Hi, my name is Justin Lauria, and today I'm going to teach you how to do a
skateboard trick called a powerslide.
A powerslide is a trick that involves turning your board perpendicular to the direction
you're traveling and sliding your wheels on the ground. This maneuver can be used to slow
yourself down when you're skating at high speeds, but it's a trick by itself so you
can do them on their own or add them to a line as well.
One thing to note before you start doing this trick is that your wheels need to be made
out of something hard. Soft wheels are great for giving you extra traction and absorbing
bumbs in the road, but they're not going to slide along the ground very easily.
Worse yet, if you do get them to slide, you're going to file down a flat spot
on one side of each wheel.
Alright, so the easiest powerslide to learn is the frontside powerslide. It's called frontside
because you're going to be rotating your body so that the front side of your body will be
facing the the direction you're traveling.
In order to do a frontside powerslide, you want to make sure you're riding on a smooth
surface that your wheels can slide on, and that you're going pretty fast. If you're going
too slow, the friction between your wheels and the concrete is going to keep you from
sliding at all, so be sure to get a few good pushes in before you start.
Once you're moving forward with a good bit of speed, set up your feet so that your front
foot is on top of your front wheels, and your back foot is behind your back wheels, both
perpendicular to the board.
Now comes the wind up. Crouch down and turn your arms and shoulders opposite of the way
you're going to turn when you do the slide. When you unwind, you want your shoulders to
be facing completely forward, so that your hips and eventually your feet can turn to
face forward too. But most importantly, you're going to be using your legs to jump up, almost
to where your feet come off the board, so that your weight isn't pressing the wheels
down into the concrete very much. This is the key step that will actually allow your
board to slide more than just a few inches.
Ok, so now, simultaneously uncrouch, and unwind your arms and shoulders to face forward.
As you move into this position, you want to lean slighty backwards, and kick out your
back wheels so the board turns 90 degrees and starts sliding.
While you're sliding, you going to want to keep even pressure on both feet, and since you're going
to be deccelerating, make sure to keep your body weight behind the board so it doesn't
stick and send you flying forward.
When you're ready to roll away from this trick, crouch down again and take some of the weight
off of your back foot, and your board will naturally slide back into its normal alignment.
When you first start learning frontside powerslides, you probably won't slide very much, and sometimes
not at all, but you just need to keep practicing them and eventually you'll be able to control
them enough to slide them as far as you want.
Once you get your frontside powerslides down, you can start working on your backside powerslides.
Backside powerslides are a little tougher since you'll be turning to face backwards
while you slide, and until you really get used to it, you're going to have a hard time
getting the board to turn the full 90 degrees. Even if you do manage to get it
to turn all the way, the board is going to have a tendency to suddenly stop sliding halfway
through the maneuver, sending you flying backward over
your heels.
While this might seem like a good reason not to practice this trick, I can assure you that
once you get it down, it feels and looks great, and it's definitely worth going through the
process of learning them. If you don't feel like you can comfortably run backwards out
of this trick at the speed you're going though, put on a helmet before you start.
Alright so on to the technique. Just like with frontside powerslides, you need to be
on a smooth surface, and you need to have a lot of speed. Then, you're going to slightly
wind up your shoulders to face forward and crouch down.
Remember that crouching all the way down and springing up to take your weight off the board
is the most important part, and the hardest part to get your body to do, so pay attention
to whether or not you're actually doing this while you're learning.
As you jump up, also turn your shoulders, hips, and eventually your feet backwards,
so that your board turns 90 degrees and starts to slide.
During a backside powerslide, you want to keep your head facing forward as much as
you can, so you can judge how you need to balance and to see where you're going. Also,
keep your weight leaned back, away from the direction you're sliding, and press fairly
evenly on both feet, keeping your weight on your toes.
In my opinion, it's better to lean too far back and have the board slide out from underneath
you, causing you to gracefully fall down onto your hands, rather than not lean back enough
and have your board stick, causing you to either have to run backwards out of this trick,
or fall to your back or even possibly your head.
Now, before you slow down too much, use both of your legs to simultaneously straighten your
board out as much as possible and ride away clean. Backside powerslides are fairly difficult
to straighten out completely before you start rolling again, so expect the whole maneuver
to steer you a little bit to one side.
When you really want to start sliding these a long ways, you can practice them by doing
the slide and riding away fakie. To get into fakie stance, you have to turn your board
at least all the way to the 90 degree point, and doing this will help your body understand
what it feels like to be sliding backwards, with your board sliding perpendicular to your
forward momentum.
Another thing that might help you get into the slide more easily is to do a small frontside
carve right before you uncrouch to start sliding. Not only will this give you a little more
room to wind up your shoulders, but it can help you stay moving in a straight line overall
even if you're unable to completely straighten your board out after the slide.
With both types of powerslides, there are a few common problems you might run into.
First, you might not be able to get your wheels to slide at all. It may be the case that your
wheels are too soft, or the ground is too rough, but more often, the problem is that
you're not going fast enough, you're not leaning back enough, or you're picking your weight
up off the board enough. Make sure to commit to fully rotating your board 90 degrees and
lean back so your momentum will push the board out in front of you, and remember to crouch
down and jump up right before you kick your board out, so that it can slide with as little
friction on the wheels as possible.
If you're getting into the slide and then the board sticks to the ground halfway through,
you're not keeping your weight back behind the board far enough. For frontside powerslides,
incrementally increase the amount that you lean back until you find the sweet spot. For
backside powerslides, it's better to start out leaning too far behind the board, and incrementally
decrease the amount that you lean back until you get your weight positioning dialed in.
With this approach, you'll be falling backwards as little as possible while you're learning.
If you need any more help with your powerslides, you can leave your questions in the comments
section below, and if you haven't done so already, be sure to subscribe so you can stay
up to date with the latest trick tips.
Also, remember to have fun.