On The Road with Kiteworld

INTRO – In issue #35 Aaron explains the ideas behind his latest tricks that are all about how good they feel rather than how many spins he can do. Here in a web exclusive, Aaron goes into the intricacies of the hand change in a back to blind with a nose grab. Blink and you'll miss it. The judges frequently do!

HAND CHANGES
"I switch my hands back on the bar between the grab and the pass. This move feels really good. You come round, grab the nose and you're so laid out. I do it in a back roll usually and end up coming round all laid out because you've got a different hand on and you're not crunched up trying to get to the back. You're pretty free grabbing the nose and you can really tweak your back leg out and bring your front knee up. After that it's sort of like the shifty where you get that momentum to uncoil back to blind; that reversing element. Grabbing with the back hand and then letting go with the other one sort of pulls you round. It just feels super cool, but this is the sort of thing that typically doesn't get picked up in the judging criteria of competition. If you're doing grabs in competition you need to know that you can hold it for a good second; just really keep it in so they can see it. This one's quite good because you really do see the grab, whether they see the hand change on the bar as you come into blind or not is another thing.

A nose grab to blind is a nice, simple one to start with. Lewis Crathern does them a lot and we started doing them a while back. It's such a simple trick but the feeling it gives you is insane. Hit the kicker/wave at full speed and the nose is right there. You can pull it and hold it for ages and then right before you land do a quick 180 and switch the bar. Same sort of feeling."