Learning to ride a skateboard is an exciting journey, and many beginners wonder how long it will take to get the hang of it. The truth is, the learning curve varies from person to person, depending on your athletic ability, time commitment, and dedication to practice. While you can learn the basics within a day, mastering skateboarding takes time, patience, and consistent effort. This article will guide you through the process, offering a realistic timeline and tips for improvement.
Skateboarding Proficiency: A Time-Based Breakdown
It’s often said that it takes anywhere from a few days to a week to learn the very basics of riding a skateboard. This includes balancing, pushing, and basic turning. Becoming proficient, however, requires a much longer commitment. Generally, it takes about 1 to 3 years to achieve a good level of skateboarding skills, which includes mastering a variety of tricks. Here’s a more detailed breakdown:
Initial Learning Phase: Months 0-1
During the first month, your primary focus should be on getting comfortable with your skateboard. The key skills to develop are:
- Balancing: Finding your center of gravity on the board and getting comfortable with its movement.
- Pushing: Learning how to propel yourself forward with one foot while maintaining balance.
- Turning: Practicing carving, which involves leaning to control the direction of the board.
- Stopping: Mastering how to safely bring yourself to a halt.
Building Skills: Months 2-4
Once you’re comfortable with the basics, you can start exploring some fundamental tricks, such as:
- Manuals: Balancing on the back wheels while rolling.
- Kickturns: Lifting the front wheels to change direction.
- Ollies: The foundational jumping trick where you pop the board into the air.
- Navigating skatepark obstacles: Learning to ride up and down ramps and other features.
Intermediate Stage: Months 5-8
With a solid foundation, you can now start tackling more challenging tricks:
- Slappies: Grinding curbs without popping an ollie.
- Shuvits (fakie): Rotating the board 180 degrees beneath your feet, while riding in your natural stance and in fakie stance.
- Fakie Bigspins: Similar to a fakie shuvit, but with a 360-degree rotation of the board.
- Board slides: Grinding a rail or ledge with the board sliding sideways.
Advanced Techniques: Months 9-12+
This phase involves refining your ollies, tackling rails and ledges, and learning more complex tricks, such as:
- Ollieing over obstacles: Successfully jumping over various objects, including stairs.
- Grinding: Sliding along rails and ledges with your trucks.
- Kickflips & Heelflips: Spinning the board 360 degrees along its horizontal axis using your front foot.
- Combining Tricks: Stringing together different maneuvers to create combos.
Long-Term Progression
After a year, you’ll likely be proficient with the basics and intermediate tricks. From there, you can choose to specialize in specific areas or continue to develop your abilities in all areas of skateboarding, with tricks like tre-flips and more advanced grinds and slides becoming achievable with continued practice.
Breaking Down the Basics
To understand the learning process, let’s delve into the basic maneuvers and their learning times:
1. Balance: 10 Minutes
Start by practicing on a non-rolling surface like grass or carpet. Place both feet on the board, centering your weight, and rock back and forth from toes to heels. Next, move to a smooth surface and repeat, slowly getting comfortable with the board rolling.
2. Pushing: 30 Minutes
Place your front foot over the front bolts of the skateboard. Then push with your back foot and quickly place it on the tail of the board as you roll. Practice this repeatedly to get a feel for it, remembering to keep your weight centered on your front foot. It might feel awkward at first, but with time, you’ll develop a fluid push.
3. Carving: 15 Minutes
Carving refers to the act of turning while rolling. After pushing, place both feet on the board, and lean gently to the left and right. You should feel the skateboard change direction as you shift your weight from heel to toe.
4. Stopping: 5 Minutes
The simplest way to stop is to lightly drag your back foot on the ground. Keep your knees bent and weight over your front foot to maintain balance and bring yourself to a controlled stop.
In just an hour, you can theoretically learn the foundational elements to ride. However, proficiency takes additional practice and dedication.
Learning Tricks: From Basics to Advanced
How long it takes to learn skateboard tricks depends on many factors. Your fitness level, coordination, fear management, and frequency of practice all play a role. Basic tricks can usually be learned within a few weeks to a couple of months. More advanced tricks can take significantly longer.
Simple Tricks Can Be Achieved Relatively Quickly
Once you’re comfortable riding, you can focus on easy tricks such as:
- Manuals
- 180 turns
- Nollies
- Pop Shuvits
- Caveman
- Boneless
It’s a good idea to practice these tricks on grass initially to minimize falls.
Advanced Tricks Require Patience and Dedication
Tricks like the ollie are foundational and essential for learning more complex maneuvers. The ollie involves a unique movement that requires precise timing and technique, and is important as a building block for most advanced skateboarding tricks. Some skaters learn the ollie within hours, while others take months. This is why it is so hard to determine the exact amount of time it might take to learn more advanced tricks.
External Factors That Influence Learning
Several external factors can influence how fast you learn skateboarding:
Quality Equipment
Having a proper skateboard setup significantly impacts your learning curve. A quality skateboard will be more responsive, making it easier to learn and improve. Different setups are suitable for different skating styles, so make sure to pick one that is suitable for you.
Environment
Skating on smooth surfaces, like slick concrete, will allow you to gain balance more easily. Rough surfaces require more balance and are less ideal for learning.
Learning with Others
Skating with more experienced skaters can accelerate your learning process. Peers can provide valuable feedback and offer tips to improve your skills. Do not hesitate to ask more experienced skaters for help.
Practice Frequency
Consistent practice is vital. Even short daily practice sessions will yield faster progress than longer, infrequent sessions.
Conclusion: The Journey is the Reward
You can learn the fundamentals of skateboarding in about a day, however, becoming a good skateboarder takes time, practice, and dedication. Don’t get discouraged by the challenges. Embrace the learning process, and enjoy the progression of your skills. Skateboarding is a lifelong journey that is rewarding and fun for both beginners and seasoned pros.
By: Ruben Vee
