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when backsides meet...


slapos

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Neil

 I need to ask a stupid question - isnt surfing frontside refering to having the wave in front of you? 

unless you mean that the reminder of the slope is in front of both rider here...

I never surfed, but I am always up to learn something new...

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On 4/11/2019 at 6:09 AM, slapos said:

Neil

 I need to ask a stupid question - isnt surfing frontside refering to having the wave in front of you? 

unless you mean that the reminder of the slope is in front of both rider here...

I never surfed, but I am always up to learn something new...

 

 call it Heel side...if that is what you want to call it

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If you are going up the wave and turning off the lip, frontside would be a left turn for regular foot or right for goofy. Skaters took this terminology when riding pools. As you come up the wall, either concrete or water, the frontside rotation is the one that initially causes you to face the wall.  

Maybe those terms get reversed in surfing during a bottom turn as you would turn the opposite way there to face the wave. But in skateboarding we don’t have bottom turns so a frontside rotation is always left for regular foot. 

In snowboarding if you launch off a kicker and rotate it’s a frontside rotation if you spin left as a regular foot.  Similarly in skating if you are launching a set of stairs or something. 

There’s no argument on what you call rotations.  It’s the turns on the snow that get confusing.  People who have no skate/surf background will say frontside is a right turn for regular because you are turning towards your front. Skaters will say it’s a left turn because frontside is always viewed as if you are going up the wall or off the jump.  I guess surfers say right as they view it all as a bunch of bottom turns.

It’s much clearer to say toeside or heelside.  Everyone understands that.

 

 

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44 minutes ago, Neil Gendzwill said:

If you are going up the wave and turning off the lip, frontside would be a left turn for regular foot or right for goofy.

i would imagine that this would be two turns, first frontside and then on top of the lip backside, but hell i got no surfing experience so...

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1 hour ago, Neil Gendzwill said:

If you are going up the wave and turning off the lip, frontside would be a left turn for regular foot or right for goofy. Skaters took this terminology when riding pools. As you come up the wall, either concrete or water, the frontside rotation is the one that initially causes you to face the wall.  

Maybe those terms get reversed in surfing during a bottom turn as you would turn the opposite way there to face the wave. But in skateboarding we don’t have bottom turns so a frontside rotation is always left for regular foot. 

In snowboarding if you launch off a kicker and rotate it’s a frontside rotation if you spin left as a regular foot.  Similarly in skating if you are launching a set of stairs or something. 

There’s no argument on what you call rotations.  It’s the turns on the snow that get confusing.  People who have no skate/surf background will say frontside is a right turn for regular because you are turning towards your front. Skaters will say it’s a left turn because frontside is always viewed as if you are going up the wall or off the jump.  I guess surfers say right as they view it all as a bunch of bottom turns.

It’s much clearer to say toeside or heelside.  Everyone understands that.

 

 

I've always rolled with:

frontside spin => frontside turn == heelside turn; and

backside spin => backside turn == toeside turn.

Everyone I know who snowboards and speaks English calls it this when it comes up.

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1 hour ago, softbootsurfer said:

Well, I have plenty of Surfing Experience, you are correct...there is Frontside and Backside, the rest is gobbledygook, seriously, somebody needed to change it to Heel side, must have been an Instructor...If you Surf the Mountain, frontside Backside is all you need, if you Spin,  either on your board or play with words,  call it what you will...I was taught Frontside and Backside by the Old Timers, back in the Day, when I was a Grom 😀 

The terms apply to both Surfing on Waves or Snow... 

 

It may be clear to you but not to many. You could have just as easily shown surfers turning off the lip and then the rotation is reversed. Plus we are not surfing. I’d say 99% of snowboarders don’t surf. A way higher percentage skate and use the terms opposite to the way you do. That’s why heel and toe are more clear. 

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In surfing, the rider is going down the line (not down the fall line) and is either frontside or backside. While going frontside or backside the surfer will make turns that are essentially what a snowboarder might call toeside and heelside. Surfers call them top turns and bottom turns and since the turns are happening at the top and bottom of the wave, those terms work well for surfing.

Frontside/backside are not descriptions of a specific turn on a wave, they are descriptions of which way a surfer is going on a wave related to which foot they have forward.

Typically a snowboarder is going down the fall line. It is not the same orientation as going down the line in surfing. It doesn't make sense to use the terms frontside turn or backside turn because alternating turns would be frontside/backside/frontside/backside....down the fall line. The snowboarder turns going down the slope are the surfing equivalent of top turn/bottom turn, not frontside/backside. But top turn/bottom turn makes no sense when going down the fall line on a snowboard. That is why snowboarders use the terms heelside turn/toeside turn. Those terms make sense for snowboarding and that is probably why, even though plenty of surfers also snowboard, heelside/toeside are pretty much universally (at least everywhere I have been in the US) used for snowboarding. 

Now if a snowboarder finds a nice bank that is frontside or backside and the snowboarder gets to make top turns and bottom turns, the surfing terms make sense and are often used along with hoots of joy! 😀

In my avatar, if I was surfing, that turn could be the beginning of a frontside bottom turn or the end of a backside top turn. It is not necessarily a frontside turn. In snowboarding it is simply a toeside turn.

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When snowboarding meets surfing (on the best bank / snow conditions I have ever found).

To use surfing terminology, here are two frontside turns. One is a frontside bottom turn and the other is a frontside top turn. In snowboarding terms the first one is a toeside and the second on is a heelside. If the terms, frontside/backside from surfing were applied to this sequence the way they are being used to describe snowboard turns of heelside/toeside then these two turns would be called frontside and backside which is incorrect from a surfing perspective.

Terminology aside, I consider this an epic frontside wave bottom turn and off the top!😉

2009-05-08_IMG_1884.JPG

2009-05-08_IMG_1885.JPG

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I should add that I don't really care what someone calls a turn on a snowboard. I use toeside/heelside, but it's not like frontside/backside is confusing. My only point is that they are not interchangeable with the surfing terms of frontside/backside.

Yes slapo, it is a very cool pic! 🤙

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@softbootsurfer

Hey no apology needed!

As I said it's good to learn something new.

Never realized that backside and frontside can be so confusing though, if you consider other sports then snowboard!

At least I am happy that the pic got such much audience after Neil and Softboot stepped up their game!

 

Cheers 

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