The Coleman slide, or any longboard slide for that matter, is an important skill needed for going down hill where you might need to stop short (for example, riding on a hill where cars drive).

This instructable covers the Coleman slide which is considered the best first slide by many boarders. After learning this slide, you can move on to many other slides like pendulums, standing slides, and others.

Sub Note: I do not have any pictures of myself sliding, so Instead I have used a picture of the inventor of the Coleman slide, Cliff Coleman.

Image Source: http://www.geocities.com/sk8sanjose/coleman.jpg

Step 1: What You Will Need:

Some skateboarding experience: Be able to carve down hills.

If you can't do this, work on your skills before trying this, or else you might fall and then dislike longboarding.

Sliding gloves: 100% necessary, either buy some, or make some using this guide:

How to Make sliding gloves
Sliding gloves allow you to put your hands on the ground at speed without hurting yourself.

A board: again, 100% necessary, make one using this guide:

How to make a longboard
Your trucks should be pretty loose, but not super duper loose. Wheels, although you will hear otherwise, aren't that important, just don't cry if you wreck your soft wheels.

A helmet: YOU NEED ONE, you might die without one

Seriously.

Step 2: What Kind of Day to Learn and Where?

When
If you are ok with possibly wrecking your bearings, I strongly recommend a wet day. The wetness will allow you to slide alot easier than when it is dry. Otherwise, dry will work.

Where
Here you have some choices that don't really matter.

A large flat area

An empty parking lot lets you push alot, get a good speed, and have room to slide.

A semi steep hill

The hill lets you build up your speed, and the run out has space to slide.

A hill leading into a parking lot

This is where I learned, best of all worlds.

It doesn't really matter where you learn as long as you can get up to speed and then have another 15-30 feet of slide room.

Step 3: What to Do:

Set aside a good hour or so to learn. Put your helmet and gloves on, grab your board, and set out.

Get into the box position, and put your hand facing downhill behind you on the ground, and do a large, sharp, and fast heelside carve.

Lean in to your hand, and if you need to do it steez *. Steez is when you grab the board behind your back foot.

Steez isn't widely recomended, but I can't initiate a slide without it.

DO NOT do it stink-bug, or with you hand grabbing between your feet.

Really, what will help your success the most is to get out there and experiment with turns. It is hard to explain in words, so your practice and experimenting will be the most helpful.

Step 4: Increasing Style:

After you hit a few Colemans, you will want to make your slide look better.

What you need to do is to make sure you slide enough to do a 180. This makes it so you slash your speed in half (or more), and then can ride out of it.

Just mess around and see what works best for you.

Step 5: Going BIG:

FInd some sick hills, bomb down, then Coleman 180 out, it is so much fun!

Watch out for cars cracks in the road, and other stuff, a helmet is very handy!

Make sure to work your way up to big hills, going all out right after learning can lead to some nasty bails.

I hope my Instructable helped you learn sliding, drop a comment on anything about sliding, I'll do my best to answer!

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39 Comments

SkatingP

4 years ago

Thank You, Auther! You have shared awesome 5 tips about longboard sliding! Hopefully you will share more important tips with us!

le_poptart

7 years ago

How loose would loose be exactly and could you use a regular board for this and just loosen the trucks? Im still relatively new to this help

Elijah0831

8 years ago on Step 4

So, I tried this yesterday, without success. Whenever I tried initiating the slide, it would throw me off, because the back wheels just wouldn't slip. I was using 70 mm., 78A rounded lip cruising wheels and gloves consisting of a square of brake pad material, and duct tape wrapped around the fingers and palm. It had rained the day before, and the road was still kind of wet. Why didn't it work? Was there not enough grip from my gloves? Was I just going too slow (like 10- 15 mph)? I had the same problems with pendies, btw... Can anyone help?