Learn the Parts of a Skateboard

Series Summary

Skateboarding has come a long way from its modest origins in the innocent suburbs of America in the 1950s. At first, a skateboard was nothing more than a wooden plank with wheels. We can now thank the radical, mind-altering attitudes of the televised revolution that was the 1960s for the increased popularity and production of skateboards. Certainly designated as “what the cool kids do,” skateboarding's third generation has taken the sport to a whole new level. Nearly every man, woman, and child knows someone who has skated or is currently skating. Though known as a popular hobby for the youth counter culture and modern day punk scene, skateboarding has been accepted by all kinds of people and age groups.

Regardless of what social group you belong to, if you’re going to skateboard, you have to learn the most essential of tricks, the one that all other skateboarding tricks are built around—yes, my friends, I’m talking about the ollie. The ollie is the trick that allows you jump over objects, curbs, ramps, grabbing some air for a simple landing, or moving into a more complicated trick. In these skate video lessons, learn the basic mechanics of the ollie, including how to pop and jump, where to put your feet, how to jump higher and farther, how to ollie on a ramp, do a goofy ollie, and more beginner skateboarding tips.

Video Transcript

"This is Kyle Hovercamp from Skatechurch in Portland, OR on behalf of Expert Village this is a tutorial of how to learn how to ollie on your skateboard. In this clip I'm going to show you how to get the right equipment for your skateboard when you learn how to ollie, this is the deck, there's different shapes of the deck and that's called the concave. Some concave have like big noses and big tales this is the nose of the deck and this is the tale of the deck. You can usually tell because the nose of the deck is a lot bigger or you can also tell from the graphic on the bottom of the board. There's grip tape on the deck and that helps you when you're learning how to pop, it grips to your shoes, popping is when you press down on your tail for the ollie. And we'll get to that later, these are the trucks that's what holds your wheels onto your deck and it also matters how tight and loose they are. Like if you land and have really loose trucks they're going to be wobbly I skate kind of loose trucks but not to loose, that helps a lot when I'm landing, from ollies or anything. Next is the barrings that's what gets you rolling when you're on the skateboard if you don't have that then you can't skate. Good barrings are a plus if you have bad barrings it's a lot harder to roll away from things and that's about it."