I used to be vaguely into skateboards when I was a kid. Basically, when I was at secondary school, I used to play tuba in the school wind band, and the local council lent me a tuba, which came in a bulky blue case, and I had a journey to school of around 3.5 miles, which was pretty epic. The bus did not always allow me on with it, and so when I couldn’t get the bus, I’d get my green plastic skateboard with yellow wheels and put the huge blue monster on top of that & trundle it all the way to school. You can imagine how much I loved my tuba. Not at all. I’d have dumped it in the canal if I thought I could get away with it. Sure, the experience of playing it in itself wasn’t bad, but the sheer logistical nightmare of taking it anywhere outweighed (literally – the thing weighed a tonne to my feeble asthmatic 13 year old frame) any fun to be derived from playing it.
But anyway, so I had this little green trashy skateboard, it was about 1983 or 4ish and so often when I was waiting for my lesson with Mr Clive Allsopp, a session musician and jazz trombonist from Yorkshire, who was quite a decent sort – he didn’t deserve the kind of grief I gave him as his unwilling pupil – I’d trundle around on my skateboard in the car park, carving big wobbly arcs on this thing I could barely fit 2 feet on.
After I gave up the accursed tuba, around 17 years old, I still had my skateboard, and I was in the habit of riding it anywhere and everywhere. It wasn’t tremendously glidey, so I’d push it like crazy & get where I was going anyway. For some reason I gave it up later – I don’t know what became of the board. Nowadays Penny Boards sells the same sort.
So anyway, fast forward about 15 years and I hear about these guys calling themselves “Middle Aged Shred”. I’m about 32 or so at this point & working for Capgemini up at the HMRC in Telford, so I get on their forum & check out what they’re doing, and I end up buying a couple of boards. There’s a 7″ wide black “popsicle” shaped board with Independent trucks and Spitfire wheels (75a 60mm – squishy!), and there’s a huge beast of a longboard, billed as a “Green Fog Homewrecker Longboard”, with 65mm 78a Kryptonic wheels. It’s not bad but the damned thing weighs a tonne to carry, but it’s smooth as it gets on the ground. I take them down my local park, and have a go.
“What you got that for?” “Why you on a skateboard?” Kids gather round in moronic hordes. I just want to be left alone. I have a wobbly push to the end of the park, then take my board home, where it gathers dust for another 15 years.
15 years later, I’m kind of in a health crisis. It’s the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and I’ve been sat on my fat butt for the best part of a year. I have diabetes and I’m not in a good way. My dad’s gone into a 24 hour care facility the other side of town & it’s been about a year since I’ve seen him. I decide to get some roller skates, having seen some 30-somethings in the park zooming about on theirs. Trouble is I have a slow-healing wound on my foot & the skates I order from skatepro.uk are VERY tight, so in the interest of giving my foot some time to heal I get out the old longboard.
Which brings me to my point. When you’re a fat old git like me who’s not done much exercise in a year & gotten considerably fatter than previously, what do you do, how do you learn this young man’s sport?
First things first: you need balance and strength, and you’re going to fall over a lot. Get the right protective gear. Do not be afraid to pad up – when you’re 10 you bounce back from a fall. When you’re 50 you may need an ambulance. So, helmet, knee pads, wrist braces. All correctly sized and ready.
Before you get your board out, do this: get up out of your chair, very slowly. Take 20 seconds to fully stand up. Now sit down again, very slowly. Do that till it’s easy. It might take you a week or two. Now, do the same with no seat: do a slow, slow deep squat, right down, & get your knees onto the floor. Sit on the floor a bit. Get used to moving around on the floor. You’re going to be on the floor a lot learning to skateboard, so get used to it. Move from kneeling to sitting, to a crab position, to all fours, back to kneeling, rock back on your haunches, and slowly, slowly get up. Do that a lot for the next few weeks. Get so that being on the floor is nothing, getting up of the floor is nothing. You may want to try some “Animal Flow” exercises.
By this point you’re developing the muscles you need to avoid injury. Add some press-ups into your floor routine. Do everything slowly – you get huge benefit from doing it this way, and there’s much less chance you’ll pull anything by accident.
At this point we need to find out what your natural stance is going to be – are you an orthodox, left front forward, or goofy, right front forward, rider? Try to imagine when you were a kid, running up to a patch of ice or a polished wooden floor to skid over it. Which foot do you have forward skidding into it? That’s your front foot for your skateboarding. There are 2 main stances you need to know on the skateboard. The first is what we’ll call “pushing stance” – your front foot faces forward, and your back foot alternates between pushing you along, and resting across the board behind the front foot, usually across the hardware, the screws that secure your rear truck to your deck. The second is what we’ll call riding stance. We’ll get to that but for now let’s concentrate on pushing stance. Put your board on some carpet or on some grass. Stand on your board, front foot on, then back foot. Now balance on your board just on your front foot. Get used to how the board flexes and how it rocks side to side. Get so you can keep your balance for 2 minutes like that. Keep your front knee bent. Let your back foot just rest lightly on the ground beside the board. Feel it pull in your front quad. This is developing the muscle you’re going to need for riding the board.
Now let’s practise riding stance. In riding stance both feet are across the board, over the front & rear hardware most usually. Get used to controlling which way the board leans. When it leans towards the frontside it’ll turn that way, and when it leans towards the back side where your butt is facing it’ll turn that way too. Switch between riding stance and pushing stance, lower your back foot almost to the floor, then bring it back up behind your front foot & switch back to riding stance. Get confident getting on the board, getting into riding stance, going back to pushing stance, and getting off the board.
When you feel ready, it’s time to do all that on a flat concrete or wooden floor. Everything you’ve done so far, get used to doing it here. The difference is that when you shift your weight forward or backwards too dramatically, the board is going to try to roll in that direction. It may even dump you off and fire off in the opposite direction! That’s something to get used to – when you’ve done it enough you’ll get to know what you can get away with and what you can’t.
Now, finally, it’s time to push – why does this sound like a childbirth blog? Well, it feels like it’s been about 9 months of prep at least, though in reality I think we’re really looking at 4-6 weeks tops. Get on your board, on concrete, on a level bit of path or car park where you’re not going to be disturbed. You’re going to push a tiny bit, and get your feet on the deck, go from pushing to riding stance, then back to pushing stance, and push again. When you’re in riding stance, you can steer the board easily (if you can’t, you maybe need to loosen your trucks a bit). While pushing, it’s often harder to steer – consider unweighting your front foot from off the board if it’s veering to one side and adjusting where it’s pressing on while on the push.
That’s basically it. Just get used to pushing and riding the board. This should be your first couple of months’ riding at least before you try to do any tricks. We’ll get into ollies and the like later, but what I’ve laid out here is the safest way for an oldie like myself to get back into skateboarding, and that’s the method I’m using.
DISCLAIMER: If you do any of the things I’ve laid out here, you need to know that I’m not a doctor – this is not medical advice. I’m not a fitness instructor either. I’ve written this on the basis that you’re an adult and can make your own decisions. Skateboarding is a pursuit that will almost certainly get you injured in interesting and serious ways, but it’s also one that will teach you character, to get up after that fall & try again. I accept zero legal liabilities here – you do any of these things entirely at your own risk. I wish you all the best & have loads of fun out there.
skiamakhos 