the rear wheels breaking traction. Try to get all four wheels sliding by pushing your legs out and holding yourself facing down the hill for as long as you can.

You can hold this one out for a while by “stalling” the rotation with your arms and head – keep playing with it and you’ll get there.

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Hookup

Towards the end of the rotation, you should be aiming to get the full 180. To start with, try looking down at your board as you come in to “land,” and keep swinging your back (now your front!) arm around. Keep turning until your whole shoulders, body and board are in the opposite direction to when you started. As you get to 180, sink your weight back down into the board, and do a little followthough with your arms keeps the slide smooth.

You should now be rolling down the hill backwards (fakie), relaxed, ready to do something else. which brings us to…

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Revert

Now you’re riding along backwards, you need to be facing the right way again! Reverting back to your regular stance is just the same as the frontside 180, but backwards. Make sure that you approach low, pop your weight, and exaggerate your arm movements before, during and after the slide, and you’ll be fine. Many skaters actually find it easier to get facing back round the right way than the first 180!

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Next Step

Once you have got comfortable with this, the next obvious thing to try is a frontside powerslide. You can also just see how fast you can go into the 180, and how long you can hold it out for – just be careful not to hold it sideways too much or you will flatspot your wheels! You can also try to go 180 into a heelside corner, ride around the corner backwards and then 180 out of it, or go 180, do a few tricks in fakie, and then 180 back out. There are also no-comply variations of this trick, get creative and see what happens….

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