It definitely helps, a simple position change of the foot can make a total difference. But this is only one part, skateboarding is so much muscle memory, even if you know how to do it, you need to try it hundred of times to get your body to actually do it.
For someone in their 40s, what's the best way to learn to ride a skateboard? I just want to be competent enough to replace a 10 min walk to/from a subway station.
I've tried following video instructions. But each time, after 10 mins I felt like I was making zero progress. Perhaps I just need to keep trying and eventually it will click?
Or perhaps I should ask one of the neighbourhood kids?
If you insist on skateboarding, larger diameter wheels go a long way to not crashing on every crack/pebble/uneven surface. A long-board is easier than a street/short-board, and will usually have larger wheels by default.
Beyond that I have no advice for learning in your 40s. I learned to skate street in my childhood and can still effectively get around on one in my 40s. But it's no joke to crash on pavement at our age. Be prepared for some slow-healing fractures and irreparably damaged laptop/phone if you're commuting with a tech job.
Having said all that though, skateboarding is awesome and should get way more respect than it tends to. Super challenging and rewarding, more kids should learn it, character building.
Unless you've got insurance that'll cover it, and/or cash money for fairly serious injuries, you probably shouldn't. You won't bounce back like most of us did in our childhood and teens, and you stand a chance of seriously fucking yourself up.
Depending on where you live, sidewalk construction may be an issue. E.g., paved areas in the UK can be shitty due to inconsistent height between paving stones. The slightest thing and the newb is gonna go flying.
The thing to remember with skateboarding is that for every several minute video showing cool tricks, you aren't seeing the hours of bails. The Tony Hawk games always included bails videos to show that there's a lot of perseverance and pain that goes into making it look effortless.
I did myself some horrible injuries over the years, including slashing the palm of my hand wide open on a pebble-dashed wall whilst learning just to coast. Also gave myself a horrendous groin injury at one point whilst casually riding around.
A few years ago I realised I left my laptop in the car some distance away in London. I hadn't skated for maybe a decade but my roommate had a skateboard. I texted him telling him I was taking it and was going to do "so many kickflips". Next text was from the hospital with bruised / cracked after I caught a lip and supermanned the pavement.
Totally aligned with the answer below. Probably not the best for commuting. But it is true that it opens a whole new world. Both deep and fascinating IMO. I have been thrown in during my childhood, and realised it is a whole part of who I am now.
If you want to try it out, we have a friend of us in the Old Skaters Tricks Challenge who started out recently at 36 yo. Being part of the tricks challenge helped him unlock tricks like BS 180 or FS 180, and it made the other guys with often more experience super stoked to witness that. First time landing a new trick is quiet something.
Anyway, if you want to get skateboarding a chance, we're here.
I can only vaguely recall this stage... but I found standing on a board without trucks or wheels fairly helpful!
On a relatively firm surface (ie: carpet) this provides some practice for the balancing act. How foot placement and the contours in the board impact things too
Similarly, on something with a little more flex (grass), it's a decent way to start trying some flip tricks :)
As for rolling around, I think it's mostly finding really smooth/flat surfaces... and just doing it a lot.
Depending on your wheels/weight placement, anything thicker than a quarter can stop you almost immediately.
It takes a little while to get the 'feel' and speed to deal with rougher surfaces particularly well
Now that you mention it... there's probably something to that.
The 'kicking off' motion is pretty tricky, compared to say - standing normally, rolling down a driveway.
Instead of just managing balance side/side, front/back gets really important with only one foot on the board -- it wants nothing more than to shoot forwards/backwards, depending on where you're leaning.
Some familiarity with standing on it is key, mainly because kicking requires a lot of balance/control -- one leg/knee is doing a lot of work. It's holding you above the board, but it's also holding the board under you
Standing with one foot on it and rolling back/forth and getting a feel for it can help too. Finding how sensitive the shifts can be and how much 'locking' is necessary to make the transition from kicking to standing
Try to avoid learning to push in the 'mango' style; planted foot on the back of the board.
Like a Dodge Viper, there's a lot of nose - it's hard to steer/keep under control.
Planting your foot near the front of the board is better for keeping control and powering through rough terrain. Near the back, it'll wander/bounce like crazy
There's no one good spot, but roughly on/just behind the front trucks is a good place to plant for pushing
well, I have to admit seeing decent numbers of fractured collarbones and wrists, and the occasional serious trauma among people learning, so first get best helmet you can find and protective gear.
