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L ongboard Stances pg 2

Advanced Stances

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Advanced stances

The time to move on to advanced stances is after you've become familiar with basic stance positions and have worked on some basic turns. Advanced stances open up many more possibilities in your turns, tricks, and footwork.

Switch stance

In switch stance as opposed to regular stance, your feet and body point to the opposite side of the board than you're used to. Your back foot is then your regular front foot. Switch is hard to do for most people, since the feet become very specialized in their function, and the balance seems unnatural.

In a street style of longboarding (with shorter boards) switch is useful for cross training and to open up more tricks. You could probably get by without it if you can at least skate fakey well. In the big board style you almost can't function without switch. In intermediate tricks you encounter it too much to avoid. I especially practice cross stepping in switch, as I found I needed to be good at it to make it through a lot of my ideas. Switch stance turns and slides are really useful too.

The example shots are in the context of a spinner, a fairly common intermediate trick. In the 2nd frame I pause in switch stance behind the nose. You could rush or spin through the switch stance, as do a lot of skaters (and many established surfers), and skip the switch stance part but it looks fudged. Typically in my style rather than fudging to make them easier I add twists to make intermediate tricks more challenging, and in this case the twist is that after the spinner and pause I am going take a cross step toward the tail.

If you're an intermediate longboard skater, try to learn all your basic moves over again in switch stance. If you're working through the Layer 2 Reef Material here such as Walk Chains you should encounter enough switch to get you oriented.

Cross stance

Cross stance is a skateboard riding stance that you do with your legs crossed. Your normal back foot is crossed over your front foot at the knee. This is a rest stance that is used when cross stepping. It also sets up other tricks. The example shot is a cross setup for a drop knee turn. I am going to step my front foot back one step and put that foot on the tail to do a traditional style drop knee turn. A good steady cross stance will help your cross stepping a lot. Try to steer the board in s shapes in cross stance, as a practice tip.

Switch cross

A cross stance in switch stance. It can be a pause between switch cross steps or a ride held in that position. Oddly enough in switch cross, my normal back foot is back. In a way, it can be easier to ride switch cross and even step switch because of the restored role of the power foot. In cross stepping there are many ambiguities between switch and regular. It's important to simply practice both switch and regular walking just to get rid of awkward feelings when changing direction during board walking routines.

Drop knee stance

The drop knee stance in the classic style is when the skater or surfer plants the ball of the foot on the tail, usually on the heelside rail, and takes a free-heel stance with the knee "dropped" or bent towards the board. The basic turn out of this stance is to heelside, but there are toeside variations.

Sometimes drop knee is used to describe some really low crouched flat foot positions in skateboarding, and also it's a term used in body boarding. I use it to describe the classic drop knee. I think the foot should point up the board, if possible, to keep it from looking like a flat foot turn.

Reverse stance

Reverse stance is sometimes called reverse drop knee stance. Reverse is when the front foot is crossed back and placed on the tail as a crossed drop knee stance. It's a narrow stance with a twisting feel, good for sharp turns although not as powerful as the regular drop knee stance. I use it a lot, often in a sequence of turns that involve cross steps.

I start in a narrow stance. My front foot will be stepped back.

I take a step back and place my left foot on the tail, on the ball of the foot.

Switch reverse stance

A reverse stance in switch, or switch reverse, has the advantage of putting your normal back foot in the back position. This is nice if you are going to pivot, wheelie, or ollie out of switch reverse stance.

Back cross stance

A back cross step is a step that is taken up the board by cross stepping behind the front foot. It's a tricky move, but I use it a lot in advanced routines. It feels like switch reverse stance, only aimed up the board. In the example shot I have stepped out of regular stance into a back cross stance, which is held a while, actually turning the board to heelside. This is part of a routine where each step turns the board, making a series of s turns.

Various combined stances

There are other possibilities for stances that can be derived from this list, such as reverse nose stance, switch tail, etc. These variations come up in routines and will be noted as they pop up in Layer 2 Chains and Layer 3 Projects.