How to noseslide & hold your slides (exercises & progressions)

Why we're not taking the normal trick tip route

So why won't this be a normal trick tip?

Well, the truth is, there isn't a perfect noseslide technique that works for everyone.

Not only do different obstacles change how you do the trick, but every skater has a slightly different technique, and even each attempt that same skater does of that same trick will also be slight different. Even if every attempt they do looks the exact same.

When it comes down to truly learning a trick and getting consistent with it, it's not about can you replicate this "perfect technique" in the exact same way every time. It's how can you get your body and board to do the right thing in all these different situations with all this variety going on, and get the same result - aka the trick.

So I'm not going to tell you "put your left middle toe on the 3rd bolt and pop using 37% of your quadriceps", instead I'll give you a load of exercises and "skate tasks" to train your body to get better at the skills necessary for noseslides, along with helping you explore the different pieces of the trick to help you figure out what works best for you personally.

By taking this approach you shouldn't just figure noseslides out or how to hold them better, but also truly lock them in and get consistent with them.

The noseslide exercises & skate tasks

So the way this is going to work is by gradually progressing through different exercises and skate tasks, each one designed to hit a specific skill or piece of the noseslide.

The most important noseslide skills we'll be hitting are:

- Single leg stability

- Dynamic stability

- Weight shift

- Technique & control

Now the exercises are going to be beneficial for all levels of skaters, but a lot of the skate tasks are aimed more at beginners. If you are more advanced you might still benefit from them - maybe they'll help you figure out a new bit of information about the trick - just pick and choose what you feel you need.

Skill 1: Single leg stability

When you're in a noseslide most of your weight is going to be on your front leg. You're essentially balancing on one leg. So the first noseslide skill we're going to hit is something called single leg stability, or your ability to just stay balanced on one leg.

Now balancing on one leg might seem easy, but when you're in a noseslide there's a lot going on to throw you off balance. Things like:

- your body movement,

- your board moving,

- gravity,

- friction,

- wax - the ledge sliding too much,

- no wax - the ledge sticking.

So it's standing on a single leg, whilst battling a load of other forces and trying to not lose balance - which obviously becomes much more challenging!

The balance and stack zones

Before we get to the rest of the exercises and skate tasks, I want to explain something called the single leg stand and do a little experiment to show how you need to stay balanced in a slide. So get up and do this with me! No I don't care that you're on the train or reading this on the sly in class at school, stand up and do this with me.

Now you're up, stand on one leg, slightly flex your knee and hip, keep your knee over the middle/outside of your foot and your chest more or less over the foot you're standing on (check the pic below or video to see what I mean).

This position is essentially a real stable position - your center of mass is aligned over your foot and the flex in your joints will activate more muscles that keep you stable. As opposed to just standing up super rigid.

Next we're going to take this position to the ledge. So if you're on the train to work, or in school, sack it off, grab your board and get to a ledge.

If you want to hold any slide you need your center of mass aligned more or less over the edge of the ledge and the foot on the nose (in the case of noseslides).

So put yourself in a nosestall position on a ledge/curb, and slightly flex your joints. What position does this look like? It's exactly the same as the single leg stand we just did, right? This is that stable position we want to aim for when holding a slide.

Ok experiment time. Once you've figured out that stable nosestall position, you're going to bounce between the two ends of the spectrum of being out of "position". So lean too far to the left until you fall off, and too far to the right until you fall off (like in the pics below or video above).

Play around with those different sides and get a feel for where you need to be to actually stay balanced. This is useful because by teaching our bodies the "wrong" thing to do, helps us figure out what a better option might be.

Exercises

- Single leg balance variations @3:48 in the video above

Skate tasks

- Stall balance wriggler @3:33 in the video above

Skill 2: Dynamic stability & weight shift

When we pop into a noseslide we jump, turn and shift our weight around. On paper, that seems like nothing but there's actually a lot going on and restabilising all this complex movement can actually be pretty hard.

The classic problem people face with holding noseslides is falling off the ledge (on the side you popped in). Technique is a big piece of this, but a large piece is also the inability to shift the weight onto the front foot - people often keep too much weight on the back foot, making it difficult to keep your center of mass over the sliding foot, causing you to slip off the ledge.

If you don't face this problem with normal noseslides, you'll almost definitely face it with switch ones.

So the next skill we're going to work on is dynamic stabilty and your ability to shift your weight around and restabilise after that weight shift.

Exercises

- 90° hop to stick | 2to1 @4:29 in the video above

- 90° hop to stick | 1to1 @5:24 in the video above

- 90° hop to ledge @5:41 in the video above

Skate tasks

- Nose stall lock-ins @6:01 in the video above

One thing that's really going to help with the carryover from the exercises to your skating is to actually imagine you're doing the trick when you're doing the exercise. So as you jump and land, imagine you're actually landing in a noseslide.

Extra stability essentials

Now there's a lot more to stabilising in slides than what I've gone over so far. For example, research shows a big piece of stability is your body's ability to contract and relax the right muscles at the right time.

When we move, before the main muscles involved in actually moving us activate, a load of stabilising muscles activate first, to provide a solid base for those main movers to be able to push or pull off.

Static exercises to train things like core control, stability and strength are a key piece to stability, especially for people new to training, but as we start to focus more on dynamic stability, better cocontraction of the muscles and activation timing, we actually end up training stability through exercises that aren't really normally thought of as stability exercises. These are exercises like plyometrics or more dynamic movements we've already been focusing on in this video/article.

Check this video for more exercises focused on core training, or if you're looking for a full program that includes training not only for slides, but also for things like pop, resilience, endurance, injury reduction, recovery and everything you need to feel at your best on your board, then check out the NBD 12 Week Skate Performance program here.

All the exercises I've gone over in this video can be added into any workout program, but if you don't already have a program or aren't sure of how to progress these exercises, then the NBD 12 Weeker is the perfect program for you.

Exercises

- Single leg snapdown @9:20 in the video above

- Single leg 90° snapdown @10:10 in the video above

- Pogo to 90° catch @10:33 in the video above

For any exercise in this video/article, you can adapt for other tricks. For example, for front noseslides, turn backside instead of frontside.

Skate tasks

- Getting slippy @11:17 n the video above

Goeth & search for the crust (maybe)

So if you're just learning noseslides it's best not go out to some crusty street ledge with cracks all over it. Why?

Because there's too much variability going on which will make it difficult to focus on technique. So pick a ledge that's relatively nice and predictable and stick with that until you feel like it's going well.

Once you get more advanced you're actually going to want to start doing the opposite. You must go in search of the crust and take the noseslide to a load of different obstacles. This is essential to truly lock the trick in and get consistent with it. Why?

Because in the same way that all the different exercises I've gone over teach your body all these different solutions to stabilise, skating different obstacles will teach you how to stabilise a noseslide in a load of different ways too.

If you're out skating different obstacles or in the streets skating crusty ledges with cracks and bumps, these will challenge your body in so many more ways than just skating a perfect Street League ledge would. And by exposing your body to all these challenges, it gives it more "stabilising solutions" to pull from when skating a new ledge. You'll hit a crack and your body will react and restabilise, because it's experienced it before.

So the last skate task is to skate! Once you feel the trick is locked in, get out there and hit the streets. Add variety to your skating and you'll truly lock noseslides in.

Hope you enjoyed the video/article and it helps you lock in noseslides. I'd love to see your progress so tag me @the.daily.push in your noseslide clips on instagram!