10 Things To Learn Your FIRST WEEK Skateboarding 🛹

if i had to pick the 10 most useful tricks and techniques that a beginner skateboarder needs to learn in their first week of skateboarding this would be the list so whenever you first decide to get into skateboarding it's going to be a good idea to try to gain some knowledge on skateboarding equipment so the skateboard components themselves skateboarding shoes and safety equipment are all going to be things that you're going to want to look into to make the process a little bit easier i'll leave some links for you for some videos that you can check out in the description section below now one topic that i can't just gloss over is going to be the importance of safety you should already know this but skateboarding is a sport where you're 100 guaranteed to fall down a whole bunch of times so some people think that they can just ease into it and kind of gradually do more and more on their skateboard and not ever have to worry about falling down but that is a naive mindset and it's not going to happen no matter how hard you try however you don't have to let that scare you because skateboarders have come up with a way to make sure that you can fall down as much as you want while still having a really low risk of getting seriously injured the first part is that you need to wear protective gear while you're skateboarding so 100 percent the most important thing is that you wear a helmet and then in addition to that it's also highly recommended that you put on wrist guards elbow pads and knee pads now second once you're all padded up now you need to practice falling down so that way when it happens while you're riding your skateboard you'll already have developed the muscle memory necessary to do it without getting seriously injured the easiest way i know is just to find a ledge maybe a foot or two tall and jump off of it a bunch of times practicing cradling yourself down to the ground as softly as possible making sure not to land with your elbows or knees fully locked out and trying to roll out of the fall so that you're bringing your momentum to a stop as slowly as possible try jumping off with your body rotated in every possible orientation so that you know what to do in every situation all right so once you're feeling really comfortable that you're able to fall down now it's time to move on to our first technique which is just being able to roll forward on the skateboard without falling off of it so there's two main ways of propelling yourself forward on a skateboard which are pushing off of the ground with your back foot and rolling down an incline and you're going to want to practice both pushing the skateboard forward on flat ground is going to be a lot more predictable so start there and then we're going to talk about going down ramps now getting good at pushing is actually a really in-depth topic on its own so i highly recommend you check out my dedicated video on that topic by clicking the link in the description section below but just to give you a quick recap the first thing you want to do is find a surface that you can put your skateboard on that's going to prevent the wheels from rolling back and forth too quickly so carpets are a good idea short grass also works good and then you just want to take some time and work on your balance on one foot put one foot on the skateboard and work on staying on the skateboard with just your one foot try it again on the other foot as well until you can do this for about 10 seconds with each foot and then secondly what you want to do is take your skateboard to the concrete and practice pushing off of the ground with your back foot and riding on the skateboard like this with your front foot over the front wheels your back foot on the tail and your feet pointed perpendicular to the board for the second technique which is riding down ramps a good strategy you can use is to start on the flat ground just before the ramp starts and slowly push off like you did before making sure to get your feet into riding position like we talked about and then go down the ramp starting with the smallest one you can find and then working your way up to the taller ones as you feel more and more comfortable as you go down the ramp make sure to keep your knees slightly bent and try to lean forward a little bit while you're on the ramp so that the board doesn't shoot out from underneath you if you start to feel like you're going to fall the best way to abort the maneuver is to take your back foot off of the board first and run the rest of the way down the ramp now once you've gotten pretty good at keeping your balance while you're riding your skateboard and now i would say you should spend at least a full day practicing just doing that but once you've got the hang of it steering is going to be a pretty easy thing to add on to it what you're going to want to do is once you're in your riding position and you're rolling forward in order to steer all you have to do is lean in the direction that you want to steer so if i wanted to turn this way i would lean the board in that direction and the trucks are built so that they will pivot in a way that will make the board steer in that direction and then likewise if i wanted to steer that way i would just lean the board in that direction and it would also cause me to go that way this might be the first time in your life that this happens to you but you're going to start to be afraid of pebbles because if you hit a pebble with your tiny little skateboard wheel you basically your skateboard comes to a complete stop and then you fall to the ground so keep an eye out for those now whenever you get to the point where you want to turn even more sharply than that you can use a technique called tic tacs which essentially just involves picking up the front of your board and instantly rotating it the direction