francis-documentary

OLLIE

Every trick in skateboarding owes a large debt to the grandfather and basic building block of all moves, the ollie. The idea is simple: just get rolling and jump with the skateboard under foot, after that, the variations are endless. You have the kickflip, the shove-it, the nollie, the impossible, and a myriad of grabs, but there’s just one problem. It’s not quite as easy as it may seem, and if you have gone through skateboarding 101 with the aid of the newest hit video game, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, you may be in for a rude awakening.

The ollie is a simple trick, but it does take a long time to master. The first thing that you may want to keep in mind is that it takes a serious toll upon your unsuspecting footwear. There are special shoes made for skateboarding that are designed with extra padding to compensate for the friction created by sliding your foot along the griptape (a sandpaper like material found on top of any serious skateboard). You may want to get a pair, but they tend to be a bit pricey. It is also a good idea to start off on gravel or some other surface that doesn’t allow the board to move around much. You should work up to performing an ollie while moving after you have it perfected in this way.

Next, you must crouch down slightly, bending at the knees (you can put your hands out slightly to help keep your balance). The basic ollie involves a quick shift in balance. Start off leaning back with a strong push down upon the tail so it touches the ground. Just as quickly as you have done that, jump up while sliding your front foot up towards the nose or front of the skateboard. Your board will be at an angle by now. The last part involves pushing down with your front foot to level out the board. The higher you jump, the higher your ollie will be. You must do all these steps in one single fluid motion, and this should result in a snapping of your board upon the ground causing it to jump up into the air underneath your feet. That’s all there is to it.

It may sound simple, but learning how to ollie takes a very long time – usually as much as six months to learn properly. After you perfect the ollie, you can work on height by stacking other skateboards (or anything else) and jumping them. Once you perfect this all-important trick, the world of skateboarding will be entirely open to you. All it takes is a good deck and a whole lot of determination!

KICKFLIP

With skateboarding, you can practice and perfect many different tricks to perform in front of friends or audiences. Although flips may be just one kind of trick, there are multiple kinds of flips—for example, there are ollies, nollies, kickflips, hardflips, pop shove-its, and heelflips. In this lesson we will be focusing primarily upon the basic flips, such as ollies, nollies, kickflips, and pop shove-its.

How do I perform an ollie?

Basically, an ollie is a simple jump, but it is important to learn because it is the basis for learning many other skateboarding tricks, including flips. To begin an ollie, you should place your front foot on the middle of the board, your back foot on the tail, and quickly kick the tail down with your back foot. When you kick the tail down, the nose will rise up, and then you should push your front foot up to the nose (in order to level the board out), bend your legs slightly, and jump. This will cause your board to leap off the ground. From here you should be able to land in the direction you are skating towards and keep rolling, with your knees slightly bent and your feet on the wheel bolts, in order to keep your balance intact.

Other variations of the ollie include the nollie, in which you simply perform a regular ollie, except that you jump by popping the front nose down instead of the back tail, and the frontside ollie, which is also known as F/S 180 or frontside 180 ollie.

How do I perform a kickflip?

Once you get the hang of ollies, you can branch out and try learning other skateboarding tricks. To begin this trick, you should place your back foot on the tail, and place your front foot just right before the nose, with the heel of your front foot hanging slightly off the edge of the skateboard. The next step is to smack the tail down with your back foot, use your front foot to push down on the side of the board, and jump upwards. This will cause the board to flip all the way around. The board should land back on all four wheels, and you should be able to land back on the board and safely roll away.

How do I perform a pop shove-it?

This trick combines ollies and 180’s. To start with, set yourself up like you are about to perform an ollie. Once you kick the tail down to pop yourself up in the air, use that same foot to thrust the board around in a complete 180 degrees by pushing down firm and back. To put down a pop shove-it, land hard, but be careful to keep your balance so the board will not slip out from underneath your feet.

Other variations of a pop shove-it are a simple shove-it, and a varial kickflip, in which you combine this trick with a regular kickflip.

You will probably have to try and perform these tricks many times before you get the hang of it, so don’t be discouraged if you can’t do it after just a few tries. Many professional skateboarders make these tricks look easy, but they have been practicing skateboarding for years and are very familiar with how to do them. After you learn these few jumps and flips, you can use your experience to branch out and learn other more advanced skateboarding tricks.