21 Levels of Skateboarding with Tony Hawk: Easy to Complex | WIRED

hey I'm Tony Hawk pro skater and I have been challenged to go through levels of complexity in skateboard tricks in the interest of time we are only covering flat ground tricks and ramp tricks no grinds no slides there are so many variations here but I'm trying to give you the foundation from which the other ones are built and just remember this is my personal interpretation of this challenge so let's hit the floor level 1 would be the flat ground ollie all these are the foundation to almost every skate trick there's hardly any tricks you can think of the don't start with an ollie first so if you're gonna start skating that's gonna be the first trick that you actually learned the motion of an ollie is using one foot to snap the tail of the board downward and then you have the board sort of aiming up and then sliding your front foot at the right time in order to bring that board up and level it out in the air it's a simple technique but it's all about timing there are a lot of subtleties to it there are all kinds of different ways to ollie but the bottom line is you're trying to get the board up in the air only using your feet people who first try to learn Ollie's the number one mistake is they won't commit to it so you see kids trying Ollie's and they they land with their foot off to the side people do that for years and it's just all about committing to actually landing on top of the board level two is a 180 frontside ollie frontside refers to the way that you're turning and it all stems from surfing so if your frontside to the wave you're turning literally with your your front facing the wave that translates down to skateboarding where that same motion is frontside on a frontside ollie 180 you can actually see where you're going you can see the landing the motion of it is basically an ollie and as you ollie you're moving your shoulders and you're turning your upper body 180 and making your your lower body follow it's a little bit of finesse with your feet because your feet have to move a little bit differently in order to make that board come around and it's very easy to have your back foot move too far which I did plenty of times during this demonstration once and you're actually you're riding backwards that makes it more complex as well because you're starting the truck forward you're landing backwards and a lot of people are not comfortable going backwards so level three I say is a backside 180 ollie it's not that it's more complex than a frontside 180 ollie it's just a little bit more difficult because you can't see your landing zone so you're going literally on blind faith that you're gonna be landing straight and going the right direction and then your head sort of catches up at the end so it's almost like you're going with the force you're using the force to land properly and then using your other senses to figure out where you are and how to adjust it takes a little bit different technique to with the snap on the ollie because on the frontside Ollie where you hit your tail is a little bit different than on the backside one your feet will move a little more on backside generally and depending on how late you turn the 180 is really how much risk you're willing to put out there my level four is a backside pop shuvit what that means is turning the board a 180 under your feet while keeping your body in the same position when I say backside direction that means your board is going the backside direction but your body stays forward I would start with a back side pop shove it first because I feel like that's the easier way to do it so 180s is the opposite but when you're doing shove it's it's actually easier to go back side because you can see the board come around the idea is that you snap it and as you snap the board you're you're giving it a little nudge in that direction and then you keep your feet out of the way as it comes around and as you see it come around you put your feet back on the grip tape where it needs to be and then push it down on the ground it's very easy to spin it too far it's very easy to spin it not enough as a reference the first couple that I tried today I overturned it so you can see where my board goes a little bit too far I caught it with my feet but my feet kept going with it and it's just not suitable for landing straight and it just takes a little bit of finesse because it really doesn't take a whole lot of effort on your tail when you push it to make it turn in fact some people learn how to ollie accidentally you pop shove-its because they can't keep their board straight my level 5 would be a frontside pop shove-it it's the same idea in theory as a backside pop shuvit but you're pushing the board the other direction you're pushing it more of an unnatural way because you have to sort of kick it in front of you yet the board stays so far under your feet it's hard to see so this trick is more based on feeling than sight you'll see that when my feet are set up my feet are very exaggerated off from one side of the tail and off from one side of the nose I need that in order to keep the board flat as they kick it around if you keep your feet in the general Ollie position and try a frontside pop shove-it it's very likely the board will flip and not flip in a good way you're gonna land either upside down or what we call prima which is on your wheels sideways and that usually doesn't turn out very well either I feel like some people find a trick that that they're comfortable with and that becomes their go-to even though it might be a few levels above what's basic perfect example is my son Spencer he doesn't skate regularly but when he does skate he could do frontside pop shove-its easily clean catch them high and it's just like this muscle memory he has which is fascinating to me because mine are terrible level 6 in my eyes is a kickflip it's crazy to think that many people understand what a kickflip is these days because when we first saw rodney mullen do it we didn't understand how he made his board flip we called it a magic flip that was literally the name of it at first he called a nollie flip because he did ollie first and then flip the board and that is the technique and the baseline of it