Can you ollie on a longboard? If you are a beginner or about to start to ollie on a longboard then you are in the right direction. How to ollie on a longboard is the most important step to doing more advanced tricks with a longboard. Actually, it is one of the fundamental steps of longboard ollie. It’s fun and effortless if you come with the knowledge of basic terms and regular practice as well. We are going to discuss here the easy ways of longboard ollie.
Quick Answer: 5 Basic Steps For Longboard Ollie:
- Know the basic terms and prepare yourself
- Know the types of longboard
- Let’s adjust to your board
- Keep your foot in the right position
- Jump & Descend
Now read those 5 steps details here and learn how to do it (with a video tutorial).
Know The Basic Terms And Prepare Yourself
Always remember that you will learn with every fall during the practice. More practice makes more progress. Today’s best professional borders have come across the way you are today. Their journey was full of inexperience, falls, and losses. But your hard work, perseverance, and motivation can make you successful at what you are trying. Most beginners commonly do the mistake of taking longboard ollie and skateboard riding as the same thing. Though they look quite similar, there is little dissimilarity. So it is necessary to know the basic terms, and differentiation, and prepare yourself for several falls and injuries as well.
Know The Types Of Longboard
If you want to learn stunning ollies then you should know the different types of longboards. You can distinguish different categories of longboards based on the size of their deck and truck. The deck is the board body that you stand on while doing freestyle. For freestyle, you should use over a 40″ longboard. Before anything else, check if the deck size suits you. Based on your weight, age, height, and shoe size you would be able to select the perfect size of the deck. However, for an almost perfect ollie, we recommend flat-cave and wider decks.
Related Longboard: Best dancing longboards
Every single part from bolts, axles and screws, kingpin, and wheels- all these are included with trucks. You will find a drop-down and drop through- these 2 kinds of truck systems. However, we recommend a drop through the deck for ollie due to its stability.
Let’s Adjust To Your Board
Now that you are ready with basic concepts and acknowledgment of primary steps, let’s start to step on your board. In this stage, you have to concentrate on a few points, like-
- Observe your longboard
- Try to understand the comfortable trick to keep your board balanced, stable and controlled
- If the trucks are too tight to move or are too much wobbling or have a small deck- check on these issues
- Find out your preferred foot for balancing
It doesn’t matter how expensive or good your longboard is, only important thing is to get comfortable with it. You should get adjusted to it and the board should be your alternative feet.
Keep Your Foot In The Right Position
It’s not magic, it is all about the technique of keeping your foot in the right position on a longboard. Keep your front foot around or near the deck center and the back foot on the rear kick or rear tail. However, there is no particularly correct way to stand on a longboard. Whatever the way you feel natural just go with that.
If your forward foot is left food, then you are a regular stance skater. And if the right foot is forward, then you skate in a goofy stance. Now get your position at the correct place with the right foot positioning. Your front foot should be synchronized with the deck’s center while the back foot is hanging half off the edge of the rear tail or kick.
Jump & Descend
The next procedures are jumping and descending. With the primary compilation of footwork, concentrate on bending and crouching your upper body. As for the longboard, Ollie’s upper body motion is as much important as your force, weight, and inertia. You should crouch your torso enough to harborage and form a good level of pressure through your feet upon the deck. Your knees should be bent not more than 90 degrees and try to do this as naturally as possible.
At this position, you are all set to make a jump. Well, there is a simple trick for this as well. And that is you should make a jump with one of your feet at a time. First, use your front foot to jump and then the rear foot. And when descending, make sure that you jump or descend on the level of both of your feet. This will surely level your board up. The most important thing to remember is that keep your feet in the same position while jumping and landing as well.
Though the tricks and techniques look easy and fun, to make them perfect, you need to analyze and anatomize them. You will do awesome with persistence and hard work.
And one thing always keeps in your mind. Safety first. Here are many examples, longboard accidents happened only of carelessness. Always wear a helmet and safety gear.