Getting padded up in the only slice of shade in the best nearest parking lot. I still resent the pads, really despise them, but at the same time I appreciate how they take a HUGE beating every day.
Today
Drills
Regular Ollies:
5
Fakie Ollies
5
180 Backside Ollies
10
Backside Half-cabs
5
Backside Popshovits
5
Frontside Popshovits
5
Kickflips
25
Backside Varial Flips
5
The above fun and practice took 34 minutes, plus a few breaks. Wasn’t rushing, but that’s record time. Yesterday I was obsessed and overthinking my mechanical breakdown and it took over an hour just to do 50 kickflips without having two in a row where it skyrockets and the back tail hits the ground.
Today, with a new relaxed approach and an adjustment on my foot placement, I did almost all 25 kickflips consecutively. Each high, straight and awesome. It was the opposite of yesterday, but I’m grateful for yesterday’s thorough trial and error.
An artified still of yesterday's backside ollie into backside tailslide.
New trick practice
Tre Flips
50 attempts, zero makes. I loved this practice regardless the again zero. Based on what I learned today about my kickflips, I made much needed changes to my front foot placement and motions. All of a sudden, way more control. Came very close numerous times.
Heelflips
Attempts: 50; Makes: 2; Make rate: 4%
Observations
1. Regarding Kickflips:
I’m quoting something I wrote today about my notes on yesterday’s very obsessive practice:
“I learned that I was throwing off my timing and pop in so many ways because I was trying to speed up the flick by 25% or try to force the Ollie higher to allow more rotation time. But then I realized I don’t have to speed up or do any of that, I only needed to move my front foot up closer to, even overlapping, the front bolts! Make the journey of the foot shorter, and use the board more like a lever and bang! Way easier.”
So that’s what I observed today. I did 25 quality, high, tight, rolling, even height, non-skyrocketing kickflips, almost consecutively.
It was a breakthrough that spilled over immediately into my following tre and Kickflip Practice.
That’s not to say that my timing won’t ever be off in the future, but I feel like I finally eradicated the old 80s habit of flicking down or flat across. The last vestige of this was my starting placement of my front foot: I cheated it back too far back toward the middle of the deck. This made the distance to the nose too far for the quick flip while getting even height. Only way I could get in the complete flip before while putting my front foot so far back, was to flick down or flat across. That was before. Now with the front foot further forward I can keep more leverage over the center of the board and minimize the quickness of the front foot action. For anything. Late flips even!
I realized that I don’t need to scoot my foot back to get extra power during my Ollie. The boards are so light and I’m so much stronger than when I was kid. The shape of the nose adds to the ease of getting height.
That said, I do also know that once I’m better at all this, I can also learn how to do it all with my foot back further for more power.
To break up my unusually lengthy post, here is a very little grindable curbed corner. On Western just south of Franklin.
2. Regarding Heelflips: Just like how my Kickflip adjustment immediately gave me more control in my tre flip attempts – very promising – so also it gave me a new vision for heelflips. The skateboard is only a lever.
I remembered, “pop an Ollie, do a trick.”
Over the last eight or nine days, I landed only a few heelflips, and I kept playing with the mechanics, learning by trial and error. I watched many different heelflip how to videos on YouTube, a few of them directly conflicting with each other. I’d decided to try a middle path approach to the conflicting lessons, and then also found the following VERY HELPFUL VIDEO. That video really very much was a middle path approach. And today, it worked quite well for me.
With all of this I can play and practice patiently FOREVER as long as I know I’m doing it correctly. The thing I’m thrilled about today is that now I’ve settled on the correct method, and from here on out it’s less analyzing and more feeling. I’ll analyse it when the dynamics get out of proportion, but that’ll be just to get it back to what I’ve definitively learned.
Note: back in February after my round of vertigo I theorized in this blog that the above is what I needed to incorporate. It took time to bring it into muscle memory and weed out old 80s habits that are tied in, I.e the power Ollie.
During the first 12 heelflip attempts today I just accidentally ollied high without even getting the heel spin in there. It was like a cool, heel based Ollie. Loftiness was missing from some of my other ways of trying.
I landed number 13, and another one later. Most of the rest of my attempts were nice Ollies and either close to being makes, or they were all good except my heel flip was either too hard or too slow and it would either over or under spin. But in place. After air. Very promising.
The middle path foot placement I’ve learned to stay with after hours and hours of experimenting:
Front foot about an inch or less below the front truck bolts, at about a 30° angle, with only my small toe and part of second toe hanging off the front edge of the deck.
For the motion, as soon as the lever action of the ollie gets to its height, I start to roll my front foot up toward the scoop of the nose. I start by dragging the widest part of my front outer foot, and as it moves up toward the nose I drag it back toward the heel (meaning I’m pushing the foot more off the front edge of the deck), and then when the heel gets to the scoop of the nose I flick my foot out.
Watch the vid. What was confusing me was specific, opposing instructions and vagueness that is now clarified.
Tomorrow
I’m probably working all day, on a tv show. However, the location of crew parking is one of the famous Santa Monica middle schools wherein exist the best banks and ditches. I’m bringing my board and hoping to skate.
These are just some of the joys, struggles and revelations -and analyzing -of this adult relearning how to skateboard.
Relearning to Skateboard 