isn't ollie but as you're ollieing and as your foot is sliding forward to level out the board it actually slides out to the side and starts it flipping it's all one fluid motion it's a foundation of skating but it also could be one of the hardest things to learn the whole idea is that you're doing an ollie and you're making the board flip under your feet a lot can go wrong like that usually it doesn't flip enough I did that plenty of times have been doing this segment and the whole reason for that is that you either didn't flick it fast enough or you didn't ollie high enough you can always improve your kickflips the idea is you want to catch them high you want to get to your feet so you're still under control of the board as you're in the air if we had levels of kickflips the first level is doing it the second level it's catching it and the third level is doing it over stuff over stairs over fire hydrants flipping into tricks level seven for me would be a heel flip it's a little bit misleading to say it's the actual heel flip because you're not using your heel to flip it so you see that the kickflip turns this one direction and when you see a heel flip it turns the opposite direction you're not actually flipping it with your heel but that's the only way it's to separate those two terms and as you see my foot is set up actually with my heel off to the other side of the board I'm actually scraping the side of my foot diagonally the opposite direction of a kickflip but I'm not using my heel I'm still using the toes and my on my shoe to make it happen and sliding it that way and then making a flop over number one mistake of heel flips not getting it around landing Premo and following backwards some people find it easier to flip heel flips including one of my kids all of this can be can be debated it's really more personal preference but in my head and I learned kick flips first other in heel flips much later ironically for me heel flips are easier on vert but I'll get to that later level eight is what is commonly known as a varial flip which is actually a misnomer because to do a varial you have to grab your board and turn it with your hand so it's actually a shove it kick flip that is what it should be called but I'm gonna go with the general population and say okay it's a varial flip basically it's a shove it and a kick flip all at once what happens is you flick the board you actually position your foot so that you're kicking it and giving it a little twist at the same time so that when it does come around a kickflip ends up landing like a heel flip sometimes that's easier than a heel flip because you get to see the board come around and you can decide when you want actually put your feet down on it like when it's going to be safe to land it's a building block to other tricks so this level with the varial flip or the shove-it kickflip is a little bit more complicated because any shuvit kickflip could be considered on the same level which is a varial heelflip and inward heel flip or a hard flip and all of those are the board's spinning different directions and doing different types of flips and then you get into spinning the body more you can do big flips you do 360 flips laser flips there's all kinds of other ways to do this so I'm just gonna leave that all in the same level and for other people to decide which ones are more difficult in the interest of time and being concise I'm excluding a lot of other ways to do these tricks including going backwards going fakie doing them switch doing them your unnatural stance there is a whole sea of different ways to do this and I'm not ignoring them I'm just trying to focus on the basis and the foundation of what these tricks are so in order to go to the next level of complexity I need to get more airtime and I do that by using my vertical halfpipe because it actually propels me into the air six to ten feet and that way I can show you what it's like to ollie and start spinning and doing more complex maneuvers so let's go hit the vert here we are on the ramp this is where I'm gonna be able to show you more aerial tip maneuvers spinning maneuvers 180 360 540 this level of complexity is a little more dangerous there's more airtime you're going a lot faster there is very little room for error you can come crashing down from 20 feet very easily but this is what I grew up skating and this is where I feel most comfortable so here we go level 9 would be a 180 aerial and what that means is going up the ramp going to the top getting in the air turning 180 degrees and coming back down the same side of the ramp so I am always going forward and I'm gonna show it to you backside because I think that's one of the easiest ones to learn and when you do a backside aerial that's usually a way to gain speed for a harder trick going up the next wall so level 10 is a 360 aerial that can be done a number of ways you can go backwards and do it you can go up forwards and land backwards I'm going to show you what I think is the most basic 360 aerial and that is a frontside 360 so I'm going up the ramp I'm turning in the frontside direction a full 360 and I'm coming down backwards so you may think the next level of complexity is a 540 aerial for some people that might be true but I believe that before we get into a 540 aerial I want to get into a flip trick flipping the board in the air and catching it under my feet while doing a 180 for me that would be a frontside 180 heelflip so you remember at level seven on the flat ground which was the heel flip this is what it looks like when you take the heel flip onto a vert ramp in the air and turn a 180 at the same time so this is where we start adding levels of complexity danger and difficulty so the next level would be a 540 spin I would choose to do a backside 540 spin more commonly known as am a twist the way that I grab it it was the first backside 540 ever done on a vert ramp which was on my Mike McGill this can turn into more of a flip sometimes but the level of complexity and difficulty is much greater because you are blind to the ramp for half the spin that means you cannot see your landing zone until you're just coming around and it's almost too late to try to worry about it so going forward I'm going to use existing