How to Heelside stand-up slide (180 and check)

Today’s guide is on the heelside 180 stand-up slide. It will be the foundation for all the other heelside stand-ups you are going to do in the future, so it’s a key skill to have.

This guide is part of the downhill skill progression guide. Check out the guide if you want to learn about which skills you need to learn for downhill skateboarding.

What is a heelside (frontside) 180 stand-up slide?

With your back facing up the hill, the heelside 180 is simply throwing a slide 180* and ending up going down the hill in switch. The video below illustrates this.

What you should know before trying this slide

Before trying this slide, you should already know how to carve and how to slow down – either by foot braking or doing a push-up, Coleman, or a toeside pendulum slide.

You should also know how to setup carve (pre carve) for a slide. Setup carving will be key to getting the board to break traction. If you can’t do it, you will have quite a bit of trouble when trying to slide the board. 

I also recommend you check out the other guides in this skill tree list I have made. This one builds off the progress, experience, and knowledge you gain from following the other guides.

Gear to have for this slide?

You should have a helmet, and slide gloves at minimum. I also highly recommend getting some knee, hip, and elbow pads too as you are likely gonna be falling a lot.

Having wheels for freeriding and sliding will also making your sliding attempts a lot easier and a lot more successful. But if you have already watched and bought a board according to my guide to beginners downhill skateboards, you should have one appropriate for this.

How to heelside/frontside 180 stand-up slide

Two different ways to learn this

There are two ways to learn this slide, the first (which is easier) is leading with your shoulder – throwing out your arms, and rotating your shoulders, and allowing the board to follow. The second is using your shoulders less and using more subtle motions with both your shoulders, chest, hips, arms, and feet to get the 180 done.

The first is easier but means you’ll have to unlearn some things to progress to stand-up checks. The second is harder, but it will be easier to progress to stand-up checks, (and easier to even learn the first once you get it). I think it’s the more worthwhile method to learn.

I’m going to teach the second method primarily but will mention the first briefly in the guide. 

Step 0.1 – Foot positioning

The first thing to look at is foot positioning. You’re going to want your front foot to be near the front truck at about a 45* angle, or an angle between 45 and 90*. Whatever is comfortable for you.

You are then going to want your feet to be about shoulder-width apart. It will look like something in the picture below.

I advise you to have your back foot either in front of the back truck, or on top of it. It’s also ok to have it on the middle of the board – if that’s where your shoulder-width stance places it. Finally, don’t have it behind the back truck unless you can’t help it.

Check out the video below for more information and an illustration of the foot positioning.

Step 0.2 – Weight distribution

You want to have 60% of your weight on your front leg, 40% on the back leg.

Most of your weight is going to be on your heels and the zones marked red in the image below.

Step 1 – Speed

You want to be going faster than jogging pace. You can learn this on a mellow hill but make sure you push in fast enough. Also, the steeper the hill, the easier it will be to get the board to break traction.

Step 2 – Setup carve is key

The setup carve will make your life easier, so it’s important you do it. It naturally brings your wheels to that edge of traction where just a nudge will get them to slide.

So before you start doing the slide, you initiate the setup carve.

Check out the setup carve guide for more info!

Step 3 – Compress

At this point of the setup carve compress in anticipation of the kick out/pushing the board into the slide (I’ll talk more about the importance of compression, decompression, compression, later on in the article).

Compression is just bending your knees and sinking into your board a bit.

Step 4 – Decompress and kick out

When you get to the zenith of the setup carve (illustrated by the image below), decompress, lean back, swing your body out lightly, and kick out the board … You kinda do all of this at the same time, I explain more about each step below.

• Decompressing allows you to kind of deweight/unweight the wheels/board which makes them very easy to kick them out.
• Swing your arms out lightly after this helps your body and thusly the board rotate.

The following steps all happen in quick succession or almost simultaneously sometimes.

