Learning skateboard tricks starts with mastering the ollie, the foundational move that nearly every other trick builds on. Before you attempt any trick, though, you need to be completely comfortable riding, pushing, turning, and stopping. Most skaters spend a few weeks just cruising before they’re stable enough to pop their first ollie, and rushing past that stage is the fastest way to pick up bad habits or injuries.
Get Comfortable on the Board First
Figure out your stance: regular (left foot forward) or goofy (right foot forward). Whichever feels natural when you step on the board is your stance. From there, practice pushing with your back foot while keeping your front foot angled forward over the front bolts. Work on stopping by dragging your back foot or using a tail scrape.
Once pushing feels automatic, practice tic-tacs (small side-to-side pivots using your tail) and manuals (balancing on just the back wheels while rolling). These build the ankle strength, balance, and board feel you’ll rely on for every trick that comes later. Spend real time here. You should be able to ride over cracks and small bumps without thinking about it before moving on.
The Ollie: Every Trick Starts Here
The ollie looks simple, but the physics are counterintuitive. You’re not jumping and pulling the board up with your feet. You’re creating a lever action that launches the board into the air, then guiding it with your front foot.
Place the ball of your back foot near the center of the tail’s edge. Your front foot sits somewhere between the middle of the board and the front bolts. The exact spot varies by preference, but closer to the middle gives you more room to slide your foot upward.
Here’s the sequence that matters:
- Crouch and load your weight. Press down through both feet before anything else. This compresses your body and pushes the wheels into the ground, creating the reaction force that lifts you. The pop comes after your body begins to rise, not before.
- Snap the tail. As your body starts lifting, extend your back leg fully and snap your ankle downward to slam the tail into the ground. Shifting your center of gravity slightly toward the nose before you pop helps maximize the board’s upward rotation.
- Slide your front foot forward. As the nose rises, drag the side of your front foot up toward the nose. This levels the board out in midair. Press your front foot straight down (relative to where it is on the board) once it reaches the nose. The key isn’t how hard you push forward but how quickly you switch from sliding up to pressing down.
- Lift your back foot. After your front foot finishes its motion, pull your back knee up toward your body and twist your back leg inward. This lets the side of your foot contact the board instead of your toes, allowing the tail to rise higher.
- Land with a wide stance. As you descend, move your back foot toward the tail and your front foot toward the nose. Landing over the bolts distributes your weight evenly and protects the board from snapping.
Practice stationary ollies on grass or carpet first to get the foot motion down without worrying about rolling. Then move to flat ground and gradually add speed. A rolling ollie is actually easier to control than a stationary one because forward momentum stabilizes the board.
Trick Progression: What to Learn and When
Tricks build on each other in a logical sequence. Skipping ahead usually means you lack the muscle memory for the prerequisite move, which makes the harder trick nearly impossible. Here’s a practical order that most coaches and experienced skaters recommend:
Level 1: Flatground Fundamentals
After the ollie, learn the frontside 180 (ollie while rotating your body and board 180 degrees so you land rolling backward). This teaches you how to rotate in the air. Next, work on the fakie shove-it, where you push the board to spin 180 degrees beneath you while rolling backward. Then try the pop shove-it from your regular stance, the backside 180, and the fakie ollie (an ollie while riding backward).
At this stage, also practice manuals on curbs or low ledges and your first grind: a 50-50 on a low ledge or block, where both trucks lock onto the edge.
Level 2: Flip Tricks and Grinds
The kickflip is typically the first flip trick skaters learn. After that, work on nose manuals, backside 50-50 grinds, frontside and backside 5-0 grinds (grinding on just the back truck), fakie kickflips, backside boardslides on rails, heelflips, and frontside pop shove-its. Ollieing over one or two stacked boards is a good benchmark for your pop height at this point.
Level 3: Combining Skills
This is where tricks start combining elements you already know: kickflip manuals, crooked grinds, smith grinds, tailslides in both directions, fakie heelflips, and frontside 180 kickflips. Each of these is essentially two Level 1 or Level 2 skills fused together.
How to Kickflip
The kickflip adds a board flip to the ollie. Set up with your back foot in the same ollie position. Your front foot sits just behind the front bolts, angled slightly so your toes hang over the toe-side edge of the board.
Pop an ollie as normal, but as you slide your front foot up toward the nose, flick it off the heel-side corner of the nose using your toes. The board flips beneath you along its length. A common mistake is pressing down with the front foot to force the flip. Your front foot only initiates the rotation, then gets out of the way. Your back foot, still in contact with the edge of the board after the pop, pushes upward and to the side to give the board both its flip momentum and enough height to complete the full rotation.
If the board keeps landing upside down, your front foot is doing too much work. Focus on a lighter flick and let the back foot contribute the energy. Jump slightly to the side (toward your heel) to clear the flipping board, then catch it with both feet as it completes the rotation.
How to Heelflip
The heelflip is the kickflip’s mirror image. Your back foot stays in the standard ollie position. Place your front foot behind the front bolts with your toes hanging slightly off the toe-side edge, but this time your heel will do the flicking instead of your toes.
Pop the tail, then drag your front foot up toward the nose, just like a kickflip, but angle the motion toward your heel side instead of your toe side. Kick outward with your heel before your foot reaches the top of the nose. The board flips in the opposite direction of a kickflip. Make sure the board is level and parallel to the ground before you pop. An uneven snap makes the flip wobble and land off-axis.
Ramp and Transition Basics
If you have access to ramps, transition skating (riding curved surfaces) develops a different set of skills that complement flatground tricks. Start by rolling up and down banks, then progress to pumping back and forth on quarter pipes, which teaches you to generate speed without pushing. Dropping in, where you stand at the top of a ramp and lean forward to roll down the transition, is a mental hurdle as much as a physical one. Commit fully; leaning back is what causes slips.
From there, work on tail stalls (riding up and stalling on the coping with your tail), rock fakies (rocking the front wheels over the coping and rolling back in), and rock and rolls (going over the coping and turning 180 to come back down). These moves build comfort with the lip of the ramp, which is where most transition tricks happen.
Setting Up Your Board for Tricks
Wheel choice has a direct effect on how tricks feel. Wheel hardness is measured on the durometer scale, where higher numbers mean harder wheels. For street skating on pavement, wheels rated 99a or higher minimize friction and maintain speed well on smooth surfaces. For technical flatground tricks, wheels around 98a in the 54 to 55mm range offer a good balance of grip and slide. Vert and ramp skating works best with wheels between 95a and 100a, which accelerate quickly for generating airtime.
Smaller, harder wheels are lighter and allow more precise movements, which is why most trick-focused skaters choose them. Softer wheels (below 95a) are better for cruising but feel sluggish for tricks because they grip the ground too much and add weight.
Protecting Yourself While Learning
Wrist injuries are among the most common in board sports because your instinct is to catch yourself with outstretched hands. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that skaters without wrist guards were roughly 10 times more likely to injure their wrists compared to those wearing them. That’s a dramatic difference for a piece of gear that costs under $20.
A helmet is non-negotiable for ramp skating and worth wearing on street as well, especially while learning. Knee pads let you slide out of failed tricks on ramps instead of tumbling. Beyond gear, the single best injury prevention strategy is learning how to fall: practice rolling onto your shoulder instead of bracing with your hands. Tuck, roll, and distribute the impact across the fleshy parts of your body rather than your joints.