Skate Reanimate

It’s amazing to me how hard nollies are, after all its the same basic ollie technique simply on the other foot. The fact that one is moving forward doesn’t help. At any rate, I’ve been trying to pick up this trick (which I could never do before) and have been able to at least get the board a few inches off the ground with my front foot. So far these have been stationary nollies, but at least they are happening.

I’m practicing them 10 at a time at intervals in my session to sort of train my legs to do them on command.

The real problem I’ve been having is not pushing the board forward and away from me with my front foot–I need to focus on pushing downward, straight downward, with the front leg.

Alright, so getting back on the board is both easier and harder than I thought. Well, at least I have no problem with basic balance and riding. I’ve got pretty decent control of the board on turns and so on. Can still ollie stationary at a good height, but am having trouble landing ollies at full speed (though surprisingly I can land an ollie into manual pretty well). Speaking of a manual, I can wheelie for no more than 2-3 full seconds at a time, which sucks, and landing into manual I can’t hold it for more than a second.

But I can still primo and reemo no problem, which is cool because I hear my old idol Mullen is ripping it up with new variations of those. Other than that I find I have to relearn even the most basic tricks all over again.

My first goal is to master basic ollies at full speed. I can’t accept anything short of 2 feet, though I’m planning for 3 or more so I can get on top of objects.

My second goal will be to get a better wheelie so I can manual off and onto tricks.

Here’s the rest of the street tricks I’m going to be re-learning over the next while:

1. boardflip
2. kickflip
3. fingerflips
4. 360 shoveit (full speed)
5. kickflip (full speed)
6. heelflip (full speed)
7. ollie to casper
8. 50-50 (not the grind)
9. primo flip
10. powerslide
11. boardslide
12. 50-50 grind (back and front sides)

This will all be parking lot stuff. Then I’ll move on to some of these, which I never had down consistently in the old days:

1. airwalk (full speed)
2. anti-casper
3. casper disaster
4. impossible (full speed)
5. tailslide
6. pogo

And here’s my dream list:

• primo/reemo slides
• casper slide
• darkslide
• hardflip
• ollie north
• noseslide
• nose wheelies/manuals

Maybe I’ve got some of those names wrong. And there’s probably a dozen other new tricks that you all can tell me about. It’s after five; I can’t stay in the office any longer.