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N ose Riding

Stances and maneuvers at the nose

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If you're walking on a longboard, the nose is the obvious place to stop. But it's more about that, it's a goal to get to the nose, hang out there, head back to the tail, and do it all with style. Taking surfing into account, there's a lot of history to nose riding. You'll find that it's just fun to stand there. Something about standing on a wriggling tip with no board visible in front is sort of like flying. Here are some of the things you can do at the nose.

Hang five

The hang five is a versatile nose stance. It's functional because you should have pretty solid footing with a "five". My back foot is about 2/3 of the way up the board, and my front foot is quite far forward with the front of my shoe hanging off the tip, and toes literally curled "toes over the nose". There are many ways you can style the hang five with your arms or body. In this shot I'm leaning back and rotating my shoulders to the left, putting pressure on the board to rotate it. This is a shot from a routine where the hang five is a setup into a nose slide.

Tip ride and hang ten

This is a tip ride nose stance. My feet are parallel on the nose, toes almost "hanging ten", maybe a little shy of a ten. The hang ten is a more sensitive position than the hang five because you are almost past the trucks and the tail starts to get light. The tail may nose wheelie up or swing. You can see my knees are bent, which pushes my body weight back a bit to hold the tail down.

Nose perch

A nose perch is a nose stance that involves some sort of showoffy move or posture. Whereas the basic hang five is functional and sets up the next move, the nose perch is purely stylish. The nose is a fun place to just relax and perch and pose for a bit. This shot is an arch nose perch, which is a tribute to the sort of arch that many traditional longboard surfers have done. The feet are close together and turned out to allow my knees and chest to push forward in an arch shape. My arms are pushed down like a taught string, pulling the arch out like a bow.

This nose perch, a bit later in the same routine, I call a "hang whole foot". My entire foot hangs off the board and touches the ground. Although this is a stylish perch, it's also functional. That toe on the ground drags and slows down the board, so it's a stall move for speed control. There's a section on braking elsewhere in Lines, and several toe drags are covered.

I call this nose perch a tai chi nose perch. My front foot is extended and raised while I balance on my back foot. This perch itself is intermediate, and if you can balance on one foot while riding, you should be able to do it. But in the context of the routine shot here it's a very advanced footwork trick, because the perch started out facing backwards then was rotated to facing forwards, without putting my front foot down. It's actually switch, but for some reason it was easier for me to pivot and balance the tai chi perch on my normal front foot.

Cross nose stance

Cross stance on the nose has a number of functions as well as being a good nose perch. When walking to the nose, sometimes the footwork pattern calls for a cross stance right on the tip. From cross nose, you can pivot into a fakey stance, you can step back into regular stance, or other options. In the example shot I'm in a cross nose stance, actually a cross hang five.

Nose wheelie

The nose wheelie is a balancing of the board while standing on the nose and rolling forward. It's similar in difficulty to holding a wheelie on the rear wheels, only a mistake is usually more costly. Tip forward too far and you will pitch off the board.

The idea in nose wheelie-ing safely is to set up a position that can be balanced and yet recovered from if the board tips forward. You want to make your body into a human teeter totter, one way or another.

The technique shown here is one way to balance a nose wheelie. I set up a balance using my arms forward and back rather than to the side. The stance is low, with the knees deeply bent. There is a balance between the knees pressing the board forward and the hips holding some weight to the rear to easily recover from a tip that goes too far forward. The feet are close together, but it's not quite a hang ten. It's a very closed stance hang five. The feet form a T shape, heel to arch.

Here is the nose wheelie starting from a tip ride. The tail is getting very light and I'm holding it close to the ground by pressing backwards on my back arm. The balance should be even enough that it only takes a little pressure on the balls of the feet to lean forward. The counter balance is best done with the back arm.

I ride along and try to maintain the balance with the wheels off the ground. The arms act like the pole a tightrope walker carries, with the front arm pressing forward and down to get the board up, but the rear arm ready to tip the board back down.