So you want to learn how to Ollie? Great, in this blog post I will help you with that by giving you some tips, and some insights into how you can do your first Ollie.

How To Ollie For Beginners

I would say the only requisite to learn how to do an ollie for beginners would be knowing how to ride and control your board comfortably because bouncing and shifting weight is a big part in doing tricks especially Ollie skateboard trick also going from the normal standing on your board position to leaning weight onto your back foot and touching your tail to the ground.

it might even be helpful if you can do the same motion but towards the nose of the board because this will help you with the whole shifting your weight and balancing.

Foot positioning for an Ollie is pretty set for your back foot but your front foot has some leeway as for where it can be placed on the board.

you want to put your back foot on the tail and your front foot anywhere between halfway and on top of the bolts, also you should be standing on the balls of both of your feet with your weight mainly towards your big toes.

It’s important not to be standing with your feet flat on the board because probably it will lead to a really rigid and awkward feeling Ollie.

So the first part of an Ollie trick is the simultaneous pushing off your back foot down as hard as you can along with snapping the tail against the ground and jumping upwards off of your back foot you can practice this motion by pushing your back foot down and letting the tail of the board hit the ground and make a snap noise, after doing this a few times you can move on to snapping the tail down and a little hop off to the side of your board.

The other part of an Ollie skate is the front foot motion.

The front foot acts as a guide of the board and it’s what will eventually level out your Ollie’s in the air so this is where it gets a little confusing your front foot should start off by letting its weight on the board, so that when you push the tail down with your back foot the nose of the board go upward but when the front of the board starts to lift up you quickly want your foot to slide upwards towards the nose this probably the hardest motion to coordinate when learning how to ollie and most of the time it’s a lot of trial and error until you get the timing and muscle memory down.

like I said earlier your front can be almost anywhere on the board but the closer to the bolts the lower your Ollie will be and the closer to the middle of your board the less control you have even if you might be able to pop higher.

I like to keep mine somewhere between those about 2 or 3 inches below the bolts, once you got the mention down the main thing to do is to practice these steps over and over until you hate ollies then go to sleep and try again the next day.

How To Ollie Higher On a Skateboard

I’ve noticed three main problems that keep beginners from doing Ollie’s.

Common Ollie mistakes

The first is bad foot placement, second is not actually understanding what the back foot is supposed to do and the last is having bad timing, foot placement is probably the easiest and this is more geared towards brand new skaters you want to make sure that you’re on the ball of your back foot, you should be able to bend your back foot at the toes and still feel comfortable standing on the tail.

a lot of times I see a brand new skater standing with the arch or the center of their foot right in the center of the tail and that’s really going to give a no pop at all, it’ almost impossible to get the proper leverage and power through the back leg if you’re standing in that position when you use the ball of your foot it allows you to transfer the power from the leg to the foot through the toes to hit the tail on the ground and this will set you up for an optimal pop with your back foot.

speaking of the back foot a huge problem I see with people who don’t have the greatest ollie’s you can pop the tail off the ground get some air but the board never really levels out and it just stays rocketed which in turn decreases your ability to get a high leveled out Ollie.

I’ll focus on how the front foot comes into play for this right now I just want to talk about the back foot in most on every how to Ollie tutorial you’ll hear that the steps are press down on the back foot to pop the tail slide your front foot up and jump

well! when you think about it that’s not very descriptive and what does it really to pop the tail there’s more to it than just pressing your back foot down so the tails hit the ground with the back foot there is not just a downward motion there’s a down and jumping up which is all part of one big movement.

you can’t think of it as just pressing your back foot down as hard as you can you have to think of it as jumping off your back foot if you get this movement right then your height should only be limited by how high you can actually jump off the ground.

Timing

if your timing is off one way the other you’re doing end up with it ollie that’s either too low too rocketed too much towards the nose and just not very good

before I get really as we go let’s go over some fundamental physics for a full-fledged ollie.

Teeter-totter motion

Ollie is a teeter-totter motion with your feet where your front foot comes up first and your back foot comes up slightly behind it

Pop=height

pop your board hard enough to the back foot it is capable of going several feet in the air but remember that this is not just about power it’s about finesse and timing so when you do pop the board with your back foot that’s going to keep it from flipping over or flying away from you is your front foot

your front foot really doesn’t come into play until about halfway through your ollie it’s there to not only keep the board flipping over but as it slides towards the nose it’s going to raise the back of your board up with your back foot to keep the board level and not rocketed.

now if you feel pretty comfortable with your ollie’s but you still end up with either a rocketed ollie or one that’s over bone towards the nose it may be because of bad timing.

you need to remember that after you pop the tail with your back foot and your front foot is sliding forward that’s not sliding forward too fast or too slow the reason why timing can be so difficult is because when you break it down and ollie consist a lot of parts there is the crouched, standing up and jump, the pop, lifting your front foot and sliding towards the nose, lifting your back leg, and landing I recommends holding on to something when you can it’s a great confidence booster and it really allows you to experiment with what you’re trying.

so after taking all of this into consideration all that’s left is to practice over and over again and hopefully, you can start to see an improvement in your ollie’s.

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