What's up guys, my name is Justin Lauria, and today we're going to drill down and
identify every possible reason you might be having trouble landing your kickflips,
and then tell you exactly what you need to do in order to fix it and start
landing them every try.
Now real quick, before we get into the list of possible
issues you might be having, first I want to go over the proper technique to do a
kickflip so that we have a baseline to work from and reference once we start
going over all of the common problems.
Being able to do an ollie is an
essential first step to being able to do a kickflip so if you haven't learned
those yet, you can watch my tutorial on them by clicking the link up here or in
the description section below.
So now, to do a kickflip, first you're
going to want to position your feet on the board for the most part like this
with your front foot positioned over the front wheels at a slight angle and your
back foot positioned on the tail in the same place that you'd put it in to do an ollie.
Now, whereas for an ollie you're going to be dragging your front foot up the
board so that you're aiming for the center of the tail, for a kickflip, you're
instead going to be aiming so that this part of your shoe right here, right over
top of where your pinkie toe is, is aiming for this area of the board right here,
where the side of the board meets the nose, which we call the pocket.
Now, as you pop the tail off of the ground, just like you would for an ollie, bend at your
ankle and slide your front foot up the griptape, not sideways or down like you
might think, and focus on pulling the board up off of the ground with your front foot.
Then as your front foot gets to the pocket, you're going to want to flick
your front foot out which is going to do two things: First, it's going to make the
board start rotating really fast. Second it's going to push the nose of the
board down so that the back of the board is going to come up, allowing you to catch
it with your back foot once it's done flipping all the way around.
Alright so now that you understand exactly what it is that
you're going for, let's take a look at how skaters normally progress through
the process of learning how to do a kickflip so that we can identify where
along that process you might be making a mistake and figure out exactly what's
holding you back from landing your kickflips in a consistent manner.
So, usually when skaters first start learning how to do a kickflip, once they're able to level
out their ollies consistently, they'll start just practicing flicking the board
out in front of them in a kickflip motion like this just to get a feel for
what they need to do with their front foot in order to get the board to flip
properly. If you're currently on this step, try to flick the board so that it
lands, for the most part, underneath you and then stop your front foot down on
the board once it's done flipping all the way around so that you can start to
get a feel for the timing of the kickflip. The next step that you'll want
to start practicing is popping and flicking the board in the same way
except landing with your back foot on the board instead and landing with your
front foot on the ground. This is an important step because one of the things
that a lot of skaters have trouble with when they're learning how to do a
kickflip is teaching themselves how to jump into the air high enough and
keeping their back foot up in the air long enough in order to land back on the
board with both feet. From there it shouldn't be all that much more
difficult to start landing on the board with your front foot as well, but just
keep in mind that it does take a good amount of time and practice to get there,
so as long as you keep at it, you'll eventually develop the muscle definition
and the muscle memory necessary to start landing your kickflips.
So one of the things that helped me start
landing my very first few kickflips is that
instead of positioning my foot right about here which is what I do now and
what seems to give me the most consistent kickflip motion is I would
position my foot a little further back and a little more pointed towards the
nose of the board because that would give me the ability to still flick the
board and get it to flip without having to develop the extreme bend of the ankle
that you need in order to do a kickflip if you have your front foot started out
right here, so what you can do is you can start with your foot foot kind of like
right here get some kickflips in, and they might be a little bit ugly...
usually when you do it like that, the board will stay tilted in this way so we call that
a rocket kickflip, but once you start landing a couple, your front foot will
get used to the motion that you need to do in order to do a kickflip, and then
you can slowly progress to having your foot started out pointed more towards
the other side of the board.
