Why You Get Stuck in FS Slappy Noseslide - Explained Scientifically

The concept itself seems pretty much straightforward. You approach the obstacle and place the nose onto it as it comes right in front of you. However, even after getting the nose onto the obstacle, the board tends to catch and refuse to slide smoothly. Why does this happen?

Before talking about how to do this trick, we first need to understand what is required in order to slide. When you think about the board being locked onto the obstacle, you can see that resistance is created as the top and side surfaces of the obstacle come in contact with the board.

To make the board slide while overcoming the friction generated between the board and the obstacle, you need to shift your center of gravity somewhat toward the toeside.

Now, the body angle becomes extremely important. If you lean too far forward, you will slip out, and the board will shoot away from you. In other words, you need to keep your body axis relatively upright while still moving your weight toward the toeside.

And that is not all. If you look at it from a different angle, you can see that your body is off the obstacle. In order to slide longer, you must move your body weight closer to the edge of the ledge. Otherwise, you will simply slip off the obstacle.

One of the most important points is proactively lifting the back foot using your own force. Whether in an Ollie or a Slappy Slide, right after pressing down the tail, the back foot becomes completely free of load. In most cases, we try to keep the back foot around the same position where we popped, but if you think about it, the foot is no longer in contact with anything — meaning it can be moved freely wherever you want.

To simplify the explanation, let's try this principle while locking the nose straight onto the obstacle. If you keep the back foot on the tail, your body weight remains far away from the obstacle.

Now consider what happens when you actively move the back foot. Since you intentionally pull the back foot toward the obstacle using your own strength, your body weight follows immediately and shifts quickly toward the obstacle as well. Do you see the difference between these two approaches? Keeping the back foot on the tail and trying to raise it afterward by pressing the nose down is a passive use of the back foot. On the other hand, lifting the back foot with your own power immediately after pressing the tail is an active use of the back foot.

Step 1 - Approach with your knees slightly bent.

Step 2 - Rotate your shoulders slightly, press the tail, and lift the nose.

Step 3 - This is the key to everything. As you place the nose onto the obstacle, lift the back foot using your own strength and move it away from the tail toward the center of the board, such as over the bolts. By doing this, the mechanism explained earlier allows your body weight to quickly shift to a position above the front foot.

Further, to slide properly, you must shift your body weight toward the toeside while keeping your body axis upright. Here again, lifting the back foot with your own strength becomes extremely useful. For example, think about the motion of walking. When you step forward, your body axis basically remains vertical, while the center of mass moves forward. You see, there's a big difference between this and leaning your body axis forward, which we will see in a minute.

So, in order to move your center of mass toward the toeside while keeping the body axis vertical, always keep in mind that you need to bring your back foot into the ideal position by yourself, rather than bashing the front truck into the obstacle and letting the tail do the job.

Step 4 - After that, all that remains is adjusting how much pressure you apply to the nose. If you press too hard and the entire underside of the nose rubs against the obstacle, the resistance becomes too great. Ideally, for a long slide, the beginning of the nose should be the primary point contacting the obstacle, while its tip stays in the air.

In addition, it is desirable to place more weight toward the toeside, and the benefit of lifting the back foot appears here as well. Due to the structure of the human body, whenever people lift their weight, they naturally tend to land on their toes. In a Slappy Noseslide, the body does not rise nearly as high as in a normal jump, but the body weight still moves slightly up and down within a very small range. The key is to lift your back foot with your body. Then, upon landing, in other words, upon locking in, it becomes easier to concentrate your weight on the toes. So use this characteristic to push through the initial friction.

Let's assume Steps 1 and 2 are the same as before. In Step 3, when locking the nose onto the obstacle, imagine leaving the back foot on the tail and not lifting it with your own strength. Instead, you rely on the force created by pressing the nose down and letting the tail push the back foot up.

The first problem is exactly what we discussed earlier: your body weight cannot move above the front foot. It is only natural, because the stance in a Slappy Noseslide naturally becomes extremely wide. It should be easy to imagine how simply bringing the back foot closer to the front foot already solves much of this problem.

With the body weight not over the edge of the ledge, you will eventually slip off the obstacle. Even if you somehow could manage to stay on the obstacle, the board becomes too flat, increasing the chance of the wheels catching on the side of the obstacle.

A similar thing happens when you bash the nose into the obstacle. Technically, this method also allows you to get your body weight on the obstacle. Still, it just increases the resistance between the board and the obstacle, and you will get stuck.

And the problem does not end there. In order to overcome the resistance you just created, you need to shift your body weight toward the toeside even more. To do so, if you keep your back foot on the tail, the only remaining option is to lean your body axis forward. Earlier, because you lifted the back foot with your own strength, you were able to move your body weight while maintaining your body axis, just like when walking. But this time, since the back foot remains low, moving your weight forward inevitably requires collapsing the body axis itself.

So, to solve all these problems, you can't just stay on the board and bash the nose into the obstacle, hoping the tail lifts your back foot. Instead, try to jump into a position where you want to be yourself. So, technically, it's not a Slappy. It's more like tapping the nose onto the obstacle and jumping onto the position where you want to be.