[gurchik]

> Also, she had to learn what it meant to ride “goofy footed.” It’s when you ride a board with your right foot forward instead of your left. “Oh,” Shaunda says. “Well, I am left-handed.”

I am right handed but would ride a skateboard the same way. I never even tried with my left foot forward. Even visualizing it feels wrong. I wonder why this is the apparently uncommon stance? Some people I think prefer to use their dominant foot to push, but it’s easier to keep my balance when my dominant foot is on the board.

[bseidensticker]

Stance for board sports is nearly even, one analysis shows 56% regular vs 44% goofy [1]. It's not like handedness at all. Not sure why one was designated "normal" and the other "weird" when it's so close. My guess is that there was a very small group of skaters that came up with the name, and by chance most of them happened to be regular.

1. https://blog.benw.xyz/2013/11/the-real-goofy-vs-regular-a-lo...

[bravura]

One theory is that "goofy-footed" came from the way Goofy surfed in an old Walt Disney cartoon: https://www.pacificlongboarder.com/news/Did-you-know-The-ter...

[bseidensticker]

Oh yeah, I forgot about that

[viraptor]

Naming things is weird. In movement/dance description, the name of the typical walk is "contrabody", but if you move your right arm with your right leg, that's called "natural".

[daggersandscars]

I skateboard "regular" but snowboard "goofy". Not that I'm amazing at either, but that's just what felt natural to me for each.

[tetris11]

Left-handed, and left foot forward for skateboard and snowboard. I associate my right foot with strength and my left with finesse

[ethbr1]

+1 on goofy snowboard. Just feel right.

[chasebank]

The classic way to tell if you're regular or goofy is to close your eyes and have someone shove you from behind, see which foot you try and catch yourself with. Probably works better if you don't know the shove is coming.

[TacticalCoder]

> I am right handed but would ride a skateboard the same way.

Yup was going to comment that I didn't know if left-handed were more likely to be goofy but back in my skateboarding days I definitely had right-handed friends who were goofy instead of regular.

> ... but it’s easier to keep my balance when my dominant foot is on the board

My daughter (who's not goofy but reglar), for a reason I don't understand, prefer to push with her front foot while keeping her back foot on the board. It's not how I told her.

[nop_slide]

Am left handed and I skate regular, however I do a ton of switch so take that as you will ;)

[zabeltech]

That’s called Mongo pushing ;)

[rendaw]

Like "handedness" there's also "footedness", and they're not strictly linked. Apparently around 40% of left-handers are right-footers but only ~3% of right-handers are left-footers.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-asymmetric-bra...

The above also notes there are similar (semi-)independent preferences for hearing and seeing too.

[emmelaich]

Same. Another variation is which foot you push off with. I always push off with my front foot, the right (strong) foot. So it makes sense to me to ride goofy.

First time I saw people push off with their back foot it seemed so weird. But I think they were mostly natural not goofies.