In surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding and aggressive inline skating, frontside and backside are terms that are used to describe how a person approaches an obstacle or performs a certain trick. In aggressive inline skating, frontside and backside are types of grinds. Frontside and backside indicate either the front or back of the rider under the following circumstances: Regardless of which board sport you are referring to, if the rider is not spinning it indicates which side is facing the "wave" on approach. This can be many things, rail, pipe wall, or slope/implied slope. If the rider is spinning it will indicate which side of the rider is first to face in the direction of travel. The only exception to this rule is fakie as there is an implied 180 degree rotation already completed causing the expression to be reversed. The names frontside and backside originate from surfing where they mean the direction the surfer is facing while surfing a wave. If the surfer is facing the wave, he or she is surfing frontside, otherwise he or she is surfing backside. The terms forehand and backhand are synonyms for frontside and backside but they are only used in surfing. Skateboarding For performing rotational tricks on flat ground, frontside means that for the first 90–180 degrees of the rotation, the rider rotates to face the direction of travel. For a rider traveling in the "regular" stance (left foot leading), frontside means to rotate counter clockwise (as seen from above). Conversely, a skater (regular) doing a backside rotation/trick is rotating clockwise. The same applies to horizontal board-rotation tricks, where the skater does not rotate: a regular stance skater performing a frontside shove-it spins the board counter clockwise, as seen from above. When riding fakie, the term is reversed. For example, a rider in the "goofy" stance (right foot leading) does a frontside 180 when they rotate 180 degrees clockwise. When riding switch, frontside and backside are the same as they would be from regular. When riding nollie, the rotation of tricks is the same as in regular stance, i.e. a nollie backside 180 spins in the same direction as a regular stance backside 180. When applied to slides involving obstacles, backside and frontside take on different meaning: the terms define how the obstacle is being approached. For example, when performing a frontside boardslide, "frontside" means that the obstacle (e.g. rail or ledge) is to