Slyde Handboards Trick Tip: How To Do A Body Roll

Once you've mastered catching waves on your Slyde Handboards, the next step for the more adventerous and extreme minded, are tricks.

Below Dalton Smith from NPI Productions talks us thru how to do a body roll.

This time we're talking about doing a body flip, a body roll, a side roll, whatever you want to call it. We're basically taking our entire body and doing a flip on the face of the wave. 

The first thing we wanna talk about is which direction is easier to do the roll. I have my board on my left hand, so I almost always prefer to go left. When I'm going left down the wave, I've got my left hand out. I'm gonna do the body roll, bring my left hand over my body. It kind of gets you a little bit dizzy. Practice doing it a few times, and try to make sure you're getting yourself pointed either towards the beach or down the wave. 

If you do wanna go right, or you wear the board on your right hand naturally, just make sure that you're going to be rolling yourself shoulders towards the beach so you're not going to get stuck behind the wave. 

When you're going down a nice clean glassy line, that's a good opportunity to do a body roll. And if you do it at the right time, you can basically do the body roll on the face of the wave, kick your feet real hard, and continue to drive down the line. 

Your other option is if you hit a section that's coming towards you. When the wave starts to break, you're gonna get a lip line, and that gives you the opportunity to almost kind of smack the lip like if you were surfing. And I think we've got a couple clips where I come up right in the section, smack the lip, and come out in front of the section. Which is perfect, because if you do it a little bit too late, you're gonna get crushed. 

Body rolls can be used to finish a wave, or they can be used to tie maneuvers together. If you drop in on a wave and it's not barreling right away, do a big body spin, drive down the line, and pull into the barrel. Or, if you're lucky enough, you could pull into the barrel, come out, and then do a body spin right at the end of the wave. The last thing you can try is doing a body roll into a wave. So, as you're paddling and you take off, immediately throw a body roll. It'll get you right in the sweet spot.

The last thing we're going to touch on is boards. I say that the Bula is definitely easier to do the body rolls, only because it's so much lighter. With that being said, I also have done them with the Wedge and the Phish. The thing about the Phish that I like doing body rolls, keeps me in the wave. 

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