Backside Air Reverse - Spin that Backside Air

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37. Backside Air Reverse

The backside air reverse is a strange air for the following reason: It is more of a chop hop out the top of the wave than a backside air with a spin. You’ll be stoked you learnt how to do chop hops now!!

I think the best place to start is getting your chop hops down and get em down on your backhand because a backside air reverse is all the same motion.
Once your comfortable chop hopping around on the face on your backside then its time to take them out the top of the lip. This is where the fun begins.

Ideal conditions for this is a sucky crumbly beach break with a bit of an onshore breeze, you do need the sucky aspect more than anything else because that is what’s going to launch you out the top of the wave.
Like with all airs you need as much speed as possible to pull this.
Get as much speed as you can by racing down the line and eyeing the section you want to blast off of. A closeout section that is peeling towards you is perfect.
Now what you want to do is eye that bit of lip that is pitching out, that is going to be your launch ramp. You don’t need to do a big bottom turn, if you do you will loose your speed and make it very hard for yourself to get a good spin in. you want your board to be exiting the lip at about a 45-degree angle. As you hit the lip you really want to propel yourself out of it so you will find you need to do a jump/ollie out of the lip to propel you into the air. As soon as you get to the point where only your tail and fins are left in the lip you want to rotate your body and shoulders pretty hard and turn your head so that you are looking at your inside/back shoulder. As soon as you do this you also want to really kick your tail out to get the board spinning. I cant stress enough how much it helps if you can already do chop hops because as soon as you leave the lip it is the chop hop motion that you have to go through with your board and your body.

So by now you should be in the air spinning. If you have rotated your body correctly and kicked the tail of your board out and done both of them at the right time then you will be spinning in the air. This is another one of those moves where it is all about timing. Get the timing wrong and your board will be flying away from you or you will simply land off the back of the wave.
Once you have got out the wave and you are spinning you actually have the hard part to do now… The landing! Because you are spinning in the air on your backside and you have had to torque your head and body so much to get in that position it’s very hard to spot your landing. The important thing here is to try and stay as centered over your board as you can, bend your knees and spread your arms so that your ready as can be for touch down. You will also find it helps if you have a slightly wider stance than normal as it will be harder to knock you off balance. The landing is where you will fall the most when trying backside air reverses. There is no secret tip that we can give you that will make you land them every time because there is so much that goes into this move, the most important thing to remember is when you do launch and get that spin in, be as ready as you can for the landing and try to ride out of that sucka.