videos of tricks because in the interest of time and my own personal safety these tricks are much more complex and require a lot more effort and a lot more attempts luckily I have some on video and we can refer to those level 13 is a 720 spin it's a trick I created in 1985 because I had a ramp that was giving me plenty of airtime at some point I realized I could probably spend more than a 540 on this ramp and it worked out pretty well you come up backwards spin around almost do two somersaults and then come down forward 720 s are especially difficult because you are blind to the ramp for a uncomfortable long time the eye you're coming up backwards and starting a spin makes it extra difficult because it's hard to snap off the wall to get enough air time in the world of skateboarding that snap is what it's all about especially on a vert ramp level 14 is a very ohmic twist so if you remember the pop shuvit on flat ground and the McTwist maneuver this is combining those two things in a much more complicated and complex way you're spinning the board an extra 180 under your feet as you spin this one and a half somersault in the air the board does two full rotations you do one and a half you've got to meet it with your feet before you're ready to land and a lot of that is just based on feeling level 15 in going with this pattern to me would be a kickflip McTwist I can't explain how much more difficult that is then these other tricks let's put it this way the McTwist wasn't created in 1984 the very oma twist was created in 1989 and the kickflip missed didn't happen until 1995 it's that much harder because you're flipping your board you're trying to set it into the same trajectory of spin that you're doing with your body and at the same time you've got to catch it as it kick flips one rotation so all that's happening without you being able to see your board or your landing zone it all happens almost in a vacuum while you're flipping and you're spinning and all these things have to come together and it's all based on feeling once I flip it and I feel the board in my hand and I feel my hand near my feet all systems go it doesn't always work but that's the only that's the only way that I can gauge if it's gonna happen at all this was my very first kick foot my twist it happened in 1995 on one of the few vert ramps in the world that was in Tampa Florida at the skate park of Tampa vert skating was relatively dead there was only a handful of hardcore vert skaters left in the world and we all happened to be there that night I just made it happen this trick I've been testing and testing and testing and I knew that if I was never gonna make it it was to be this time with my contemporaries so if you see where I'm landing on the ramp that's not the ideal landing zone but I managed to absorb that impact just based on experience in hindsight I needed to land that low because I needed all that time to make all the other things happen I made it a few times since then maybe a little bit cleaner but I'm I'm hugely proud of this one because it was the first one and you can tell the elation on my face and just how excited everybody else was it's weird to think that that kind of progression was happening in this very small scene of skateboarding I mean that wasn't gonna make an ESPN highlight or anything it was just more of a cool thing that happened in the skateboard world level 16 would be doing a 720 spin and adding a board variation to that my board variation of choice for the first time doing it was a varial 720 the board does a full 900 rotation and my body does a 720 rotation spinning around twice and trying to get your board to your feet during that double spin is extra hard because basically once you leave your board you kind of leave it behind and see if you got to rely on your feet kicking the board into an extra spin as you catch it and guide it around if that sounds difficult it is if you ever see someone trying Verrill 720s you'll see them kind of lagging with their board behind and they never get back to their feet correctly and the key to it is getting that snap kicking your feet extra hard and getting the board to start spinning before you even start spinning your body we're talking about fractions of a second to make that work and even then it might not work level 17 of spinning arrow maneuvers for me would be a 900 to give up some perspective I learned Verrill 720s in 1998 and then learned 900 that in 1999 basically a 900 is extra tricky because twice you're blind to your landing zone you need plenty of airtime as you come around you've got to shift your weight mid spin in order to not fall too far forward I'd say that's the first mistake of anyone learning 900s once they actually try to land it on the wall you end up falling forward into the bottom of the ramp and a McTwist you don't have to shift your weight like that but once you're coming around and you're spinning another 360 on the way down you've got to make sure that you balance your weight evenly it's a very nuanced shift into your back foot and it can't be too much and even then you don't know if it's gonna work the complexity of a 900 is not necessarily higher than any of these other tricks the danger factor is much higher because if you miss any part of that spin or if you open up during that spin you find yourself in midair way over the ramp and falling on your back and it happens all the time even if I miss the grab I have to commit my body to that spin just to land safely and I know that just sounds bizarre the idea that you already know you're falling but you've got to commit to the whole trick because otherwise you're gonna land on your back and the flat bottom I have broken my rib on it I've broken my ego many a times trying to make it happen I had been trying 900s for about 10 years before I actually made one when I finally made one it felt it just felt like a huge relief it was more like oh I can just put that one to rest no more getting hurt on that so to leave level 17 and go into level 18 when we just add one more 180 spin we need to leave this realm of size of ramps because it requires much more air time Shaun White almost got 10 days on ramps this size but truly you need something where you're gonna get at least 10 to 15 