If you're ready to take your skating to the next
level, and you want to learn how to do an ollie as quickly as humanly possible, today I'm going
to break down a training technique that you can use in order to land your first ollie in under 8
minutes. All right, so now, for the first minute I just want to take a couple of seconds and make
sure we have everything all set up so we're ready to go. So, the first thing I want you to do
is make sure you're wearing the right shoes. You don't want to be wearing any like running
shoes or sandals or anything goofy like that. You're going to want close-toed, rubber shoes, and
if you can find some like this, find some where they go a little bit over the ankle. That way
you're having some protection from rolling your ankle when you're doing this because you might
land in kind of a silly way for a little bit and you want to have that protection from having
any issues with that. All right so now that you've got some good shoes on, I want to make sure that
you're in a situation where you're set up to succeed here. So rather than just putting your
skateboard on concrete like you may have been, what I want you to do is I want you to take
your skateboard and find some short grass, maybe some turf, or my personal favorite: a thin
rug put on top of concrete. This is what works for me every time anytime I teach someone how to
ollie, I always get out the rug and they don't have to go and buy skater trainers or put tennis
balls on their wheels or anything like that. So now you're going to have your skateboard on a
surface that's going to prevent your wheels from rolling left and right too much, but also have
enough rebound to still allow you to do an ollie. All right, so now the next item on the
itinerary is that we want to find a way for you to be able to fall repeatedly without
breaking anything. Getting scratched up is fine, that's part of skateboarding, but breaking a bone,
that's how you take yourself out of skateboarding for two months and we don't want that to happen.
So number one thing that you're going to possibly break when you're doing this is going to be
anything in your arm, so you wanna prevent that. What you want to do is, if you're already on
turf or something like that, that's going to be a pretty good way to prevent yourself from
having that kind of situation, but if you're not, if you're on concrete like me, put on a bunch
of pads, okay? Number one pad I recommend for this is going to be a helmet, but after that
we're going to do wrist guards. That's the first thing that kind of sticks out instinctively
when you start to fall, okay, so if you've got a wrist guard on and you got your helmet
on, you're going to be pretty good. If you're a little more clumsy and you want to play it extra
safe, put on those elbow pads and those knee pads as well. All right, so now that we have that out
of the way, you're ready to fall, we're gonna do the first step of actually skateboarding. I know
we're getting into this and we only have like five minutes left but that's okay, that's plenty of
time. So now that we're all set up, go ahead and stand on your board and then the first step and
this is the key step that everyone misses for like a year while they're practicing ollies. They don't
know why they're doing it. They're doing this: "I can't ollie! I don't know why i can't ollie!"
Here's why: it's because you didn't practice this one step that I'll go ahead and show you. What
you want to do: stand on the board with your feet above the wheels, and then all you're going to do,
for the whole minute, is you're going to practice JUMPING off of the board. You're not going to
worry about ollying, you're just going to practice jumping off of the board. Ultimately I want you to
be able to do this: jump/land back on the board. But at first, you can just jump and land in front
of the board, or jump and land behind the board, however you got to do it. But i just want you
to bend down ALL THE WAY to where your knees make a 90-degree angle with the ground at least.
JUMP. And you want to remember that. You want to feel that, and the next time you stand
on your skateboard and try to do an ollie I want you to be doing that exact same thing. I
don't want you to be jumping like that. That's not how you jump. It's not how you jump in real
life, and it's not how you jump to do an ollie, either. So we're going to jump, we're going
to bend our knees, jump, just like that, and then we're going to ultimately when we get to
the end of this minute, I want you to be jumping like this, okay? Jumping, landing on the board.
Now, don't forget this step when we go to the next one. You got to do this exact same thing. Don't
start giving me that. All right, so we're jumping, landing on the board...now what i want you to
do, is i want you to start looking at the correct foot positioning for an ollie. So what that's
going to look like: you're going to have your feet like you did before, feet over top of the wheels,
then i want you to take your front foot, and put it just behind the front wheels, okay, and
then the same thing with your back foot. I want you to put it just behind the back wheels.
So this is going to be how you want your feet positioned to do an ollie. All right so now that
we have our feet set up in the right position, you want to practice doing that over and over.
