Training Articles - Tricking Orientation Writeup

What is Tricking Orientation?

Tricking orientation is the direction of your tricking (duh). The direction of your spin, what leg you jump with, what leg you kick with, which leg you land on etc are all components of tricking orientation.

Why does it matter?

So why do we care about the direction of our tricking? Long story short, consistent orientation will make your tricking easier and better. In particular your combing ability will be drastically improved. The vast majority of trickers eventually realize the importance of consistent orientation, however being conscience of it from the beginning can save you a lot of time and frustration as well as increase your rate progress. Now imagine the fallowing situations: You finally land your aerial and you want to try to cheat 720_aerial, but then you realize that your aerial takes off on your right foot, while you kick with your left foot on your cheat 720. Another example, if you try to combo pop 360 c/t 540 but your pop 360 spins clockwise, while your 540 spins counterclockwise, you are going to have a hard time. There are a whole lot more example (btwist s/t cork, hbs9>aerial, Raiz m/l btwist), so figure out your orientation and stick to it and your tricking will be better off because of it.

 

Determining your spin

Let s begin with a couple definitions, these should be pretty obvious, but let's just make sure we are all on the same page:

Dominant Hand: The hand you write with
Dominant Leg: The leg on the same side as your dominate hand
Non-dominant Hand: The hand that not your dominate hand
Non-dominant Leg: The leg that is not your dominate leg

 

So now it should be easy to figure out your tricking orientation. 80% (or so) of the time, if you are right side dominant you will spin counterclockwise and if you are left side dominant you will spin clockwise. If you want to double check that you are not one of the rare 20% or so, stand up, jump and spin as many times as you can, then not which direction you span, this will be your spinning direction. Once you have established this direction it is absolute. It doesn't matter what trick you are doing, twist, flip, kick, vertical or horizontal, spinning the same ways it critical. Why? Because spinning direction is the only constant in tricking, whether you are doing a quad cork or a tornado kick, you spin the same way (because tornado s/t quad cork wouldn't work other wise). The leg you jump off of, the leg you kick with, they change, but your spinning should always be the same and because of this spinning direction will dictate the rest of your tricking orientation.

 

Now I know at this point some of you are thinking "what the hell, I am left handed, but I spin counterclockwise, what gives." This is just fine. In general righties find it easier to spin counterclockwise and lefties find it easier to spin clockwise, this is because of a disparity between your dominant and non dominant arm/shoulder as well as some sorta "natural tendency" that is tide into your brian chemistry. Point is, the actual direction you spin is rather irrelevant as long as all your tricks spin the same way. So if you spin opposite of what I said you should, then take a moment and think, 'do I really spin better that way', hell stand up jump and spin, see which direction is better and if the 'wrong' side feels better stick with it, just make sure to be consistent.

Putting it all together

Now that you have figured out your spinning direction, we can ensure that the rest of our tricking matches up with it. Below I have listed of various setups and kick and with which leg the kicks or jumps are preformed with. Many tricks will fall into more than one category depending on what part of the trick is referenced; a jackknife for example is a cheat trick with an outside and inside kick. I trust that this wont confuse you any.

Outside Kicks

Ex: Pop 360, cheat 720, Box cutter, Shuriken Twist

Any kick that travels away from the body's center line=>Outside crescents, hooks, and wheel kicks, should be performed with the non-dominate leg.

 

So:
Counterclockwise spinners-Left leg kicks
Clockwise spinners-Right leg kicks

 

Inside Kicks

Ex: 540, Pop 900, Hyperswipe, Fulltwist round

Any kick that travels towards the body's center line=>Inside crescents, round, and front, should be performed with the dominate leg.

 

So:
Counterclockwise spinners-Right leg kicks
Clockwise spinners-Left leg kicks

 

Cheat Tricks

Ex: 540, cheat 720 twists, raiz

Any trick performed from a cheat (tornado kick) set up should jump off the dominate leg and drive up with the non-dominate leg

 

So:
Counterclockwise spinners-Right leg jumps, left drives
Clockwise spinners-Left leg jumps, right leg drives

 

"Dipping tricks"

Ex: Cartwheel, Aerial, butterfly kick, butterfly twist, round offs

Any trick based of the cartwheel or butterfly kick should lead and jump off the non-dominate leg, thus ensuring a smooth transition from outside kicking tricks and into a vast array of other tricks.

 

So:
Counterclockwise spinners-jump with left leg
Clockwise spinners-jump with right leg

 

Gainer tricks

Ex: gainer flash, corkscrew, box cutter, swing through double leg

Any trick that uses a gainer setup where one leg jumps and the other kicks up should jump with the non-dominate leg and kick with the dominate leg.

 

So:
Counterclockwise spinners: Jump with left, kick with right
Clockwise spinners: Jump with right, kick with left

 

Groundwork

Ex: Au Batido, Macaco/Valdez, Scoot, TD raiz

I am not a breaker, so I can't speak for their moves, but for the ground work listed above, your non-dominate are should be to one on the ground.

 

So:
Counterclockwise spinners: Left hand on ground
Clockwise spinners: right hand on ground

Thanks for the contribution!

*Cleaned it up a bit, added some bold and spacing to help the visual flow.

Hmm... I'm right-hand-dominant, I spin counter-clockwise way on all of my cheat tricks, but all of my pop tricks go clockwise. (This is mostly because the first two real tricks I learned were p360 and c5, and I wanted to kick with my right on both of those, so I learned them accordingly...)

This is super common. i would really suggest relaerning your pop trick on the ther side unless you are happy not beign able to combo them easily

Cool :D I still need to transfer mine in text instead of just giving the link, I don't know why I'm too lazy. I should have time next Saturday as I'm gone all this coming week.

Ehh, I haven't hit any big roadblocks because of it. My biggest tricking-orientation problem right now is that I put my left hand down first to cartwheel (which matches the spin on my 540s), and so I got my gumbi on my cartwheel side. See the problem yet? I really want to learn an invert-raiz, which is a gumbi without hands. But if I try to do an invert-raiz on my gumbi side, it's going the opposite way of all my cheat tricks (except c7s; I can do those on both sides).

Haha, I wonder if that's why Prodigy's high- and low-raiz are on different sides...

I'm right handed, and in the majority of those I'm a counter-clockwise spinner... Except, I RO full and fulls in general go to the right. Going to the left is too hard and confusing. -_-

I'm right leg dominant and prefer to spin in whichever direction allows my right leg to do the kicking. Counter-clockwise for 540, clockwise for p3, p7, etc., counter-clockwise for btwists and corks.

I forced myself to do everything anti-clockwise, I used to do my pop tricks clockwise though. My last hurdle is learning to aerial better on my bad side, I do it taking off of my right foot and I can't use aerials in any combos =\

Thanks Webmaster