Now when some people first start learning how to do a kickflip, they'll
develop a habit that becomes so ingrained into the way that they go
about popping and flicking their board, that the only way they can learn how to
do a kickflip properly is to first unlearn that bad habit and then they can
go about learning how to do it correctly. So on that note let's talk about some
common problems that might be happening to you and then go over some ways that
you can fix them so that you can finally start teaching yourself the right way to
do a kickflip. Alright so the first thing that might be holding you back
from doing your kickflips properly is that you might not have taken enough
time to perfect your ollie technique yet. To do a kickflip, you have to pop the
tail of the board off of the ground with your back foot and then slide your front
foot up the griptape, just like you would for an ollie, to pull the board up
into the air high enough before you can even worry about flicking it and getting
it to level out even more using the flick, but the first part is just like an
ollie, so if your kickflip attempts to look kind of like this, try to go back
and forth between practicing your ollies and practicing your kickflips
and focus on mimicking the same motion that you're using during your ollie
during your kickflip so that you can get the back wheels off the ground high
enough to start worrying about what you can do with your front foot. Now, another
thing that skaters will sometimes have trouble with is being able to get fully
balanced and centered over top of your board right before you pop the trick
which is something you're going to want to be able to do if you want the board
to stay underneath you after you pop the trick. If you start to notice that your
board is consistently landing in the same spot out in front of you or behind
you, this is most likely the reason why. One thing that might help you get your
balance a little better as you're setting up to do your kickflip would be
to try to do the trick while you're rolling forward a little bit rather than
just doing them while you're standing still. If that doesn't seem to be working
out for you, you could also try putting your back wheels into a crack in the
cement, which will help keep the board stationary while you're bending down to
set up for the trick. Another possibility that might be causing the board to land
out in front of you each time is that you might not have built up the
confidence that you need in order to flick the board underneath you and
commit to landing on it with both feet yet. Most people, when they are a little
bit scared of what's going to happen if they put both of their feet on the board
after a kickflip, is when they go to pop the trick they'll lean back a little bit
and the board will land out in front of them which allows them to
land with one of their feet safely on the ground.
In order to land your first few kickflips you're gonna have to actively
push yourself outside of that safe territory, so before you do, make sure
you've got your technique of flicking the board and making it rotate
underneath you one full time and catching it with your back foot and then
once you've got that down, take a deep breath and really give it an honest
attempt now you might end up taking a couple of spills here, but if you already
have some practice falling, which you should, and especially if you have some
pads on, it's not going to be the end of the world. And then, before you know it,
you're going to be able to start landing your kickflips without having to worry
about being afraid of falling any more. Now, some people will say that in order
to make landing your kickflips easier that you should try them on a smaller
board, and to an extent that is true; it is it is a little bit easier to flip a
smaller board faster, but by no means is it necessary. As you can see here, I have
an 8.75 inch wide board and I'm still able to do
kickflips and double kickflips on it, so don't feel like you need to go out and
buy a whole new board just in order to learn this one trick. Now, another thing
that has the tendency to give people a little bit of a problem is that when
they imagine what they need to do in order to get the board to rotate in this
direction, they think that what they need to do is to apply a force straight down
on this side of the board, which would make sense if the board was just floating in
the air, but it's not. It's being popped up like this, and it's already
angled, and then this right here is also angled up more than just the side of the
board so instead of jumping up in the air and kicking your foot straight down,
what you need to do is drag your front foot up, and then flick it out, in this
direction, and that's going to make the board rotate the way that you want it to
and get it to level out in the air so that you can catch it with your back
foot.
Another thing you're going to want to keep in mind about this trick is that
whenever you go to pop it, you don't want to have your back foot positioned too far
heel-side or else what's going to happen is the board is going to pop off the ground
and start rotating a little bit in a kickflip motion, but it's going to be too
early, and you're not going to have anything to kick your front foot off of, so what I
usually do is I take the ball of my back foot and I position it right on this
center line of the tail, and if you want to you can even position it a little
further toe-side than that, but what that's going to allow you to do is pop the
board off the ground and have it rotate kind of in a heelflip motion into your
front foot and allow you to get a really nice strong flick with your front foot
and make the board go all the way around. The last piece of advice I have for you
is that you're going to need a lot of patience in order to learn this trick.
Most people are going to underestimate how many hours it actually takes in order to
develop the motion that you need to do with both of your feet as well as
getting the timing down between them, so even if you're not seeing a lot of
progress, you just need to stick with it and try to focus on what it is that
you're doing wrong that's holding you back and correcting that motion over and
over again until you're doing it properly, and soon enough you'll be
landing your kick flips every single try. A good technique that you can use in
order to determine where exactly it is that you're getting hung up would be to
just film yourself doing a few kickflip attempts and then compare what those
attempts look like to someone who already does kick flips very well.
Just remember, it's easier to see your progress when you compare two practice
sessions together rather than comparing two individual attempts back-to-back.
Make sure to subscribe if you haven't already, and as always,
Never Stop Improving!