you want to be so in order to do it what you're going to do is have your feet positioned like we had before in riding position make sure your back foot is on the tail and then you're going to rotate your upper body in the direction that you want to turn first and then follow it up by picking up your front leg a little bit and allowing your board to fall in line with the way your upper body is rotated so if i want to turn to the right i throw my shoulders to the right pick up my front foot and then it'll align itself so same thing if i wanted to go the other direction i would just turn my shoulders pick up the front of the board and it'll align itself to go that direction so once you get pretty good at doing tic tacs you're going to find out that doing tic tacs is an additional way of gaining speed so the way that works is rather than making really big tic tacs you're going to make more smaller ones but you're just going to keep doing it back to back left and right and eventually it'll slowly propel you forward it'll look something like this so now the third thing you're going to want to learn during your first week of skateboarding is how to come to a stop so the most traditional way of stopping on a skateboard is going to be like this so let's say you're just riding forward in your normal riding position like we've been talking about what you're going to do is take your back foot off of the board and push it against the ground in order to stop now you could do it that way or if you're going a little bit faster you can just skid it along the ground like this now if you use that second technique too much it's going to wear a big hole in the bottom of your shoe so try to use the first technique whenever you can now if you find yourself in a situation like we were before when we were going down the ramp and you need to get off your skateboard immediately you always want to resort to your backup plan which is just to jump off your board completely taking your back foot off first and then your front foot next for number four we're going to be going over our first legitimate trick which is called a manual now some people call it a manual some people call it a wheelie but it's all the same thing you're just gonna be picking up your front or back set of wheels and balancing on the other set of wheels for as long as you need to now the manual is a trick that actually gets easier if you do it while you're rolling so while it is possible to do it stationary if you get a little bit of speed before you do it you'll be able to keep your balance more easily in my opinion the fastest way to get good at manuals is just to start out by doing little tiny manuals now you do them rolling because they're easier that way but i'm going to do them here so i'll stay in front of the camera but just pick up your wheels for just a second at a time and then slowly work your way up to being able to hold it longer and longer so maybe you can do that and then eventually you'll be able to hold the manual for as long as you want for number five we have riding off of a curb so riding off of a curb it just essentially boils down to being able to do a manual at the exact right moment so what you want to do is right before your front wheels get to the end of the curb you're going to want to pick them up and hold the manual until your back wheels get to the end of the curb as well and then once your back wheels are clear you can stomp all four wheels down at the bottom of the curb and right away clean for number six we have a technique that i call the throw throwdown but it's also sometimes called a running start so what this is for is if you have your board in your hand and you want to just start going fast really quickly without having to set your board down get your front foot on it push off a bunch of times you can just basically take off running you have your board in your hand and you can just throw it to the ground and start running on it so it'll look like this so a good practice step that you can use to work your way up to being able to do the throw down as well as the next trick we're about to learn is going to be taking your board just set it on the ground and then practice kind of running up to it jumping off of your back foot and landing on the board over top of the wheels and rolling forward once you've gotten the hang of being able to do that now you can work on your throw down so i go over this in detail in my pushing video but just to give you a quick recap you're going to take three steps starting with your back foot so my back foots to my right foot so i'm going to take one two three and then on your fourth step you're going to be in a position to where your front foot is ready to step forward onto the board you're just going to drop your board into place and step on it with your front foot and then you'll be able to put your back foot on it afterwards so if we're doing that at full speed i'm going to do one two three boom jump on it with my front foot and roll forward number seven is a trick called a caveman now a caveman is pretty similar to the throwdown but this time instead of taking your board and letting it hit the ground before you step on it this time we're going to take the board and throw it into the air and put our feet on it before it hits the ground so the easiest version of a caveman is called a nose grab caveman so we're gonna take the nose of the board and grab it with our front hand and then we're gonna do like before we're gonna take three steps starting with our back foot and jump off of our back foot this time and at the same time we're gonna throw this board out and bring it back in and kind of throw it in the air like that so that way we have a platform to jump on and if we time it just right we're gonna jump on the board and land on it and roll away so we're gonna be taking three steps one two three land