Heelside Predrifts

[David Serate]

This tutorial assumes you can coleman to shutdown and coleman and hook back up to going straight.

What is a predrift?​

A predrift is when you ease into a slide to shave off speed before cornering. A heelside predrift is doing this, but just going heelside. Generally, predrifts are less than 90 degrees.

Slide theory​

To start, let's think about how our Coleman pendy slides work.

We get the energy to break traction and rotate the board underneath us from a few factors. These differ between riders, but generally they include (in no particular order)

1. Turning of hips

• Strong precarve

2. Turning of shoulders

• Putting a puck down
• Punching the other hand across

3. Kicking back foot out

• Lift the hips and keep the legs strong in the slide

4. Putting weight off the board

• Put more weight into the puck by having the puck farther from the board

To predrift, we basically take these factors and play with them until we are able to initiate a slide and hold it at a lower angle than a coleman slide.

Decreasing the slide amount​

Predrifts are a lot easier on grippier wheels, so break out a set of square lip wheels or broken in race wheels you bought off the BST for cheap.

To start, we have to start slowly stripping the factors that increase the slide amount.

Sit on your hand​

For the hand that I go puck down with, I mentally cue to place the hand going puck down closer to my butt to increase the amount of weight going through my wheels, decreasing the slide amount.

Punch with the shoulder​

On the hand I punch across, I mentally cue to punch the shoulder across instead of punching my whole arm across. You can even punch the shoulder over and leave the hand and arm trailing

Outside inside outside​

On a straight road, a pendy requires a bigger precarve as the road isn't helping us kick the. If we consider that the road now curves, the idea of going outside-inside-outside can BE our precarve. On the approach to the corner, carving to the outside of the corner sets up the predrift, which is used to dive on the inside line in the predrift. Ideally, the predrift takes you from the outside of the turn to the inside, where you can grip up before riding away.