10 Things Every Beginner Should Know How To Do Well

here are 10 things that every beginner skateboarder should know how to do well now the things on this list aren't necessarily tricks but rather they're things that you should perfect when you first start skateboarding because a lot of times when someone starts skateboarding they go and buy a skateboard and they immediately start trying tricks and in my opinion this is gonna make learning tricks a lot harder and if you actually spend some time getting to know your board and feeling comfortable on it so at worst here are a few things that'll just help you when you're cruising down the street and at best hopefully once you perfect these it should help your confidence and control with your skateboard so if you already good at skateboarding and you're confident on your board you can go ahead and skip this one because it's more towards the beginners first up we have pushing now everyone knows what pushing is it's a very simple concept but I've had quite a few people ask me to do a tutorial on pushing so there's only a few main concepts that you want to have down when you're learning how to push really well but I would say that the most important one is getting your weight distribution down basically you want to keep all of your weight on your front foot near the center of the board you want to get very comfortable with this so much so that you can easily stand and balance on your front foot and the only time that your weight should slightly shift to your other foot is when you're actually putting it down to push just keep in mind that you don't ever want to transfer all of your weight into the pushing foot because it's gonna be a lot harder to keep your momentum and to keep the board going straight next up is picking up your board now there are plenty of ways to pick up your board some of which I've showed in my previous videos but they can all come in handy whether it be to stop really fast or just to pick up your board without having to bend over all the time now I know I'm a super old man but if I had to bend over every time I wanted to pick up my board I'd probably die so learning how to pick up your board is just the easiest and most efficient way to go about things plus there's a slight bit of board control and coordination that's learned from this for number three we have throwing down your board this is the best way to get speed really fast without having to start from a dead stop this one is a pretty simple concept but I've seen a few beginners have trouble getting the coordination between throwing the board down and jumping on it but the good thing about this one is it's easy enough to start while standing still and then slowly taking a few steps into it and eventually bringing it up to where you can run and jump into it once you get this one down you'll probably notice that you're using it every single time you go to get on your skateboard just make sure that when you throw it down you're throwing it slightly ahead of your front foot and then stepping forward onto the board next up we have one of the most important things to learn when you're going to be cruising around getting up curbs now this trick is just an ollie the only difference is you're going up a curb instead of doing it on flat so the worst thing about cruising around could be that once you hit a curb you have to stop get off your board put it on to the curb and then continue skating and the best way to do this is to learn the six-inch ollie up the curb I won't get into an in-depth ollie tutorial here but I'll put a link to my how to ollie video but essentially just watch that try and learn how to ollie and then you can practice while standing still next to a curb and I would say if you're having trouble getting the height for this try an ollie and get your nose onto the curb first and then pulling your back trucks up after that anyway in my opinion getting up curbs is one of the most useful things you can learn now what give it ollie up the curb be if you couldn't ride back down one riding off a curb is super easy but it's also super important for if you want to be riding around without interruption now this one's obviously easier than Alling up a curb because you don't have to ollie all you have to know for this one is how to lift up your wheels just a slight bit and keep your weight centered over the bolts just make sure you have enough speed to clear the curb and then all it takes is a little bit of confidence this is something that you should be so comfortable with that you don't even think about it when you're cruising next up we have getting over cracks now this doesn't have to be just getting over cracks it can be rough terrain or rocks or anything really but when you're rolling down the sidewalk and you see a crack it's best to know how to get over it rather than just run into it and fall so I've gone over a few ways to do this stylish lay in my old videos like the Chinese Ollie and Ollie but really all you need to know for this is how to lift off the weight of your front trucks and then slightly jump off your back foot also you have to make sure you have enough speed to get over the crack so essentially while you're rolling towards an object right before you're gonna hit it if you lift your front wheels over it and then as your back wheels are coming into contact with it you slightly lift off on your back foot so that the board has room to pop over it and then you put your feet back down and keep riding next up we have riding fast this is an aspect to skateboarding that is almost entirely competence-based pretty much anyone can stand on a skateboard while it rolls but really being comfortable going fast whether it be by pushing or bombing a hill marks a level of comfort with your board if it's really going to start showing you're improving [Music] another important reason to be comfortable while riding fast is to eliminate the chance that you'll get speed wobbles when you're bombing a hill coming up next we have the kick turn now I've already gone over a kick turn as a trick in a previous video but right now I'm talking about the more practical use of when you have to kick turn fast to either avoid an obstacle or turn really sharp so sometimes you don't really have any other choice than to make a really quick 90-degree turn and pretty much the only way to do this is to pivot on your tail which is called a kick turn this can be extremely useful when an object or an obstacle comes out of nowhere and you have to really quickly avoid it or if just for whatever reason you need to make a really fast turn around a corner the key to this one is keeping your back foot in the pocket of the tail and shifting your weight back to that foot while swinging your arms in a direction and lifting up the nose this is one that should help with your balance and with your board control at number eight we have riding switch when you've progressed to a little bit more of an intermediate or advanced stage with skateboarding learning how to ride switch is a really invaluable tool and I bring it up as something that you should learn as a beginner because it's something that can definitely feel awkward at first but the more you do it the more confident you'll be with it pushing switch is something I never tried to learn until recently so I'm still really bad at it but if I could go back to when I was first learning how to skateboard it's something that I would have spent at least a little bit more time and effort on also on the plus side if you're a beginner who pushes this can help you out learning how to push switch which I talked about in my previous video about pushing next up we have stopping just like with picking up your board there's plenty of different ways to do this which pretty much achieve the same effect but the important thing here is being comfortable so that you don't jump off your board and hurt yourself so whether it be by jumping off doing the nose pickup or doing a power slide the main thing here is being aware of how to stop in a safe and controlled way of course just jumping off your board is going to be the easiest way but if you're going really fast and you're gonna jump off the main thing you want to watch out for is that when you jump off you jump ahead of your board and keep running rather than jumping off to the side and just kind of crumpling over like all those haul of meat videos so I know a lot of the things on this list may seem like pretty obvious things to know as a skateboarder but I wanted to show the kind of double use for each of the things on this list not only will all these things help you in your day-to-day speeding whether it be riding down the street or trying tricks but the underlying principles behind each of these are that when you're learning these really easy things you're slowly building up your confidence and your board control which in turn will hopefully make you a better skater so go out bomb some hills all the ups and qords maybe fall a few times but most of all make sure that you're having fun so I hope that this video helped you I'd like to thank you for watching and you can like and subscribe if you want

Channel: VLSkate

Views: 3,802,390

Keywords: skateboarding, skateboard, skate, skater, skating, sk8, vilas, left, vlskate, atm, click, bones, ipath, real, world, hardware, tricks, trick, kickflip, heelflip, poway, security, fight, braille, vs, hater, bail

Id: rLSdt-cuCUI

Length: 7min 57sec (477 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/ixAp0c]

If you can't ollie, ignore the 'ollie up curbs' until you've got them down pat.

Everything else can be learned before ollies, and will overall make you more comfortable on the board.

[u/XxEdgySnakeXx]

I'll show my friend this he needs all the help we can get

[u/rikitikiattack]

Great video. I was one of those people that tried to ollie before I could even push on the board for 20 yards without losing my balance. I finally found this really big parking lot to skate on at night. I'd just go end to end working on pushing and foot placement and just getting totally comfortable on the board. I must have done this for 2 or 3 months before trying to incorporate any tricks again.

[u/messipro]

when I'm riding, do I put my back foot on the tail or the back truck?