[Authors note - this has been sitting in my google docs for months now, I’ve not really progressed much further but I’m still skating and still enjoying it so I thought I’d post it now. I’m going to try and post more this year even though four months of it are already up, so hopefully you’ll get some more #content. It was also far too long so I've split it accross two posts.]
Progression
I found a car park behind my work which had an extremely convenient skateboard wheel sized crack in it. This allows you to stand on the board and not worry about it shooting out from under you. I’ve just been going out every day, standing there for an hour trying to drill it into my legs. And like everything the more you do something the better you get at it. Every couple of days something would click, I’d figure out that if I lifted my back foot off the board really fast (aka “jumping”) the board would come up higher this sounds incredibly obvious but just having the confidence to really jump off your tail is a big step.
I did this for three weeks and was definitely improving, but because I was turning slightly I couldn’t land it consistently. There are a few tips on how to stop doing this the most common being to keep your shoulders straight. This didn’t help me, I tried all sorts of weird things with my arms to stop them swinging backwards, but it wasn’t working. I was filming myself to see if I could see what was going wrong and one afternoon reviewing the footage at home I spotted it.
At the top of my jump I was turning my foot 45 degrees and that was pushing the board away. So I shifted my front foot 45 degrees so it was already turned, jumped and landed straight. It wasn’t the one thing that taught me how to Ollie, that was practise, but it was the last piece of the puzzle. After that I could land 8 out of 10 standing still. I’ve been attempting rolling Ollie’s now for about 3 weeks and I’m now at the point where on a good day I can land 8 out of 10 at what to me feels like a decent speed. They aren’t high, but they are becoming less of a thing I try and more of a trick I do. This week in particular I’ve gone out and found it much easier to get the trick.
Because I’ve been filming myself on and off I’ve got a nice little album which I might cut together or might not. If I do I’ll add it to the blog.
I’m going to keep working on it but I think I need to challenge myself with something else, out of interest I tried a cheeky kickflip and got the board to spin but next up I’m going to try and learn a frontside 180 ollie.
One day though I’m going to do a kickflip. Keep it foolish.
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