Has anyone chosen their "natural" slide incorrectly?

johnnyBuz

johnnyBuz

Active member
Kind of a random question but I'm interested to see if anyone else experienced this.

Basically, the first time I hit a rail I put my left foot forward (I'm right handed and spin right). After that first rail slide I didn't know any better so I just kept sliding left foot forward.

Fast forward to today, 12 days in the park later. I have bad bruising on my right thigh/hip so it was too painful to slide what I thought was my natural way and fall on those bruises, so I decided today would be an "unnatural" rail day.

Well holy shit! I think sliding right foot forward is my real "natural" slide. I was hitting just about every feature in the park and staying on the rails all the way through when I usually fall off a little early with my left foot forward.

In a nutshell, I was pretty nervous about learning to slide both ways and as it turns out I spent my first 12 days in the park sliding my unnatural way and saw how much easier right foot forward was. Now I am stoked that I have a ton of unnatural experience and that should make learning switch ups that much easier.

Quite the pleasant surprise!
 
I've always believe your "natural" slide is based on whatever you tried first. I also though maybe it was based on how you skate since I did that before hitting rails but I skate regular so I'm starting to think its whatever leg you feel the most confident on is your front foot.
 
i skate regular but slide right foot forward. and for rollerblading i started out doing topsides with my right foot but then i realized i was better doing them with my left. then i realized some tricks i do better with the other foot. what i'm getting at is footedness makes no sense at all
 
If I am hitting a new rail for the first time I will hit it right foot forward, but if I want to do front 2 or 4 I go left foot forward and spin left. I am goofy footed in skating so hitting it right foot forward "feels" like I am doing a 50-50 on skateboard. I dont really know what way Id say is my natural way to slide. When I first started I hit everything left foot forward but it has changed since then
 
everything about this "left or right" thing is weird for me. I can only snowboard left foot forward, i can only skateboard right foot forward, natural rail sliding is right foot forward. I write left handed but kick left footed. Throw right handed bat left handed. WHY AM I SO WACK?!?
 
the first rail i ever hit was single barrel we built in my front yard in 2000. the set up was pretty off angled and you naturally wanted to hit it right foot forward. Throughout the first half of that season I hit all the rails right foot forward until I switched one day and it all worked a hell of a lot better.
 
i spin left and rail with right foot forward. and i'm right handed and footed. i don't even know if that's natural or not but works for me haha
 
I actually started spinning right, but switched to left after learning 3s, and the difference was noticeable. Even after a couple years, I'm still better than all my friends at un-natty spins. Sometimes it just happens.

It seems to be loosely correlated with dominant hand, but that's about all I know.
 
Ya before i was learned to grind I thought left foot forward was the way to go. when hitting my first rail though my brother told me right foot was easier so thats how i slide now.
 
my more confident leg would be my trailing leg, being my right. This came from rollerblading. So i slide rails left foot first. For skateboarding, my confident leg is the front foot on the board. The weird part is i spin left.. go figure.
 
i spin to the left railing with my right foot first. I also skateboard with my right foot first.. goofy.
 
Well i'm a bit more comfortable sliding with my strong leg trailing (right one). I also skate regular so it seemed better. I spin left however, so blind spins are more comfortable unnatural.
 
I slide right first. Spin left. Skate left first. If i 50-50 on a skateboard i go left first. Skis is right foot first. Really weird. Maybe cuz i skate mongo (left push, regular.)
 
I was always wondered if it was nature or nurture until my gf started skiing. She slide her wrong foot forward for a solid year and a half until she decided to try the other foot forward. She progressed more in 3 days than she had since she started.
 
The same thing kinda happened to me. I spin left naturally. But when I spin switch, right is my "natural" way. I never realized this until last year. I tried spinning switch left and bam. It was so easy. I don't care though, it's almost an advantage now because I can spin both ways switch.
 
I spin left, learned to hit boxes n rails right foot forward so that would've been my natural slide. But somewhere over the years I started sliding left foot forward but I still spin anything over a 3 left, but anything 3 or under I spin right
 
I'm right handed, I put my left foot forward on rails, spin to the right, but can only do butters when I carve up onto my left edge.
 
I skate regular, but slide right foot forward naturally. I want to say it's due to my preference of spinning left because I can throw my dominant shoulder (right) into the spin more. I'm also right eye dominant, so I guess it was easier for me to look at the end of the rail.
 
When I started skiing switch I found it easier to look over my right shoulder. Now I can´t do my bigger spins switch since I´m spinning to the left. I´m in the process of learning to hit jumps looking over my left shoulder, but it´s tricky once you´ve gotten used to the opposite
 
yeah i took a lil while to work out which way i was gunna approach and slide the rail. when i skated, or wake boarded, or mountain boarded or surfed or any thing like that, im a right footed regular, so left foot forward. but skiing and trampolining i spin left. so to spin up onto the rail i wanted to be going left meaning right foot forward or goofie, seemed weird to me, then tried it, and sliding right foot forward is so must more natural.

I THINK its to do with some what which way you spin and therefore which was you prefer to skid stop. if i needed to stop real fast id skid stop right foot forward my stronger foot. i dunno.
 
Ya, I agree with people saying that there is no correlation between sports or tricks within a sport. In skiing, I spin counter clockwise (left), naturally slide right foot forward, and switch spin clockwise (right). In bmx, I spin clockwise (right) and when I practice bar spins, I throw with left and catch with right. Whatever you practice first is natural. Just because you do one thing a certain way doesn't necessarily mean that you will do similar things that way as well.
 
i learned to hit rails right foot forward, and i was way more comfortable that way. then, i really wanted to get front 2s out, so i only hit rails left foot forward. i did it so much that it became really comfortable, and now I'm more comfortable sliding left foot forward than right.
 
I feel like spinning 1s left is awkward, despite the fact that's my natural way of spinning. It's probably because I jump onto rail spinning unnatural (despite the fact that it's only a 90) and look over my left shoulder for switch. Somewhat off-topic, but whatever.
 
This is what im trying to do. My determination is coming from front swaps to front 270 out. I can get the front swap fine but cant lock in my edge when sliding unnaty for the front 2 out
 
i have always like skated and snowboarded regular, so when i slid rails i did left foot forward and that was natural for me

but my friend kept trying to slide right foot forward because he spun left, so that's how he landed on the rail, but after a little while we told him to slide left foot forward and BOOM goes the dynamite he slide the whole rail
 
i skate/surf/board regular but my "natural" way on rails if right foot forward because I spin left but now I do rails both ways
 
right handed, spin left, slide rails left foot forward, surf goofy. Never tried to spin right or slide right foot forward.
 
As a first year skier i was not sure what side was mine so itried both and started doing left foot first but keep splitting rails so i switched to right and everything is so much better
 
Sorry man but you are whack, haha..

But in all seriousness it seems like there is no rhyme or reason to the way anybody chooses their natural slide. Sounds like some do different types of grinds with different feet forward, either for a spin off that feels more comfortable or whatever.

I'm sure as I get better I will start doing certain slides on way or the other depending on how I spin on, if I'm switching up or how I want to spin off. Looking forward to the point where it is actually relevant for me to think about which slide is better.

Fuck I need a summer jib set up.
 
I spin right on skis but left on a bmx. Slide rails left foot forward, i do mistys to the right but i do flatspins to the left. i'm just dick-footed everywhere. Oh i also learned 360's the wrong way until realizing that wasn't my natural. It's not too big of a deal once you find out whats natural.
 
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