Toespin

How it works

Skateboarding's pirouette: the rider turns a full 360 on the ball of the front foot while the board keeps rolling straight underneath. Nothing about the board moves - the whole trick is the body, which is why it reads as a body varial even though the front foot never leaves the deck. The heel has to stay completely clear of the griptape: touch it down and the spin either stops dead or goes off-centre. Weight lives directly over that one foot for the whole turn, and leaning in any direction at all pushes the board away. It is rolled into rather than done standing, because a little momentum is what keeps the board under the rider through the weight shift. NOTE ON THE MODEL: it is tagged `body-varial`, which the model defines by the rider's turn being independent of the board's rather than measured against it - true here, since the board does not turn at all. The tag's usual mechanism is the feet leaving the board, and in a toespin the front foot never does; it is the pivot. The independence is what the tag is claiming, not the airtime.

Step by step

1. Roll slowly with the ball of the front foot dead centre on the board, heel lifted clear of the grip.
2. Prewind the upper body the opposite way to the intended spin.
3. Unwind, bending the knees to compress, then straighten the legs to unweight the board.
4. Push off with the back foot and twist the torso into the rotation ahead of the feet.
5. Whip into the spin on the toes, body stacked directly over the front foot.
6. Bring the back foot blind back onto the tail, then unwind the twisted front foot into a normal stance.

Body mechanics