Topside Grinds

Topside is when the souling foot is grinding on top of the obstacle, with the weight on the frame instead of the sole of the boot.

Topside is when the souling foot is grinding on top of the obstacle, with the weight on the frame instead of the sole of the boot. Your skate is horizontal instead of vertical. They might seem hard to learn in the beginning, just as it was when learning souls. When practising topside soul tricks, a good thing is to imagine that you are to do a farside soul instead. When you've learned this, try to land the trick with your skate horizontal on the obstacle.

Topside souls are harder than ordinary souls, but also looks really good. This is mainly because it's hard to do a topside trick without doing the trick in lowrider style. In order to do topside tricks, you have to lean out away from the obstacle, so that your body is over the ground, stairs, or ramp, and not the ledge, rail, or coping.

When doing topside tricks on ramps, you need to have your body placed over the ramp and not over the coping. The more you lean out, the easier it is to maintain balance once you've locked in. If you don't lock in, simply just bail out, slide down the ramp. Lots of people don't like to lean out over the ramp, because they are scared they will fall bad, but if you just slide down the ramp, there's really nothing to fear.

The easiest topside trick is probably the sweatstance, since you can see your souling skate. When doing topside souls, you can't see your souling skate. So go for the sweatstance first, then the kindgrind, and then either the fishbrain or the topsoul.

Other Grind tricks