Step 4.1 – How to “decompress”

Decompressing is sort of coming out of the bent position, extending yourself upwards. You can also lightly throw your arms up to help with it.

Step 4.2 – Rotating with the whole body/swinging arms out

You rotate by swinging your widespreads arms, shoulders, chest, and hip lightly into the other direction. You want to swing them just as you come out of compression and just before you kick out the board.

So instead of just using your shoulders to swing out, you’re going to be opening up and rotating your whole body.

This in combination with the kick out should land you in the 180* position. More on the kickout below.

Step 4.3 – The lean back?

Leaning back is just something you have to suss and figure out for yourself. You have to lean back a bit to get good leverage on the board and sort of counteract the fight back you get from the wheels. It is something that will come with trial and error.

You also want to lean off the middle of the board (or rather the point on the board between where your feet are placed). You don’t want to be leaning more off your back or front foot … maybe **slightly** more off your front foot.

The image below is just to show you how much I lean back. I’m not necessarily suggesting you lean back this much, but feel free to try it and see if it works for you. 

As Doom duck media said, you will fall a few times learning to get the right feel for the kickout.

Step 4.4 – The kickout?

The kickout is more of pushing your board out. It’s not an aggressive push, but one that is firm. In the chain of things happening, it is the one that happens last.

As I said above, you will have 60% of your weight on your front foot, and about 40% on the back foot. 

You push out with your back foot whilst keeping your front foot stiff and firm, with your weight being kinda forced down.

Remember to have most of your weight on your heels.

The image below roughly illustrates how you want to be applying force and pushing out.

You essentially want to push your board into the 180* direction, almost like you’re pivoting on/around your front foot/truck.

You also want to push outwards (or forwards) but also down at the same time to keep your back foot planted and from slipping off. 

Some tips

• Weight on your heels.
• Don’t unbend your knees and straighten your legs all the way when you decompress, keep your knees bent a little bit.
• Video yourself to see what you’re doing.
• Make sure you are setup carving.
• Make sure you stay on top of the board and not let it get away from you, sometimes the board can keep going and will leave you behind.

Troubleshooting + shoulder help

Shoulders

Your shoulders can also help with the 180. With you doing all the other things, simply throwing your shoulders out and into the other direction (180*s) can help the board rotate and will let you do the 180 slide. In fact, it will be really easy to learn it this way. Your board will naturally follow your shoulders and you will end up 180*s. 

However, it doesn’t always lead to the cleanest hookups and it will make it harder to learn stand-up checks as you will have to unlearn leading the slide primarily with your shoulders. So I don’t recommend using just your shoulders, but your whole body.

The above is essentially the “first method” of doing stand-up 180s I outlined above.

Step 5 – Hang in there sweetie

To hold it out, you just stay relaxed, with pressure in the relevant places. Your board/body will naturally glide along in a 180* carve, just allow your body/board to follow.

Step 6 – Compress on hookup

As you feel the board rotating into 180* position, it will naturally hook up (regain traction) – just allow this to happen and follow the board along.

What you need to do now is compress (which is bending your knees) to allow your body to sort of absorb the harshness/momentum of the rotation. 

Compression is key and will allow for a cleaner more controlled hookup.

Troubleshooting …

If you’re having trouble hooking up the slide, you can push out the board even more at the last minute it will end up in the 180* position. Be careful though, the board can keep going on without you.

Step 7 – Switch … 

You should now be rolling away in switch. The steps to swing it back are pretty much the same … I like to cheat and just swing back with my shoulders leading hehe, bad behavior I know but I don’t plan on progressing with my switch skating any time soon … 

How to do a heelside stand-up slide

What is a heelside stand-up slide?

Also known as a frontside stand-up slide, this is a slide you do without touching the ground, on the heelside slide. You keep the board sliding under 90*s as you do this slide.

The 180 is the foundation

If you‘ve managed to learn the 180 according to my guide, then doing the speed check will be a piece of cake. 

