But practicing and failing at powerslides can hurt! So, I totally recommend wearing pads when learning to powerslide. You might look like a dork, but who cares?! Crutches look lamer, and will keep you off your skateboard. If you are really self conscious, then just practice alone somewhere!
Once you have your powerslide dialed in, there are a few things you can do with it besides just stopping:
- Slow down - you don't have to stop compeltly with the powerslide - you can use it to slow down,and then straighten out your board and keep going. However, you need to have very good ballance and board awareness for this!
- Bert slide - something like a powered-up powerslide, the bert slide is where you crouch down and slide the board out, full of style. Learn how to bert slide!
- Frontside / backside powerslide - these instructions don't specify which direction you are turning when you powerslide. That's on purpose. I recommend backside powerslides to start (where you are facing the direction you are going), but learning both is a good idea. If, as you read these instructions, you imagined doing a frontside powerslide, then go for it!
- 180 powerslides - strangely hard, but pretty sweet looking and fun to do is the 180 powerslide. Do it just like the regular powerslide, except that instead of stopping as the board spins to 90 degrees, keep that spin going all the way around 180 degrees (you will need to give the tail of the board a push to keep it going).
