Mon 9 Jan 2006
My skating stance is wrong for modern tricks. When I learnt to skate, I didn’t have anyone to teach me or to learn from. I was a loner that just had a board and skated the best I could. Unfortunatly, that meant that I didn’t learn the right way to do things. This is not a problem until you try to do something more complex than kick-turns and ollies.
I’m right-handed/footed. My stance is goofy (for surfing too, which is not a problem). However, my pushing foot is my right foot, which means that I push with my front foot, not my back foot. Consequently, my style is to ride with more of my weight on my back foot. I’ve since been informed that this stance is called ‘mongo’ (thanks Stu, and wikipedia)
I’ve tried switching to regular so that my pushing foot is where it should be but it just feels so wrong. I’ve tried doing goofy properly (back foot pushing), but with only my right foot on the board I have no control. I would like to do one or other of these, but breaking a 25 year habit is hard.
Probably the biggest issue is braking. It’s next to impossible to brake with the front foot. This is a bit of a problem, especially going downhill.
Although the comparison does not require the same amount of effort, I have successfully swithed to become a left-handed mouse user. This was because when I became a full-time webmaster I spend most of my working day operating a mouse and didn’t want any sort of strain injuries, so I use left hand at work and right hand at home. It took about a week to get really productive and about a month to become just as competent as mousing with my right hand.
I would love to have eight hours a day to get competent skating another stance. Since I don’t, I guess it will take longer.
Has anyone else tried, or heard of anyone try, to dramatically alter their skating stance before? I think that it would have to be done cold-turkey to prevent reverting to the old style. Any advice appreciated.
I think that style is called ‘mongo foot’. I had an Irish friend that skated mongo. He swore it was better to have the center of gravity over the middle of the board.
I skate goofy too but kick ‘normally’
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Damn time to get back on the skateboard.
Interesting stuff. When I skated as a grommet, I guess I skated ‘mongo’. I could never get the hang of kicking with the back foot. I’m right handed but stand left-foot-forward and kick with that foot. So is that ‘non-goofy mongo’?
Not that I’ve skated for years. I gave up sometime in highschool when I saw a 10 year old ollieing higher than me
I think I’ll get hold of or make an Indo Board before I switch. It would be good for balance all round.
I used to push exactly the same as you. Some things to practise if you want to change (and the change is worth it, your ollie leg gets stronger, you have more time to set up for tricks as you only have to adjust one foot instead of having to shuffle our feet 3 times with mongo, your centre of gravity is more over your board allowing you to push with longer srokes and get more speed, mongo puts you behind and to the right of your deck while pushing, pushing orthadox also gives you the balance to brake with your back foot)
Try just rolling and balancing on the board with just your front foot, toes pointing toward the nose, just a short distance at the start (like when you learnt to wheelie), then try to steer it with your front foot, when confident at that, try using your back foot as a brake by scraping your toes gently on the ground. I’m 28 and it took me about a month of conscious non-mongo pushing for it to feel right and another 2 months for it to look right but I could never change back, plus it just looks a bit more stylish.
Hope this helps. Bit of an old page so let me know.
Thanks Mike. I’m working on it. On a smooth surface going resonable straight I can go natural mostly. I still don’t have the control I need if it gets too crowded though. I can push just as fast both ways now, either natural or goofy/mongo, but I need more practice before I start doing any tricks. I’m getting better at carving both sides and walking the board.
Awesome, after a while you’ll wonder why you ever pushed mongo. I mostly short board, but love to bomb hills and skate to my favourite trick spots on my longboard, was just wondering if you had any longboarding videos of yourself or friends that you could post up? Or perhaps a spot where others could post their own in? From what I know of the shortboard skate community, videos are an intregal way to expand and diversify the scene, and it’s always good to know what is actually possible on a longboard. Check out youtube.com for some great longboarding clips. But there’s some mad kiwi’s out there with camera’s and longboards I’m sure. Just an idea, let me know how the pushing feels and skate whenever sun the briefly smiles (damn winter)
The best longboard videos I’ve seen are from Adam Colton. He makes it look so easy.
i also skate mongo and im still pending on if i should change or not becouse some ppl say its more unique mongo but i wanna learn to ollie faster and higher and i think it will improve my 180 ollie as well. but then again if i practice stance not tricks i might get rusty on some tricks, what should i do?
yo dudes i skate mongo wota so bad about it???
There are a few things, but the worst thing is probably the time it takes to set up for tricks when you have to put your front foot back on the board and then re-position your back foot. Also, foot braking is more difficult, but not impossible.