The steps until about step 4.2 are literally the same, so we will carry on from that point.

Step 0.1 to Step 4.1

You’re going to follow the guide above for these steps. Everything is the same, the setup carve, the compressions, decompression, etc. 

So do those before you get to the next step in this section.

Also remember, in the Step 4, stuff happens kinda simultaneously.

Step 4.2 – Point your shoulders where you wanna go

As you decompress, you point your shoulders where you want them to go.

You keep them focused on that point throughout the slide and don’t try to move them, or don’t allow them to be the SOURCE of any movement.

Keeping them still/facing a fixed point is important. Your board naturally wants to follow your shoulders in the slide (which is why doing a 180 by throwing your shoulders out around is so easy). So any movement from them could cause the board to rotate over 90*s.

You can keep your shoulders in place by focusing on a fixed point. This fixed point could be an imaginary point, or better, the inside of a corner or the apex.

The video below highlights how much the shoulders DON’T move during the slide.

Step 4.3 – The lean back

Just like in the step 4.3 above, you lean back.

How much you lean back is something you are going to have to figure out for yourself.

How leany your board is, your wheels, the hill, etc. This will all affect how much you lean back for this slide.

Leaning off is important as it will help you counteract and resist the “fight back” that you get from the wheels.

You want to lean off more of your front foot than your back foot. In the 180 slide, we were leaning off the middle, here we will lean more off the front foot.

Remember to keep your knees slightly bent. This will help with the leaning back a bit better. In the decompression step, don’t fully decompress to where you are standing up with your full height.

Step 4.4 – The kick out

Instead of using your front foot as a pivot, and pushing the board all the way around like we did in the 180, this time we are only pushing to a shallow angle and maintaining pressure on your front foot.

With about 60% of your weight on your front foot and 40% on your back foot, as we come out of the decompression we start kicking out/pushing out our back foot.

We push it out to a shallow angle.

At the same time, we maintain pressure on our front foot. This is key.

With our front and back foot, we are pushing both out and down.

This is key

The setup carve, compression, and decompression will help make doing the slide a ton easier.

But, what will make or break our attempt is leaning off our front foot, and how much pressure we can maintain on our front foot.

Pushing out your backfoot is surprisingly easy, but the leaning off the foot and maintaining pressure on your front foot for the slide is more difficult … but your results may vary of course. 

So you gotta be careful with both of those things and make sure you are doing them correctly.

And yeah … you should be able to heelside stand-up slide.

Step 5 – Hang in there

Once you’re in the slide, just sort of chill and let the board keep sliding forward. Once you’re done sliding as much as you want to, it’s time to get the board to hook up.

Step 6 – Hookup and compression

Now to regain traction, start to release pressure off your back foot and keep maintaining pressure on your front foot. This will allow the board to rotate into the other direction, guiding it so it can regain traction.

As this happens, allow your body to follow the board. 

You will then feel the board regain traction, and as it does this/just before, begin bending your knees to recompress and absorb the momentum of the hookup.

And boom you just did your first heelside standup slide.

Tips

• Learning the 180 according to this guide, it will make learning the stand-up slide so much easier. SOOOO much easier.
• Practice it in the rain. You will get grips to this so much quicker. Transferring the skills over to the dry is pretty easy.

This is so important to do (secret to easy standies)

The compression before kickout, decompression at kickout, and re-compression on hook-up are key for clean and consistent stand up slides.

If you observe super good riders like Cole Trotta, Lars Troutwine, Patrick Lombardi etc., They all do this. This method of initiating and catching stand up slides is key and results in very consistent standys at any speed.

Trust me on this. Try it yourself and see wondeful results.

Any questions? Has this heelside stand-up 180 guide been useful?

Let me know if this guide has been useful. As always these guides are a bit dificult for me to make so your feedback is really appreciated. Helps me know if I’m doing something right or wrong.

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