How To Skateboard

Skateboarding has become a significant and influential culture in today’s world. Its wow factor and the coolness that skateboarders exude make it popular to many teenagers and young adults alike, especially with big media coverage like ESPN’s Extreme Games. Even the kids in your neighborhood performing some street tricks are sure to have caught your attention more than once. Learning how to skateboard might come easily to some and not for others. As it is with learning to ride a bike, it is preferable to start at an earlier age rather than later. And you can expect that on your first few times on the board, there will be a lot of bumps and bruises, so be advised and wear protective gear such as helmets, elbow pads, and knee pads.

It is also advised that you wear proper clothing such as shoes with big flat soles and good traction, and clothes that will not get easily snagged onto something. Wrist braces can be optional but experts advise that you should not heavily rely on using your hands when catching yourself from a fall. Now that you look like you’re ready to skate, let’s hop on to the board.

The first thing to learn when getting on your board is to get comfortable standing in it. With both your feet firmly planted across where the wheels are located, try alternately balancing from the front and the back wheels and moving your feet across the board in different positions. Get used to the feel of standing and balancing on your board. Are you getting comfortable standing on your board? Good.

Next, you should figure out your skateboard stance and whether you are more comfortable with the right foot forward, or the left foot. Usually left-handed people would prefer standing with their right foot forward. This is referred to as the Goofy Stance. The Regular Stance is done with the left foot forward. With this concept, your more dominant foot, the foot where you mostly rely on for balance, should be the foot on the back of the board.

Now that you have figured out the stance that you are most comfortable with, it’s time to figure out how to push yourself forward on your board. Take your skateboard on a wide flat area of pavement or concrete, preferably an abandoned parking lot or a park. Have you found a wide abandoned flat paved area where you can skate without the danger of hitting something or somebody? Good. Now try to cruise around by placing your front foot a little bit behind where the wheels are situated, and with your back foot, start pushing off until the board gains enough momentum to keep on moving for a short distance. Ones you are starting to roll at the preferred speed raise your back foot and place it back on top of the board. When the skateboard loses speed you can take back down your back foot to push off from the pavement again. To execute a turn, when going downhill basically you can just lean towards the direction you want to turn to but this will turn you slowly. A better way to turn is to shift your balance towards your back foot, and for a split second, swing the front of your board by stepping down with your back foot, guiding the front swing with your front foot, to the direction you want to turn. This maneuver can require practice to get it done properly.

The next thing you should learn now that you can get going on your skateboard is how to stop. The easiest way is to get off your back foot and drag it on the ground. Practice this type of stop to familiarize yourself with the balance and friction you require from different speeds. The other way to stop is the Heel Drag. This is the more common way to stop for some people who have been skating for a while. To perform this stop, put the heel of your back foot at the back of the board so that it is sticking out of the back and by leaning back, you are pushing the front of your board up and dragging your heel from the ground should put you to a stop. Be careful in performing this stop for the first few times as pushing off from the back too hard can swing the board up so fast and hit your shin or launch the board in front of you.

As with everything else practice makes perfect so practice as much as you can when performing the basics and getting them down pat before you want to try out the more advanced moves. And if all else fails when speeding away on your board, just jump off! Just be careful where you jump off to as you might end up in a deeper ditch than where your board is cruising out of control to.

So there you have it, the basic moves of skateboarding. With constant practice you will be able to do these with ease then you can move on to the more advanced tricks and maneuvers.