question from newbie to veterans

With practice, patience, and persistence does toeside ever feel natural and comfortable? Or does it always feel like a red-headed step child compared to heelside?

I have been riding since '91 and it still kicks my butt!!!

I don't know what to tell you, sometimes I hit all my toeside jumps and they feel smooth and poppy and other times I am all over the place.
I am much better toeside if I actually do a trick instead of a straight air!!

Good luck,
jjakober

IMO, it wont ever feel as good as HS for me but I am getting better and more consistant everytime I go. When you get that down, then its time for switch TS, lol...

I'm in the same boat as Jakober. If I actually do a trick when I go in toeside it feels a lot more solid. If I do a straight air I sometimes get off balance. The more I ride the better it gets, though.

when I comin' correct on my toeside, I like the way the jumps feel better than heelside.

I've noticed that your if you're not on it with your body position on toeside, you're gettin' bucked. It's a little more finicky than heelside, but when you do it right it's butter.

im with mark d, throw a trick and its better, i think the same can be applied to switch, and is it just me or is switch toeside damn near impossible? lol

Switch toeside feels hard because people don't work on it, most would rather go for the instant gratification of yet another regular heelside trick. Switch toeside is the remedy for the Hollywood move syndrome.

it all comes down to handle position, and that goes for toeside and heelside, but especially toeside. once you learn where to position the handle for every jump, it becomes much easier and natural

It is surprising but I am better on my toe-side than heelside . I can edge stronger on my heel-side but the fine tuning of releasing on time is better on my toe-side. Maybe it comes from spending a lot of time learning TS 360 and 540 as well as frontflip and scarecrow. Switch TS is an othewr history

Ductape! Yes it does, in fact I am more comfortable on my Toeside then my heelside, especially when it come to spinning, and landing blind. Figure that one out.

Kevin,

I love switch Toeside. What really helped me was learning a switch Toeside frontroll. That move is pretty forgiving when you crash or come up short, so you can really trouble shoot you switch toeside edge. I learned riding an O'brien Valhalla, it has the crook fins on it which really helped me when learning, in fact the only crook fin I ever rode with was the switch toeside fin. After about a year and 1,000 crashes I can pretty much do everything regular and switch except a swich ts 7, I will get that one this summer.

So there is hope at the end, to somehow appease the great God of faceplants?

TS takes a while, but they get easier. Just do a ts jump after every hs. Too many people cut across the wake because they dont like ts. I have friends that have more ts tricks than hs. Switch TS still sucks for me.

Take every opporunity to improve. Its' no fun riding on Chop Suey, and you don't want to "waste time" "practicing" when its nuthin' but butter. So go out when its choppy and use that time to practice toeside approach and/or fakie. When you're out on a nice day with friends, you want to perform, right? So use the nasty days to improve your game....just my opinion...