Correct body posture for ChiPushing and short demonstration of how you can start to chipush a longboard following the grounding stance:

Before starting to push you should always check the correct body posture so you can easily maintain it throughout the entire distance push with your board. The conscious adoption of this posture is especially important for beginners. After you get used to it and you can relax your body more and more, allowing the Chi to flow freely, you will be able to take it very quickly and automatically, as your body can sense what is the best posture to take.

 

Tilt your hips forward and flatten your lower back area while going down into your knees as if sitting down on a barstool. Straighten your spine and bring your upper body


into an upright position. Take your chin slightly back to straighten the neck area.

 

After turning the body into the direction you want to ride start shifting your body weight to the front foot and let your body lean forward. This will allow the gravitational force to pull you to the front. At the same time you bring your foot to the ground in front of you, catching your body wheight. As I see it, this principle of using the gravitational force for efficient movement can be directly transferred from Danny Dreyers ChiRunning technique to pushing a longboard.

 

However, when you start with your board standing still you will be able to lean forward only minimaly because otherwise you would push the board to the back and loose control over it. But if your board is already rolling, you can lean forward more, which will allow you to take a wider step with your pushing foot and give you more room for moving the board forward with your other foot.

  

The movements in the video are performed relatively slow. In the beginning this will help to develop a good feeling for the movements and to experience their underlying principles. It also allows to reproduce them in the correct way much easier. To master ChiPushing and to benefit from the efficiency of this method you will first have to work on perfecting the form of pushing, which is done by moving with your board in a slow and conscious way. In a next step you can then extend the distance you are pushing. Building upon these two foundations you will finally be able to also increase the speed of your pushing in an easy way.