One thing you can do is you can step with your front foot right into the right position and then
step with your back foot right into the right position and you're ready to go. That's going to
be your setup. You're going to do that every time. You're going to put your front foot on, back
foot on, and then we're going to do the same thing we did before, we're just going to jump,
okay, just like that. Now, it looks like we're not doing a whole lot, but that is over 50 percent
of how to do an ollie is just that right there. So we're going to keep practicing this, we're going
to put our front foot on, put our back foot on, then we're going to bend down, jump, and land back
on the board. All right, so keep practicing that. Get a couple more of those in: front foot on,
back foot on, we're balanced because we're on the carpet, we don't have to worry too much about
that, bend down, jump, looking good! All right, so now we're on to the next step. We have three
minutes left and that's plenty of time because we're already really far into this. Now, what i
want you to do: we're going to start popping the skateboard off of the ground. Now, the way
that we're going to do that is when you jump, this time, same as before, but pick up your front
foot first, that's all i'm going to say all right, so pick up your front foot first. So what
that's going to look like...on flat ground, what that's going to look like is like this, okay,
you're just going to do that. Now, obviously it's going to be different when you do it on a
skateboard, and you pick up that front foot, immediately that's going to shoot down
okay, so you got to be careful of that, but you just have to go with it...and
you want to minimize the amount of time in between that front foot coming up and the back
foot coming up. So you don't want to do it like: front foot [small pause] back foot that's
too long. You want to do it more like, jump, front-foot-back-foot, like that!
We're gonna take it to the skateboard. So we're already trained up, we're going
to put our feet on the board. Front foot, back foot, and we're going to do the same thing.
Prepare to fall. Do it on purpose. Get it over with. Front-foot-back-foot, okay, fall. Doesn't
matter. That's fine. Once you get the first fall out of the way, everything else is going to fall
right into line. So we're going to do that again. Get our front foot on, put our back foot on, bend
down, and then jump again the same way. Now it doesn't matter where you land. Preferably at this
stage you want to land with one or both of your feet not on the skateboard. That's the first step.
Front foot on the board, back foot on the board, we're going to bend down. Front foot
up first. Take the back foot off. At this point you should be getting some
clearance from the back wheel and the ground, and that's what we're going for. So we're going
to do it again: front foot, back foot, bend down, take that back foot off. So now once you've got
that down, now we're going to try to start adding in landing on the board with both feet. Once you
can do that, it might look a little ugly, but it's technically going to be an ollie. We're going to
do it again. Now this is the key step. This is the one, right here! We're going to try it, and we're
going to leave our back foot on the board for when we land, because that is the scariest part, and
we're going to do it right now, and you're not going to overthink it, okay? So we're going to
bend down, jump, pull that back foot up, and then just...just...[clap]. You don't have to fully land
on it. All you have to do is get that back foot to be on it when the back wheels touch back down
on the ground, then you can step off like I did. So we're going to do it again. We're going to
have our front foot, back foot, bend down, okay, just like that, and then step off. Once you're
doing that, you are really really already past all of the hard things. All you've got
to do is, kind of, refine your strategy. One of the things that's going to make it a little
bit easier for you to stay on is when you jump, don't have that hesitation where you're leaning
back. Just kind of stay over top of the board. Just like that. Now we're going to talk about
making it look a little bit prettier and feeling a little more legitimate...and all that you
have to do in order to do that is, in the air, rather than keeping your legs like this, you're
just going to level them out. So you're going to pull your back leg up, and you're gonna let
your front foot come back down. So that's looking like this, okay, we're going to bend down just
like before, and then you're just going to pull that back foot up. So one way you can do that
is you just envision that your back foot is touching lava the instant it touches the ground
and you instantly pull it up. So the first second you feel the your foot touch the ground, go
ahead and pull it up. We have our front foot, back foot, we're going to bend down, jump,
and then just pull that back foot up as soon as you possibly can. And these ollies might look
ugly but i guarantee you, they're looking better than they did when you started if you have
never done an ollie before, because that's what we're doing right now. All right, so we're
going to do the same thing . We're going to pull that back foot up instantly the second we feel
it touch the ground. We're going to bend down, and then we're just going to do that. That's
how your ollies should be looking as soon as you start getting your first ones. All right guys,
I'm a little worn out, but I hope you guys had fun with that. Let me know how the ollie practice
goes, and I'll see you all in the next video!
