Don’t tell me you didn’t sense this one coming. If you didn’t then it is time that you paid a little more attention to how you describe moves. There are plenty of people including those that should know better that are abusing the terms frontside and backside. Frontside and backside are not terms that refer to how a person is approaching the wake but rather terms that refer to the direction a rider is rotating during a spin. Toeside and heelside are the terms that should be used to specify which way the rider is edging up the wake.
Which way is frontside and which is backside? Your spin direction is simply determined by weather you turn your back to the direction you are going (backside) or if you turn and face the direction you are going (frontside) when you first come off of the wake. On a backside 360 the first part of the spin you cannot see the direction you are traveling (blind) but the second half you can spot your landing as you are finishing the rotation. The opposite is true of a frontside 360, on take-off you can see the direction you are traveling but the second half of the spin is blind.
So what is the difference between backside and blindside? Not much, it’s just that frontside doesn’t have a cool-sounding synonym. Which leads me to another note on the same subject. There are certain athletes in this sport who choose to throw out all sense of established guidelines when naming tricks. If you choose to land a trick without passing the handle looking as if you are trying to shove the handle up your ass that does not mean that you are landing blind. That means you are not quite proficient enough at that move to pass the handle again and make it look good. So if you do a 720 off the wake and stomp it like Greg Necrason, passing the handle to your front hand, that’s a 720. It is also called a 720 if you neglect to make the final handle pass and land as if you are playing twister with the Village People, not a 720 to blind. The only thing I can think of that would resemble a 720 to blind is a backside 900, in which case it would be called a backside 900, which to date has not been done. This makes perfect sense if you follow the established guidelines of trick naming because a tantrum to blind is a tantrum with a blind 180, similarly a back roll to blind is a backroll with a blind 180. Thank you for your support.