You could try a hub driven electric board, supposedly they can be freewheeled without the motor like a heavy passive skateboard to increase your practice time, which musicians and gamers call shed time or seat time
I believe with good brakes and good skills, an electric skateboard is probably safer than riding a bike if you keep lower speeds and learn how to roll instead of just flopping/falling on the ground but a passive skateboard with no brakes is clearly more accident prone.
So perhaps this is obvious, but for commuting you probably want to use a longboard, not a skateboard. Can't do tricks on a longboard, but other than that it's much easier than a skateboard.
I've always been curious about what it's like for other people to watch something like this.
Can you watch a dance or a trick or something and feel what it would be like to do it yourself? Do you see this stuff in your head as a sequence of frames? Or a movie? Or do you somehow have access to the whole thing at once like you're thinking in 4 dimensions?
When I watch any kind of instructional video for even something very simple it looks like a total blur, one of those "Wow that's impressive, I can't even tell what happened" things, and I usually don't see or feel anything in my head at all, I'm just saying "Ok he moves his arm up at the same time as his foot goes back away from the camera towards the hand with the stick" and trying (And failing) to copy things one piece at a time.
This is how I learned to swing a baseball bat. I remember my dad bought some VHS tapes with a swing coach who broke it down into stages "one, two and three." And then he showed the slow motion swings of major leaguers and pointed to where the three stages were. Then he gave a drill for each step. And you were supposed to practice each step in isolation, then put them all together.
I remember thinking it was ridiculous, but it was somewhat effective (I was never a great hitter, but I think that was due more to the lack of a batting cage in my backyard than it was to the poor teaching skills of some mustached guy from the 70s). It's "good enough" for beginning instruction because it gives you a way to break a complex process into smaller discrete steps that you can practice in isolation. Are professionals thinking about their swing in three parts? No, definitely not, but you've got to start somewhere...
My piano teacher had a similar way of teaching, breaking each song into small pieces and making me practice a few notes dozens of times, then gradually growing the size of the pieces, and then putting them all together. He was an expert, so you could put a sheet of music in front of him and he'd play the whole thing on the first try. But I couldn't do that, so I needed to learn step by step.
There is something to be said for this technique, at least until you become an expert at something, to the point that it's second nature to swing the bat or play a full sheet of music. At that point you probably have more effective ways of teaching yourself. But you've got to start somewhere.
The four-dimensional thing is better than any explanation I can offer... as a skater, with skating things at least.
It doesn't translate to other things at all for me, but this was the most active thing I ever did...
I can watch Rodney Mullen do things I could never physically do, but 'feel' things you wouldn't expect. Examples would be where I'd put my weight, where the board would be pushing back, and how much I should lean forward/back to not slip
It's kind of like when zoning out while driving, in some ways. You go through the motions because you've done all the various pieces before. A kickflip is an ollie with a slide to the side, for example
But, because this process is new, it does take a lot of trial/focus. You get a good idea, but... theory/practice
Totally. I see that it can get a long way for the aspect of "cherish" this tricks it took so long for you to master. For example, I lost my kickflips after a 10 year hiatus. I am still trying to recover from it. Once, I ll be there, I want to never forget them again, or at least having a solid proof I perfected it once in my life.
That's an interesting point. It is highly likely for someone who does not skate that you would not feel anything much that some sort of satisfaction (if anything at all). This is all the more intriguing that for skaters though, it lights up so many different things in your body and brain, that you could literally stay watching a simple trick forever. It is probably true for a lot of sports with some artistic vibes. Vibrating to the perfect moment, the sound, the touch, all happening at speed.
Interesting, my conclusion, it depends. That particular one has back foot just barely in the frame at critical moment.
Watching Troy Grady's closeups of leading guitar players picking hands from a few inches away didn't do much for me, but watching lots of telemark skiers vids helped pinpoint variables like pole length and pole plant reach that I would not have thought of.
So, like learning piano or violin or sports/kinematic skills, read and watch vids a little and practice a lot.
100. Also, I am still quiet surprised that for this example on the hardflip, you place your back foot near the opposite side. It was pretty counter-intuitive for me. Practice for sure is the most important part.
There was that paper recently where they built a model of tennis players by feeding it recorded tennis matches. I wonder if you could just do the same with skateboarding and use that to figure out the possible parameters under which a trick succeeds or fails, and then also use it to be able to evaluate your own performance and tell you how far off you are and what you need to do different?
