How to Avoid Kickflip Mistakes When Skateboarding

Mastering skateboarding's seminal trick, the kickflip, takes time, skill and lots of practice. To help you along your way, however, there are a few things you should do to prevent yourself from making the common kickflip mistakes.

Instructions

    • 1

      Keep your torso upright and even lean forward with your forward shoulder a little to keep the board from kicking out from under you as you perform the kickflip. Lean over and let your front arm hang down a little to try to improve this. Also, take focus off of the first flick (with your back foot) to remove incorrect back-leaning posture.

    • 2

      Slide your front foot gently and smoothly up and to the inside of the skateboard just after your initial flick to stop the board from shooting out to the side. Keep the front foot motion very light at first and increase the pressure of the motion as you to work up to applying the right touch for your kickflip.

    • 3

      Bend your knees and crouch down slightly before you flick the skateboard, but don't crouch down so your hands touch the skateboard or the ground. This helps you avoid shooting the board out behind you. Instead, try to keep your torso upright and loose, paying more attention to spinning the board correctly with your front foot than getting a huge initial flick.

    • 4

      Continue to practice the kickplip dozens or even hundreds of times before you get a successful landing. Most new skateboarders make the mistake of thinking they'll never land the trick after they've made a dozen failed attempts, often because they think that the trick should be easy because many people can do it. In actuality, you need to make lots of mistakes before you even come close to landing the kickflip.