Fucking Tre flip

Titular sentiment
I love tre flips. It isn’t about that. I’ve been landing at least a couple in most sessions all year. They have been a battle for over a year now. They inspired my return to skating. And yet, they’ve felt like a huge tug of war for twelve months. Progress melts into plateau, into frustration and then losing some progress , flatlining, and then getting better, and then losing them. When I first had them stationary, over a year ago, I was up to 16% make rate. Since I’ve had them while rolling, I’ve been up to a 40% make rate, but have had a couple more foot injuries which led to losing momentum and then back to slow and steady. I’ve never landed more nice tre flips than I during the last few weeks, and yet as I move toward getting them better, higher, tighter and more consistently, I keep losing the progress I made.

Long story short: Last night I spent like 40 minutes trying tres, and didn’t land any (“landed” a few, and then my foot fell off or I fell on my ass). Landed lots of unintentional 360 pop shovits, and I executed many nice ones  -perfect except my front foot came down too fast. And I got frustrated and named this post.

Gotta say that, although Tres are a huge focus, and although I’ve landed probably a between 150 to 200 by now, they still bring up a little skate performance anxiety, and now unpleasant inner pressure to succeed – mixed with some “Oh here we go again!”. I have created some inner tension and tre-pidation around the whole advent. Makes me in a subtle way, want to shy away from the burgeoning ego-based non-fun sense of responsibility to get these consistently. Yet when I land them, the sensation immediately takes me to feeling like I’m at the top of a mountain.

In other news
I got to go out and skate a couple more sessions since my last post. Each was at the Fairfax High manual pad. Each was at about 11pm after being up and active since 7am. The first one was 90 minutes, the second was 60 minutes.

In the first one I busted out a Practice Set 3.0, plus the new tricks I’ve very recently learned: frontside nollie popshov, backside nollie popshov, fakie backside 360 shovit, backside no-comply popshov, fakie frontside pop shovit, fakie backside popshovit.

In the second session I busted out a mixed bag of all these tricks, including all the flip components of the Practice Set 3.0, minus a successful tre. (Hence the title. I got super frustrated, even though I could actually see some quality control in the motions, and could see I was working towards something).

That gap
As per some photos above, I was sizing up ollieing a 7.5 foot sidewalk tree stump gap. I measured it, and then repeatedly tried to ollie the same distance on flatground. Over and over I kept maxing out at 5.5 feet. When I’d approach it faster I would just lose control of the board. One serious bail, knees saved by the fucking ridiculous-looking pads. I’ll keep working on it. Last night, however, I was too obsessed (and eventually in a rut) working on those tre flips.

Ancient Skater
As a reminder, I’m 40 years old. A year and a half ago I couldn’t even hardly ollie. All of this is progress. My biggest challenge these days is a mix of finding the time and the energy to get out and skate. Otherwise, I’m confident that everything can be broken down into baby steps and approached. That said, I’m jonesing to get out and skate, but even writing out this blog is chipping into my career and everything else. Alas, this is just another challenge facing this adult relearning how to skate!

And oh yes, am very much looking forward to using my new Andrey Reynolds hollow Indys. 8″. Think I’ll wait until I also get a new deck. My current deck has it’s first pressure cracks, and the tail is wearing down. I’v loved this Element deck. Might get another one. Will see!

Another four new tricks! Growth spurt despite limited skate sessions

180 no comply fakie stoneless (stalefish boneless).

Limited time, bla bla bla
That’s the story of this year. Had taken massive amounts of inner-adult sense of responsibility to work and do so much non-fun, non-skating, even non-stand-up comedy distractions. Last year it was all play (but this also had some fallout).
Even despite the non-axle work grind, I daydream in tech tricks at bus stops and coffee houses and night dream in Cardiel-style gnar, and I picture Mariano-style tech gnar at every waxed ledge.
Even while being so limited of time and precious late night energy, I’ve actually managed to incrementally increase my long-battled tre flip skill and have even learned 8 new tricks in the last two full sessions. (This doesn’t count mini-sessions wherein I do kickflips, grinds, manuals and ollies en route to whatever. A favorite dilly-dally past time is Ollie variations off driveway hips).

Been eyeing this for awhile now, wondering if I can Ollie high enough. Literally tho, I hit this rail in my dreams at night.

The 8 new tricks
First I shall share that during my late Sunday night session I skated for over an hour, practiced at the Fairfax manual pad, and did a Practice Set 3.0.
In the previous session, as noted in my previous post, I got my first makes ever of: fakie 360 shovit; fakie frontside popshuv; fakie backside popshuv; and 180 no comply fakie stalefish boneless (pictured above). I included all of these again in my more recent session.
During Sunday night’s session I felt strong, especially stronger than ever in the nollie realm (due to some foot placement adjustments noted a few sessions back). I achieved the following additional four new tricks: 180 backside nollie; 180 frontside nollie; 360 no comply stalefish boneless (grabbing the no comply midair with my back hand, and jumping off with my front foot as I’m already airborne); and lastly something I’ve long been capable of but didn’t occur to me until I saw it on Aaron Kyro’s Braille skateboard how to channel on YouTube…no comply frontside popshuv.

