A lipslide is a skateboarding slide trick where your back truck passes over the obstacle (a rail or ledge) before your board locks into a perpendicular slide. It looks nearly identical to a boardslide once you’re on the obstacle, but the way you get into it is what sets the two apart.
How a Lipslide Works
To perform a lipslide, you ollie and rotate 90 degrees so your board lands perpendicular to the rail or ledge, with the underside of your deck sliding along the edge. The defining detail is that your back truck travels up and over the obstacle during the ollie. Once you’re locked in, the obstacle sits between your feet and the tail of your board, and you slide on the underside of the deck closer to the tail.
This matters because lifting the back truck over the obstacle requires more height, more commitment, and a slightly different rotation than the alternative (a boardslide). You’re essentially turning your body toward the obstacle and popping over it in one motion, which puts you in a position that feels less natural and harder to bail out of. That added difficulty is a big part of why lipslides carry more respect in skating.
Lipslide vs. Boardslide
The easiest way to tell the two apart is to watch which truck goes over the obstacle. In a boardslide, your front truck passes over the rail or ledge as you ollie on. In a lipslide, your back truck goes over. That single difference changes everything about the approach and body position.
For a boardslide, you approach with your back facing the obstacle, ollie, and rotate 90 degrees outward so the middle of your board catches the edge. Your front truck clears the rail first, and you land in a relatively open, comfortable stance. A lipslide flips the script: you approach facing the obstacle and ollie with enough rotation that your back truck clears it. You land with the rail or ledge behind you, closer to the tail of the board. This position feels more “blind” because you can’t see the obstacle as easily once you’re sliding, and your weight needs to stay more precisely centered to avoid slipping off.
Another way to think about it: a lipslide on a rail is essentially a 180 into a boardslide. If you’d normally set up for a frontside boardslide, a lipslide has you ollie and turn the extra distance so you land in what would be a backside boardslide position instead. That extra rotation is what sends your back truck over the rail.
Frontside vs. Backside Lipslides
Like most slide tricks, lipslides come in two orientations. A frontside lipslide means the obstacle is on your toe side as you approach. You ollie, rotate, and your chest faces forward along the obstacle as you slide. A backside lipslide puts the obstacle on your heel side, so you rotate with your back toward the direction of travel. Backside lipslides are generally considered the harder of the two because you’re turning away from your line of sight, making it tougher to spot your landing.
Why Lipslides Are Harder Than They Look
The extra commitment is what makes lipslides a step up from boardslides. Three things make them more demanding:
- Higher ollie requirement. Your back truck sits farther from the obstacle during approach, so you need more pop to clear it over the top.
- Tighter rotation. You’re rotating into the obstacle rather than away from it, which leaves less room for error. Under-rotate and your back truck catches the edge. Over-rotate and you lose the slide entirely.
- Weight distribution. Once locked in, the obstacle is closer to your tail, meaning your center of gravity has to stay balanced over a less intuitive part of the board. Leaning too far forward or backward sends you off quickly.
Because of this, most skaters learn boardslides well before attempting lipslides. A solid, comfortable boardslide on both rails and ledges gives you the board feel and balance you need before adding the extra rotation and height.
Lipslides on Ledges vs. Rails
Ledges are the more forgiving surface to learn lipslides on. A flat ledge gives you a wider surface to lock into, so small errors in weight placement don’t immediately throw you off. The slide also tends to be slower, giving you more time to adjust your balance mid-trick.
Rails are a different challenge. The contact point is a single round bar, so your board can slip sideways much more easily. You need a more precise lock-in and steadier weight distribution throughout the slide. The payoff is that lipslides on rails look cleaner and more technical, which is why they tend to be the version you see in video parts and competitions.
Lipslides Beyond Skateboarding
The lipslide crossed over into snowboarding as rail riding progressed through the 1990s. A crew of riders in Salt Lake City, including Brian Thien, JP Walker, and Jeremy Jones, helped push backside lipslides into the spotlight around 1996 by hitting increasingly large urban rails. The mechanics translate directly: the back binding passes over the rail before the board locks into the slide. In snowboarding, the trick carries the same reputation for difficulty and commitment, since the rider has to clear the rail with extra rotation while staying balanced on a single edge.
Building Toward Lipslide Variations
Once you have a clean lipslide dialed in, it becomes a foundation for more technical tricks. Adding a kickflip or heelflip into the ollie before locking into the lipslide is a common progression. You can also vary the exit by spinning out 270 degrees instead of the standard 90, or by combining the lipslide with a revert on landing. These combinations stack the difficulty quickly, which is why a solid, confident basic lipslide matters so much before moving on. Mastering the balance and rotation of a standard lipslide builds the control needed for nearly every advanced slide trick in skating.