with your feet over top of the wheels and roll away all right so now for number eight now this one's pretty easy but it involves whenever you need to pick up your board off the ground rather than just kind of bending down and picking it up like that it looks a little bit cooler if you pop it up into your hand using your foot my favorite way of doing it is using my back hand and my back foot holding my hand out in front like this with my palm facing out and then just kicking the board down with my back foot until it gets into my hand now if you want to do the more lazy version of this you can pop it a little less hard and it'll stay on the ground my favorite way to do it is to pop it all the way up into my hand so i don't have to bend down at all and it just kind of makes you look like you've been skateboarding for a little while and it's fun to do now for number nine i would be completely remiss if i didn't get you into a half pipe at least once during this video it is my personal favorite type of skating and i think that everyone can benefit from learning how to skate a mini ramp now at first this is going to feel really awkward and you might feel like as a type of skating you don't want to do but trust me it only takes about 30 minutes of practice total before it feels just as easy as riding on flat ground it's not that bad so give it an honest shot and try to get the hang of this so the first technique that we're going to be learning on the half pipe is called pumping and we're just gonna use it to go up one side of the ramp and then back down and then up the other side of the ramp and then back down and we're gonna just be able to keep doing that back and forth over and over so what you wanna do is start down at the bottom of the ramp and get ready to push off like you're about to ride on flat ground push off get your feet in riding position and then whenever you start to go up the ramp make sure your head's facing forward and that your knees are a little bit bent and then kind of lean your body so that it's always staying as perpendicular to the ramp as possible so if you're going forward up the ramp make sure you're leaning back a little bit if you lean back too much it's perfectly okay the board will shoot out from under you and you can generally catch yourself on your feet but if you instead if you don't lean back far enough the board is going to shoot out from under you in the opposite direction it's going to be a lot more dangerous so try to prefer leaning back to leaning forward too much but whenever you get to the top of the ramp assuming the board hasn't shot out from under you what you want to do is bend your knees a little bit turn your head to face back down towards the bottom of the ramp and then just roll fakie back down the ramp now whenever you get to the other side of the ramp it's going to be a pretty similar process you're going to keep your feet in riding position you're going to keep your head pointed towards the top of the ramp until you get to the top of it and then whenever you come to a halt and you're about to start rolling back down turn your head to face toward the bottom bend your knees again and keep your body leaned on the inside of the ramp so that the board doesn't shoot out from under you now in case you've forgotten whenever you ride a mini ramp make sure you're wearing all your pads but it's even more important to wear knee pads whenever you're skating a half pipe so go ahead and put those on if you don't have them on already and you should be in a good position so for number 10 the last technique we're going to go over is going to be kick turns on a quarter pipe kick turns are going to be pretty similar to pumping on a mini ramp but this time instead of whenever we get to the top just rolling back down fakie we're going to do basically an exaggerated tic tac at the top we're going to pick up our front wheels and rotate the board so that way when we're coming back down the ramp we'll still be riding forward if you haven't already guessed it just like before when we were doing tic tacs on flat ground the key to this move is rotating your shoulders first and then picking up your board so that it orients itself with the way your shoulders are already turned and then you can ride back down out of the ramp you want to practice doing kick turns back side which looked like this and front side which looked like this alright guys so once you get through the list of all 10 of these tricks you're going to be well on your way to being a really proficient skateboarder you're going to be able to do a whole lot of stuff you're going to be very well-rounded and you're going to be ready to progress onto your next step and it's completely up to you whatever that is so it might be doing ollies it might be doing more mini ramp stuff it might be doing more freestyle tricks it's whatever you want there are no rules just make sure it's something that you want to be able to do and you think it's fun start working towards it and go have a blast alright guys other than that i'll see you guys in the next video let me know if you have any questions in the comment section below and remember never stop improving [Music] you

Channel: Never Stop Improving

Views: 40,178

Rating: 4.9723802 out of 5

Keywords: how to ride a skateboard, for beginners, how to ride a skateboard for beginners, skateboard, skateboarding, how to skateboard, how to push on a skateboard, how to roll, how to ride, how to steer, steering, pushing, riding, rolling, how to stop, stopping, on a skateboard, tricks, beginner, beginners, begginers, techniques, learning, what to learn, what should I learn, what should you learn, first, best, easy, easiest, trick, tutorial, advice, list, top 10, 10 things, week 1, first week, first day

Id: MTzQX_6fKL4

Length: 13min 25sec (805 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021