What next?
Must keep working on my now-got-but-still-honing-and-easily-lose-able tres each session. That’s a huge focus. Jonesing to kickflip into and out of manuals, and recapture and refine backside tailslides, and huge desire: tail stall (and tail slide) to kickflip out…and of course also get my first kickflip into tail stall and tail slides. Then I need to put them together, in and out. How sweet that will be!
But first…I am tasked with the ultimate adult skateboarding challenge of finding the time for another session!

Four new tricks and a new Practice Set

So much things to say right now
That’s actually the name of a great Bob Marley tune. Check it out.
I think I’ll bullet point this post, so I don’t squander your attention span with all my loving and averting adjectives.

• I didn’t really made a big deal out of my most recent post, where I showed a video of me landing a tre flip. But really though, I was thinking about how to me it was a big deal as it was visual validation of something I’ve been working toward for over 16 months. That long ago, I could hardly ollie, and I was dozens of hours of practice away from even doing a pop shovit. I’d seen a vid of someone doing a tre flip, and it really inspired me to start skating again.
• I’m still in skate time redux mode as I’ve taken on way too many responsibilities. Each time I skate it tends to be around midnight and in doing so I’m cutting my sleep down to about 5 hours. I skated on 4/20, and then again over the last couple of nights. It’s killing me not to skate daily. Am stoked though, that I haven’t lost all my progress. I’ve been skate commuting quite a bit though, some I’m always ollieing and doing manuals.

More bullet points, new practice set, four new tricks
I got in another session last night, and it was awesome. Was yet another time during which I had to go out at almost midnight -despite the long work days sandwiching the session. Skated for about an hour, at Fairfax High.

• I officially kicked off a new Practice Set 3.0. This one incorporates 3 new tricks: 360 backside shovit; backside nollie popshov; Tre flip. I just started really aiming for this the night before last night, and even since then I learned 4 new tricks. They’ll make their way into a set later. The Tre happens almost every session, but it isn’t yet a given that I’ll land one.
• The night before last night, and last night, I skated for about 75 minutes each time, at midnight, at Fairfax High, and each time completed a Practice Set 3.0.
• The four new tricks I learned are thus: Fakie frontside popshovit; Fakie backside popshovit; Fakie backside 360 shovit, and something I don’t know what to call. It’s like a frontside 180 no comply, but on the way up I grab the board with my back hand (like a stalefish) and it sort of turns into a mid-air-based floating boneless. Fun. Almost did it 360 too.

Loose ends and an updated work in progress/wish list
Over the months I’ve begun many skate projects, and haven’t been able to work on them all the way. Either that or I just deemed that there were other focuses (usually the tre) which came first. Here’s a list of these tricks. Some of them I’ve landed before, but they aren’t par for the course yet.

• Frontside (180) flip (I’ve landed before, needs work)
• Slappies (I’ve landed before, needs work)
• Backside tailslides (I’ve landed before, needs work)
• 180 flip (backside) to tail stall (Have come super close)
• Tall stall to kickflip out (Have come super close)
• 180 heelflip (Not close, but I feel it within me)
• Backside no comply (??? Help!)
• Hard flip (Wow, that’s a whole new world)
• Hand rail board slide. (Not even tried, but I feel like I’m about there).
• Blunts and bluntslides (Not close but I feel it within me)
• K-grinds. (I’ve landed before, needs work)

Grainy still of a 360 shovit

A bit about last night

• Last night my tre flip practice was not as awesome as the night before. And I gave myself a little grief about it! Despite being exhausted! Despite landing one, and having a few almosts. I do break it down into components, and technically, if I work on that then the pressure is off my ego. In actually though I can feel a little bit of nerves and self-challenging adrenaline surge up before I work on the tre. Whatever. I have ego problems, and that’s why this is mostly an anonymous blog, and that’s why I skate alone.

What happened to me doing my invented skate games?

• I haven’t skated enough since breaking that bone in my foot and then taking on a 60 hour per week friggin’ job (plus my biz and other projects), to practice the Skate solitaire games. Those are to keep it fresh, keep the challenge alive, avoid auto-pilot. However right now I’m beyond super stoked to skate anyway, and the Practice Sets are challenging enough. My present moment awareness is strong enough to make it all good without needing to play a game.

• 

  And I was friggin’ working when I saw this.