feet of air just to spin that fast the next level of difficulty would be a 1080 spin [Music] you come up backwards three full somersault rotations and then come back down forward I honestly have never even tried one because you need a much bigger ramp to get that kind of air time and you have to be going at that ramp going backwards and those two things just were not in my in my wheelhouse the guy who did a first was Tom Shar he was known for his spinning maneuvers on ramps he was much smaller so he could ball up tightly and he was very comfortable on what we now know as the mega ramp the mega ramp is usually one big long jump and then after you land that jump you go into this giant quarter pipe they covered that jump for Tom for this so he could just focus on the one trick so he would come in backwards roll over the what used to be the jump and then he had the right amount of speed for this 1080 it was hugely monumental when it happened only one other person has done it since then it's still one of the most difficult biggest milestones in skateboarding as far as I'm concerned especially in ramps this could be argued but I believe the next level of complexity would be a flip trick with a 720 we're gonna remove a full 360 from this trick of a 1080 and add another board variation flip into it instead of three spins it's two spins but at a heel flip way harder as far as I'm concerned the reason being is that you're coming up backwards and to make that snap coming up backwards and get the board flipping and your body spinning all on the same plane requires an intense level of focus an intense level of airtime and everything has to come together perfectly I'm telling you this because I've never done it but our team writer Elliot Sloan has done it a couple times and it is hugely impressive when he does it I watched him try this trick for almost three hours straight and make it once and it was worth it basically what you see in the beginning is that snap that I've been talking about where you're snapping it off the wall trying to get enough air time and distance away from the coping to make the full rotation as he's snapping you see his foot do this very quick motion sending the into a heelflip and as that's happening he makes sure that it's also not just flipping but spinning with his body and his hand is just in the position to catch it he hopes that it comes around back into his hand and that is the key to this whole trick is is the flip and the catch and when it actually happens and he feels it in his hand under his feet he just throws it on the wall and he doesn't even know if it's gonna work when you get to this level of ramp skating that's what it takes is sometimes just a Hail Mary so for these next levels of complexities I think that we're gonna go into the realm of unreality because these are NB DS which means they've never been done but we know as skaters of this ilk that they are possible level 20 would be something that has never been done in nvd and it would be an alley 720 which means you go up the ramp and do a full double rotation without grabbing the board and MIDI and so the last final level to end this list is something that has not only never been done but I've never seen it attempted although with the size of ramps and with the experience level of some of these skaters that are growing up riding these ramps doing it at age 10 I feel like is on the horizon and that would be a 1260 spin three and a half rotations going up the ramp forward 900 out of 360 to the 900 come back down forward I know that there are people that have been discussing it it's very possible that we'll see one in our lifetime [Music] what can I say it actually got done recently by Mitchie Brusco he was the only one to even try it in fact I don't think he ever practiced it before he made the one he did that's where it lies that is the absolute apex of spinning maneuvers on ramps you're lucky to see in your lifetime it's hard to say that even though an ollie 720 hasn't been done that that's somehow harder than a 1260 that has been done the 1260 is just the danger factor and the difficulty and the spinning there's so many things that could go horribly wrong tragically wrong on that trick that I have still would keep it as the top level of complexity and difficulty even though all these 720 is still an NBD so I'm choosing to end this list here because I feel like it's a pretty good summary of different aerial type maneuvers or all a type maneuvers there are so many variations of these tricks that you could go to exponential levels of complexity and difficulty skateboarding can be as complex as you want it to be I think skateboarding at its base is a form of expression and for me it is my art form it's also a sport it's also a lifestyle but as very core it's your voice and you can do it in any style in any form you choose the possibilities are endless and I hope that this gives you a glimpse into the difficulties and complexity of skateboarding especially through my eyes okay thanks wired hope it helped [Music]

Channel: WIRED

Views: 8,901,264

Rating: 4.9654193 out of 5

Keywords: tony hawk, tony hawk levels, tony, levels of skateboarding, skateboarding tutorial, skateing, skating, amateur to expert, easy to complex, easy skating, levels of skating, 21 levels of skateboarding, skateboarding easy, skateboarding hard, expert skateboarding, tony hawk kickflip, tony hawk tricks, tony hawk do a kickflip, 21 levels, levels, tony hawk 900, tony hawk interview, tony hawk wired, tony hawk teaching, tony hawk wired interview, wired

Id: OOg-4mtA3Zo

Length: 24min 25sec (1465 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 25 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

How many times do you have to teach us this lesson OLD MAN!?

[u/ApatheticApollo]

You guys should also check out his video back from 2016 when he re-attempts the 900. Once he does it he slams his helmet on the ground, hugs his son, then peels the fuck out. It was fucking sick.

[u/anthiggs]

Alternate title was: 20 minute video of Tony Hawk desperately attempting to be relevant.

Joking aside, figured my fellow shitlords would dig Tony breaking down a bunch of tricks.

[u/TheArkhomDestroyer]

Who’s that guy, I think I might know him.