FS 5050s on a round flat bar

[Petite_Vagues]

Pals.

After a decade of almost exclusively grinding ledges, I’m trying to move back to the flat bar.

I can’t seem to lock in. I am used to pushing against my heels on a ledge, and that is causes me to just slide over and off the rail.

Any tips? I’d highly recommend staying at least somewhat proficient on the rail, it was terrifying just getting myself committing to getting on the rail the first few times.

[ChuckRamone]

You need to lock your ankles because the bar is not gonna support your weight on one side like a ledge will. Locking your ankles will help keep the board from rolling over toeside or heelside. Basically you keep your feet as stiff as possible while kinda pointing your heels down and your toes up to keep the board from wobbling around.

You also wanna flex and harden your legs and core as you lock in more than you normally would on a ledge.

[Petite_Vagues]

So just locking everything out when I get on the rail… are you doing like a shifty Ollie up onto the rail, or getting on and sliding into a cross-lock?

[ChuckRamone]

I usually try to lock in heelside or right in the middle but often end up doing an unintentional crosslock.

[mfweeno]

I am way more comfortable with front 5050s on ledges versus round rails, but I’ve been trying to get better at the latter recently. There’s a big mental hurdle for me with rails, so I’ve taken notes on the shit that makes them feel less squirrelly.

One detail I’ve noticed - with ledges, I very subtly “angle in” my run up. On a ledge, this helps me get a good lock-in when I land. It feels like I can apply more “horizontal” pressure into the grind. However, on a round rail, this habit will typically cause me to slip over the heel side after landing on the rail.

For rails, adjusting my approach so that my roll up is more “parallel” helps me feel like I can lock in “from the top”, placing pressure into the rail “vertically” instead of “horizontally”. One of the guys at the park who’s really dialed on front fifties and front smiths on the bar told me he thinks about “standing and pressing” his trucks into the rail to stay locked on. This was helpful for me to generally understand the balance and pressure points. Once you find a good balance point on the rail, it’s mostly a matter of keeping tension on top of your board through your feet until you pop or grind out.

One drill that helped me apply this was actually starting the grind from the middle of the rail. This forced me to align my roll up properly with the rail, and made deviations from “parallel” way more obvious. Starting slow with this - and intentionally holding a slow grind/stall - can also help build confidence in the “balance”/“tightrope” feeling of locking on a round bar.

As the more “parallel” roll up felt more natural, I started adding speed and popping into the grind from earlier points on the ground. I think I actually posted in the “last skate session” thread about grinding the entire round bar at the park one time - this is the process I used to land it that day.

[Petite_Vagues]

I took all the recommendations this afternoon, I found that just barely rolling and ollieing into a stall helped a lot.. I’m still regularly slipping over onto my heels, but I’m finding that landing with toe pressure helps mitigate that.

[rawbertson.]

i finally learned this again after many years of never 5050ing any round bar
I 5050d and 5-0d a round 6 stair handrail one night at my skatepark and then never did it again cause of how many tries it took, basically just got lucky and landed those straight on. that is basically what you need to do though, just ollie onto it absolutely perfectly. because you can lock in one way or another its not impossible once you start grinding but it is sort of a mind fuck.
I ollie over the rail a bunch of times just to warm up and make sure my ollie sticks to my feet and is where it needs to be.
Once I got over the fear of slipping out, I got it really quickly
I think round bars its probably more important than any other type of rail to land in a good ollie position if you want to pop out middle because you dont have any wheel at all for leverage its all truck. also even if you try to just go to the end of the bar i think its much harder to adjust your feet on a round rail to get to a good position to get out than it is on a ledge.