How To Ride A Skateboard
Now that you have determined your stance, it's time to learn how to properly ride your skateboard. The basic fundamentals of skateboarding come down to pushing, turning, and using the tail of your skateboard in a variety of ways. When learning how to skateboard, you will want to be mindful of your foot setup as well as how you are distributing and shifting your weight on the skateboard. The way you shift the weight of your body and set up your feet will play large a role into your stability on your skateboard as well as how the skateboard is most easily maneuvered.
How To Push On A Skateboard
If you are a regular skater, you will ideally have your left foot as your front foot on the front bolts of your skateboard while pushing, using your right foot to push. Goofy skaters push with their left foot and right foot on the bolts. The reason to have the front foot on or near the front bolts is because you will have the most stability turning with your front trucks, especially at high speeds. Rear steering is actually a main cause of speed wobbles, but as you get better at skateboarding you will learn how to shift weight towards your back trucks, such as when pumping. When you push, you will want to get comfortable having the majority of your weight on your front foot, skating with one leg on the board and your back leg off, because the pushing motion is a massive weight shift from your front foot to your pushing foot as you kick behind you off the ground. Ideally your front foot will point forward on your skateboard as you push, with your shoulders facing forward. When you step back on to the skateboard with your back foot, you will turn your shoulders 90 degrees back now parallel to the skateboard, pivoting your feet about 90 degrees as well so you are set up in your normal stance with your toes facing about perpendicular to the direction your board is going, but angled exactly how you feel most comfortable.
How To Steer On A Skateboard
Now that you have some speed and your feet are set up in your normal stance with your back foot on or by the tail and your front foot near the bolts, you are going to want to learn how to steer on your skateboard. Steering on a skateboard is about shifting your weight from toe to heel. At comfortable speeds you can have your weight distributed about 50/50 between your front and back foot, steering by shifting your weight from either your toes or your heels depending on which direction you want to go. As you get to higher speeds you will want to do more of this steering with your front foot for better stability, pressing down with the toe or heel with your front foot on or near the front bolts of your skateboard. When it comes to weight distribution, you will always be most stable with your weight shifted forward on your skateboard on the front trucks as opposed to leaning backwards. This applies to when going at high speeds as well as when skating down an obstacle such as a bank or quarter pipe. It is always good to be mindful of your weight distribution in that sense when steering on your skateboard as well as where your feet are set up. You will have more stability with your front foot on the front bolts of your skateboard with more weight there than on the tail.
Shifting Weight To Your Tail On A Skateboard
Another great way to use weight distribution and foot setup to your advantage when learning how to skateboard is to shift weight to the tail of your board. Most skateboard tricks require you to shift weight to your nose or tail, such as an ollie. To start learning the techniques behind tricks like the ollie or kickflip, you will want to experiment with shifting different amounts of weight to the tail of your skateboard. Be careful when doing this and do not lean back too much. Try to use as much ankle as possible rather than leaning back with your body to shift weight to the tail. Your goal here should be to get the front truck and wheels off the ground for maybe even a tenth of a second when starting out, whereas just your back two wheels are on the ground and your front two have been lifted up. Play around with this technique, lifting the nose of the skateboard off the ground by shifting weight to your back foot on the tail and bringing it back down in a controlled manner. Front foot is ideally behind the bolts for this. By practicing this technique, you will be learning how to manual which is foundational to many other things. As you get more comfortable doing this in place try it rolling. Also try it in place, shifting weight to your tail while moving your front foot side to side, guiding your board in a desired direction. That will teach you the methods of how to kickturn. One last great thing that shifting weight to your tail can teach you is how to pump on a skateboard, but we will get into that another time.
We have video tutorials for just about all of these things so make sure to follow us on social media where we show you how to skateboard:
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