Your Skating Stance - Are you Regular or Goofy?
How you stand on your skateboard is called your skating stance. Most people skate with their
left foot to the front of the board. This is known as the regular stance or being regular footed. If you stand with
your right foot forward then you skate goofy.
There is no best stance, it just depends which you are most comfortable with. As a very
general rule of thumb, if you are right handed you will probably skate regular and vice versa.
Some skaters are known as switch footers as they are able to skate equally comfortably switching
between regular and goofy stances.
But before you worry about being goofy or regular let's just try standing on the board. Set the
board down somewhere safe so you don't roll all over the place. Nice soft grass is good for this.
Now hop onto the board and just move your feet around to get a feel for it. Try balancing on one
foot at a time but make sure you don't put your weight over the nose or the tail as you may tip the board and fall
off.
Finding Out if Regular Stance or Goofy Stance is Right For You.
Probably the easiest way to find out is to just step onto your board and see which stance feels
best. It might take a while for any stance to feel comfortable until you get used to having a rather unstable
platform under your feet.
Another way is to run up to a football and kick it. Usually the foot you kick with will be your
back foot on your skateboard.
Finally you could get a friend to come up behind you and give you a gentle shove, preferably
when your not expecting it. The foot you put forward to stop yourself falling flat on your face will most likely be
the front foot on your board.
There is no foolproof way to tell until you get up and skate. Just play around a bit at first
and you'll very quickly develop a preference. If both ways work for you that's great.
Being able to comfortably switch stances is a gift.
Go to Skateboarding for Beginners for more
lessons.
Return to Know How to Skateboard from Your Skating
Stance
|