The sad plant is another grab trick on our list. It is, again, only about the little tweaks that make it different from the well-known hand plant, and we will try to teach you the basic steps. The hand plant is a great old-school trick that was invented way back, and is one of the most iconic quarter/ramp tricks. It is done on the coping of the ramp, and it needs both of your hands to execute it.
So first, to quickly describe the hand plant, we can say that you need to do a back handstand on the coping while grabbing your board on the toe side of the board with your front hand, and then turning into the ramp curve in a backside rotation.
Find a comfortable quarter that is not too high for the beginning. Take right about enough speed to feel like you can go to a slight air from the coping. To start, you should first try the handstand on the edge of the quarter stationary to get the feel of how to transfer the body weight from feet to a hand, as this will be the key element later. Try to grab the board with your front hand and try a slight backside kick turn, as this is another key element to roll away.
Once you get the feeling of what to do, you can start adding the speed and go higher each try until you are comfortable to reach the coping. Set your back foot on the tail and your front foot centered on the bolts. Once you get close to the coping, extend your backhand and try to grab it. At the same time, grab your board with the front hand on the outer side of the board. Leave the body weight to go up and over the coping like you are trying to fly out, but start leading the direction a bit in the back side to transfer the majority of the body weight to the back (stand) hand.
If there is enough speed, you will be able to fully extend your backhand, which now holds all of your body weight. When your back hand is fully extended, suck your knees up and pull the board closer like you want to prevent to go airborne and this will pull you back to the curve. You will end up on your hip for sure on the first try, but that is normal!
Because your body weight is on the back hand, you need to lean forward to land and use your front hand to try to lead the board centered under your feet.
So, when we have the basic hand plant in our pocket, we can start to play and add some tweaks to execute the so-called sad plant.
For the sad plant, we will need to force the body into a bit different position, which makes the trick look so much more awesome.
In the moment of grabbing the coping with your back hand, you need to start extending your front foot far up like you do at the Nose Bone or Stalefish Ollie, and suck your back knee as close to the body as possible, so that you are almost in a vertical position when reaching the peak. Try to hold it as long as possible, and once you feel like your body weight starts to pull you down, just relax and softly go.