How to Do an Ollie on a Skateboard

Video Transcript

"My name is Shawn Connolly. I'm a sponsored skateboarder that lives in San Francisco, California and I teach skateboarding to kids 8 to 13. Now what you're going to want to do to do a good ollie is get the right foot placement. The foot placement that's needed for a good ollie is going to require you sometimes to setup in a way that's a little bit difficult to roll when you're first starting out. Your front foot should be in the middle of the skateboard and your back foot should be with your tip of your toe on the tail. Now the reason for this setup is that when you hit the tail on the ground, you want to get as much power out of your toe that's doing the hitting as you can. Now remember you can't ollie unless you hit your tail on the ground. You will never be able to leave the ground, not on flat ground at least. So when you put that power into hitting the tail, after that you're going to drag your front foot up the board. Now you'll notice that older skateboarders that have been ollieing a lot, they have holes in the sides of their shoe. Now the reason for this is the drag that you get while hitting the tail on the ground. Now once you've hit the tail and then you drag your foot up, this causes the board to arc and you follow up the board with your foot and then it evens out in the air and then you stay directly above the board and land back on the board. Now to do a good ollie, you're going to have to coordinate hitting the tail, dragging the foot and jumping all at the same time. The best way to learn how to ollie is to learn stationary, not moving and then eventually start rolling a little bit and getting your ollies so that you can actually use them and you're rolling and ollieing over things. Sometimes you can pick like a small crack or you can sometimes go off a small curb when you're first starting to ollie to try to teach yourself how to use it a little bit. And then eventually the ollie can be used to get you onto ledges, off from ramps, up on to any kinds of grinds or manuals or anything that you can really think off. And that's how you do an ollie. My name is Shawn Connolly and I live in San Francisco, California. I'm sponsored and I teach kids how to skate that are 8 to 13."