Learn To Skateboard

When you are starting up and want to learn to skateboard the best advice I could give you is to get a cheap skateboard first up! Hey, there is method in the madness, cos you are gonna take a lot of dives and smash that board into a few inanimate objects, and a lot of the time those inanimate objects will come off best!

So dont spend a lot of money on a board that you find you have wrecked a few weeks down the line. Before you start to learn to skateboard have a look around in your local area for any skateboards going cheap. Go to a few shops and find out what sort of price they are selling boards for by all means, but I would for sure go for a second hand one to get you going.

Try to pick one that has a good width to it, and also a good depth/thickness, meaning that the skateboard is relatively heavy, so that it will give you more balance as you learn.
If it is possible I would also try to get good bearings on your wheels too, Abec 2 bearings are spot on I would say, as the higher the bearings, the quicker your wheels will spin.

When you want to learn to skateboard it is important to get a feel for your board and where your feet are positioned on the board. Practice rolling along on the board, and find the best place to position your feet that avoids you falling off or tipping up your board. Practice balancing and push off and bend your knees to see the effect the movement of shifting your body weight forward has on your speed and balance.

Practice banging your foot down on the tail of the board and catching the front end of your board with your front foot as it pops up, and then leaning forward and gaining momentum.

There are lots of little actions you can try out as you learn to skateboard.
The quickest way to learn all the tricks and everything you need to become a really skilled skater can be found if you click on Skate Secrets

Skateboarding Tricks

Skateboarding tricks can generally be broken up into 5 separate groupings, and this is what we are going to mosey on down to take a gander at here.
OK here are the 5 main groupings, in no particular order mind.

1. Fliptricks. These are all based around the ollie and comprise of various types of aerial flips without using your hands. The feet remain on the board throughout the trick. Some fliptricks include a fakie ollie, an ollie 180, the kickflip, the heelflip, and the hardflpi etc. In many fliptricks the board is flipped upside down.

2. Freestyle tricks. Freestyle skateboarding tricks involve balancing on either one wheel or two, and sometimes just the front or back of the board, or even the edges. Freestyle has been popular for many years as it is a great way to improvise and have fun on the board, and you can get in to some cool flips.

3. Aerials. Similar to the fliptricks, and as the name implies they are tricks involving flipping your skateboard into the air, but with an aerial trick you use your hand or hands to control the board.

4. Slides and grinds. These skateboarding tricks involve the use of a rail or ledge that the skateboard slides or grinds along. The skateboarder jumps onto the rail or ledge with his board and either slides along it with the edge of the board, or grinds along it with the truck. You dont have to use just rails or ledges either, you can use whatever you got available and improvise, such as with the edges of pavements or pools. The great thing about skateboarding as far as I see it is we can all improvise and use our own imagination.

5. Liptricks. These are mainly done on a skateboard ramp. Half pipes, quarter pipes and mini ramps are all used for liptricks, which again as the name implies uses the lip of the ramp to perform various tricks, such as axle stalls, bean plants, boardstalls and inverts etc.

If ya want to learn to skateboard like a champ in the space of 2 months just take a look at the guide here by clicking on SkateboardSecrets

History Of Skateboarding

In this blog we are taking a walk down memory lane and looking at the history of skateboarding.
It started off as "side-walk surfing" and was closely related to surfing back then, a kind of offshoot. Fact is that skateboards we are pretty sure originated in California, so you can see the connection.

They were developed at first it is believed in the 1940`s, but only began to gain popularity in the 1960`s onwards. Surfers used them as a kind of dry surfing run, and kids who couldn`t get to the beach found skateboarding as the next best thing.
The first skateboards were surfboard shaped, but the board widened as people started using skateboards more inventively, and ramps started being used.

The history of skateboarding shows us that once skateboard parks came onto the scene things really started to rock and roll! People started all sorts of cool tricks.
They started doing nose wheelies, which is riding on the front wheels, and the 360 was invented, which is spinning around on the back wheels. I hope this isn`t dullsville for you, but I like finding out about the history of skateboarding, its neat to know how things are connected, and how sports develop and grow.

The ollie was the first skateboard trick of the modern era, and after the ollie things really hotted up.
If ya don`t know what the ollie is, it is to fly off the ground with the board, but not holding onto the board, and then landing back on the board. You can use your feet to press against the board in all types of ways for various manoeuvres and tricks. This must have been ultra exciting when this was first created.
By the way,do you know where the name of the ollie came from? It was the creators middle name Alan Ollie Gelfand.

So thats a brief history of skateboarding. It doesn`t always get the respect it deserves for the complexity and subtlety of the tricks and the imaginative moves.
To learn all the best skateboarding tricks in rapido time click on SkateboardingSecrets

Skateboarding Planet.

Welcome to Skateboarding Planet!. Everyone is welcome here, the young, the old, the beginner, the expert, the geeky kids, the kids with two left feet, the dudes and the chicks!!

This blog is for anyone who is interested in skateboarding, it is going to be a living, breathing creature that gets updated at least once a day whether you like it or not! I am going to try to pack it with as much information as I can, and I sincerely hope that there are lot of skateboarders, or wannabe skateboarders, out there that are going to find this informative, instructive, fun, maybe a little goofy at times, and hopefully a useful and good place to hang out for skateboarding fanatics.

Now don`t worry if you don`t know your varial kick from your ollie, or your kick flip from your heel, or you wouldn`t know a 360 flip if it bit you on the bum, in the not too distant future we will be covering all bases. If you are the type of person who likes to push mongo or ride goofy we got it all down here.

And the more input I get from anyone of you people out there who love skateboarding the better.
I am going to pack this blog with tips on various moves, write out beginners guides, give info on the latest trends and fads. There will be info on gear to buy, where to get the coolest boards etc.

So I hope you find us, stick with us and enjoy the ride. I will make this as fun and smiley as possible, as life sucks if you can`t let yourself go and enjoy it.
For all who love to get out and express themselves by skateboarding, I will see you soon.