How to Ollie Going Through the Motions

After you've mastered standing up on the board and coping with speed changes and different slopes the first question is can I do more? Sure the feeling of being free is like no other but you need to step it up a little. That's where the ollie steps in. The ollie is the basis of a lot of other tricks and opens up many avenues for your skating.

The ollie was invented by Alan "Ollie" Gelfand in 1978. It uses the bounce force from throwing something against the floor to stick the board to your feet. As you're riding crouch down with one foot on the tail and one foot in the middle of the board. As you approach an obstacle slam your tail foot to the floor and lift the other foot up to your knee and jump at the same time. As you jump lift your tail foot up to clear the obstacle and push your front foot forward to level the board off. The board should follow you up with the bounce from slamming it against the floor. Make sure you remain central and stable over the board as you land to avoid your feet landing to one side of the board, and crouch down as you land to soak up the landing and prevent damage to your ankles, knees, or board.

It's difficult to get everything to run together at the right time. It's natural for you to panic as you do gain some height and walk off the board as you jump or disrupt the sequence because it feels strange landing onto a board with wheels. This is why new tricks are often performed into something soft, and if you can ollie onto something soft there's a good potential to be able to learn the trick faster.

It's also advisable to start out not moving when you learn the basics. Take it in stages, see if you can get part of the move working first and then move onto the next part and fit it all together. Learning with friends can be great to push each other to do better especially if you don't mind laughing when you fall off.

Where to go from here:

Once you've mastered the ollie it's worth enjoying it and playing with it to get used to doing them on different slopes as it can make a huge difference. The next natural progression is to turn 180 degrees as you jump, and then to move onto the kickflip.

A lot of people probably want to learn to skate thanks to Tony Hawk's video games, so it's always a good idea to remember that most of those combos either can't physically be done or are ridiculously hard. Watch an amateur skate video to see what you could reasonably accomplish if you stick at it and work hard.