Let’s not make a complete fool out of ourselves by learning about the most commonly made mistakes that any skateboard beginners should avoid.
Skateboarding is a fun and rewarding sports activity, thus it’s always the number one choice for anyone who’re looking to do healthy sports while also learning a little bit about styles.
However, skateboarding can be relatively hard sometimes, especially when you have no clue of what you’re doing.
This typically happens due to the lack of the fundamentals of skateboarding. If you don’t do the fundamentals right, you’ll find yourself having a hard time learning the sport.
Hence, it’s our mission as veteran skaters to deliver you with the most comprehensive guides to help you in your skateboard journey. In this post, you’ll be learning about all the common mistakes that most beginners tend to run into when the first start skateboarding. Let’s ride.
Carrying your skateboard in shopping style
A weird carrying style that I see many beginners do with their board is to hold on the trucks. This gives me cringe every time. The reason you should do that is that it’s not efficient nor comfortable, and in some cases, you might even damage your trucks
Instead, you should grab on the sides or the head of the board. This allows you to hold your board closer to the body, making it more comfortable to move around. Moreover, this way, your truck is untouched and you won’t accidentally damage it if you bump into something.
And if you feel like skating, you’ll just gently release your grip and slide the board on the floor. Then jump on it and you can start moving.
Having perpendicularly foot at the start
Beginners tend to put one of their feet on the board in its skating position, which is perpendicular to the board. They think that it’s better to place the foot in this position since they won’t have to adjust the foot later on.
However, doing this would place your body in a relatively awkward posture, making it harder to control the board. As a result, you might experience wobbly control, or worse, falling off your board.
Here is the solution, you should start by placing the front foot in a comfortable position when you start accelerating then use the other foot the push on the ground to generate motion. After you’ve gained a stable speed, swiftly pull the back foot on the back and readjust the front foot to a suitable position.
Remember that your front foot doesn’t have to be parallel with the board if you’re not comfortable, it could be slightly diagonal as long as you feel comfortable.
Having the wrong foot position when pushing
Another mistake that most beginners tend to make is to place their foot at the tail of the deck instead of the front part. This sets you in an uncomfortable and insecure motion when you’re pushing the other leg on the ground to gain speed.
The reason is that when placing the foot at the tail of the deck, the center of gravity would shift to the back. And instead of being neutralized in a balanced position with your foot on the upper part of the deck, the force would make the tail part heavier and increase the chance of a “flip over”. Not really the type of flip you would want to perform on your board.
So make sure you avoid that kind of push and go for the position that we’ve introduced above to save yourself some scratches and bruises.
Avoid keeping the stiff body
A lot of beginners always skate with the same position that they begin with. Even worst, some skaters even keep their same stiff posture throughout their skating session. They always have that stuff back and legs when going up and down, even when turnings.
This is not good for both your spines and legs as well as giving you a harder time mastering the art of skateboarding. With a stiff body, you’ll find it extremely difficult to control your skateboard regardless of what you do.
Instead, follow the movements of the board to adjust your body to it. If you’re going down then you should lower the body and push it forward a little to shift the balance to the front, this allows for better control when landing. And if you’re making a turn, it’s essential to move your torso toward that direction to help guide your board. It’s not good to keep relying on just your feet to control the board.
Being stationary when doing tricks
This is a major misconception as many beginners believe that it would be easier to practicing a trick when you’re in your resting position. Little do we know that our board is designed to have the best balance when it’s rolling on the ground, not just standing still on the floor.
As a result, you’ll find it extremely difficult to maintain balance while performing or practicing tricks on the board. It’ll usually feel unstable and you’ll not likely to learn anything from it.
Hence, you should be practicing tricks while you’re riding on your board. Not only because this is a more practical position as you can combine riding with doing tricks, but the rolling board will give you better balance than a stationed one.
Learning to fall without getting hurt (or at least minimizing the injuries)
The process of learning how to skateboard requires a lot of time, money, effort, sometimes even blood, and a little bit of skin. As you learn to become familiar with the board, chances are that you might fall off your board every once in a while. And when you’ve got the hang of it and move to do tricks, that number would even increase more. A lot of skateboarders don’t know how to fall properly, which usually result in serious injuries.
Hence, we’re all advised to wear our protective gears and helmets whenever we go out for a skating session. However, even with your protective gears on, falling off the board is still a painful experience. Thus learning how to fall properly is also art for skateboarders.
And an effective exercise that I always recommend my fellow skateboarders to do is practice fake falls. All you need to do is standing at a relatively tall edge (don’t make it too tall unless you want to break a few arms or legs, 50 cm should be enough), then naturally pin forward to fall off the edge.
Completely disregard yourself from any movements that the body react as it tries to make you land safely. Instead, land your body on the ground with two arms placing forward. Once you hit the ground, use the arms to protect your body from hitting the ground. But don’t push forward since you might break your arms. Instead, you should follow the movement and roll a few rounds on the floor to eliminate the risks.
Doing this a few times to get the hang of it then move on to falling off a moving board. Once you’ve practiced enough, you’ll develop the essential muscle memories to keep you safe from future accidents.
And that, my friends, are the most commonly made mistakes that any skateboarders should know to improve faster.