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Sure, your new skateboard looks great leaning against the wall and under your arm as you walk around, but the real fun starts when you ride that thing. So strap on your safety gear cause the time has come to learn some tricks.
The fastest way to build up a decent bag of tricks is to construct a solid foundation of basics to slowly build upon. Comfort, style, and finesse come with experience and muscle memory, and that comes with repetition. Some tricks will come easier than others, some you won’t ever land at all, but we promise that once you have the fundamentals down the process of learning can be as much fun as the process of landing.
Keep in mind that intentionally standing on a rolling plank is not natural. The human instinct is to keep your feet safely on non-moving ground. A lot of success in skateboarding lies within habituating your mind as well as your body to feel comfortable landing on your moving skateboard. It is also why staying calm and relaxed can be crucial toward your progression.
With all that in mind, get ready for a lot of fun and fulfillment. You also might want to check out our Skateboard Buyer's Guide or Skate Terminology Guide if you get a little lost in the lingo here. We’ll cover some of the basics.
REGULAR and GOOFY FOOTED: There are two basic stances in skateboarding with names derived from surfing. You are naturally one or the other, just like you are left or right handed. If you skate with your left leg in front, you are “Regular” footed. If you have your right foot forward, you are “Goofy”. This primary division can make explaining tricks and obstacles a bit difficult, as a clockwise turn for Regular stance is the opposite direction for Goofy. The same issue exists for obstacles; a curb that would be approached frontside for a Regular would be backside for a Goofy skater.
NORMAL, FAKIE, SWITCH, and NOLLIE: Your natural stance, with your front foot forward and your back foot in back, be it Regular or Goofy, is your Normal stance. When you skate in your unnatural stance, that is considered Switch Stance skating (sometimes called Opposite Footed). If you ride backwards, that is known as Fakie. And when you switch the function of your legs without changing your stance, so you pop off the nose rather than the tail, those tricks are called Nollie. So, does that mean that doing a fakie ollie is the same thing as a switch nollie? Yes, it does. But nobody says “switch nollie”.
So then, nearly every flip trick can be done 4 different ways. Nollie (off the nose), Fakie (backwards), in your non-natural stance (Switch), and in your natural stance (Normal).
ROLLING: The first thing to learn is to stand on your board while it is moving. Being comfortable with rolling, pushing (with your back foot!) is essential. Start slowly on a smooth, flat area with plenty of room. This is also a good chance to practice the timeless art of bailing, or stepping off or jumping away from your board when things get a little hairy. That’s it. You are now officially a skateboarder. Ready to take it up a notch, practice rolling over small sidewalk cracks and textured surfaces like bricks. Maybe even take it down a very slight downward surface.
CARVING: Get ready for some surf-inspired fun. Carving is just turning your board by shifting your weight to one side or another while keeping all four wheels on the ground. You can carve on a flat surface, or carve on embankments (either curved transition or flat) for some real surf action. Rolling and carving… these are the essentials of skateboarding and you can have a lifetime of fun on your board and only do these two things. Don’t overlook them in the rush to learn tricks. And if you ever get frustrated while trying to land other tricks, taking a few moments enjoying these basics is the perfect reset button.
ROLLING: The first thing to learn is to stand on your board while it is moving. Being comfortable with rolling, pushing (with your back foot!) is essential. Start slowly on a smooth, flat area with plenty of room. This is also a good chance to practice the timeless art of bailing, or stepping off or jumping away from your board when things get a little hairy. That’s it. You are now officially a skateboarder. Ready to take it up a notch, practice rolling over small sidewalk cracks and textured surfaces like bricks. Maybe even take it down a very slight downward surface. CARVING: Get ready for some surf-inspired fun. Carving is just turning your board by shifting your weight to one side or another while keeping all four wheels on the ground. You can carve on a flat surface, or carve on embankments (either curved transition or flat) for some real surf action. Rolling and carving… these are the essentials of skateboarding and you can have a lifetime of fun on your board and only do these two things. Don’t overlook them in the rush to learn tricks. And if you ever get frustrated while trying to land other tricks, taking a few moments enjoying these basics is the perfect reset button.
Understanding how skaters define the direction they are turning can take some effort. Because Regular and Goofy skaters’ bodies are facing different directions when standing on their boards, we can’t frequently describe the direction of spin in terms of clockwise and counter-clockwise.
The terms frontside and backside come from surfing and whether the face of the wave you are carving into is in front of you (frontside) or to your back (backside). This works well for skaters when we think of skating ledges or ramp coping, but can get a bit confusing when we talk about body and board rotation on flatground with no obstacle to reference. These distinctions can seem downright illogical when we describe rotations from a fakie position, which is then backwards.
Don’t sweat it. The fundamental understanding you need is that a Frontside rotation, be it a turn or a trick where your body spins, is when your shoulders open up and your front side (or chest) will face forward as you turn 180. For a Regular stance skater, this would be a counterclockwise spin. For a Goofy skater, a frontside spin would rotate clockwise. Logically enough, Backside rotation goes in the other direction. Backside is often considered more challenging as you will lose sight of the direction of your momentum for a moment.
KICKTURN: This is turning, in one direction or another, by lifting your front wheels off the ground and pivoting on your back wheels. A crucial skill when you want to make a turn that is too tight for carving alone. A kickturn is equally applicable while rolling on flat ground or changing direction at the top of a bank or transition.
TIC-TAC: A series of back and forth mini-kickturns. So rather than turning 90 or even a full 180 degrees, you are just pivoting about 25 degrees in one direction (Tic) and then immediately pivoting back (Tac). An added bonus to the Tic-Tac is that one can use this slight side to side motion to gain forward momentum.
POWERSLIDES and REVERTS: This one takes some bravery and board control, as you will be using your momentum to not pivot or carve but to slide on all four wheels. Sliding on your wheels (which is easier on harder wheels; soft wheels are sticky) creates a lot of friction and will slow your momentum quickly. In order to maintain a powerslide, you’ll need to center your weight behind your slide enough to keep forward movement but not so much that you slip out.
Like the powerslide, you’ll find a lot of skateboarding’s slide and grind tricks involve finding the perfect center of gravity to strike the balance of overcoming friction and keeping the trick moving forward while not slipping back or sticking and falling forward.
Reverts are quick 180 spin powerslides that quickly change your stance without changing your direction. Reverts can also be done in combination with a kickturn so only your back wheels slide.
An ollie is to get air on your board without touching it. The name entered the skate lexicon as a vertical bowl trick around 1976 thanks to Alan Gelfand, whose nickname was “Ollie”. Alan discovered that he could control hands-free aerials above the coping if he slammed his tail on concrete near the top of the bowl while simultaneously sliding his front forward on the board. Freestyle skater Rodney Mullen invented the modern flatground iteration of the ollie in 1982, and thus the foundation of modern street skating was born.
The secret to the ollie is the coordination of using your front foot to control your board in simultaneous conjunction with the back foot popping the tail. This muscle coordination can take a while to develop, but it is well worth the effort. A solid ollie is the single most crucial element that nearly all other street tricks are built on. It is also one of the most fun things you can do.
Got the ollie down? Guess what, you now get to learn it all again with a switch ollie, fakie ollie, and nollie.
