Unit 15 · Advanced Tricks and How Skill Is Built

Skaters borrowed the words frontside and backside from surfing. A surfer riding frontside faces the wave. A surfer riding backside has the wave behind them. Early skaters in California were often surfers, so the words came with them onto pavement and into empty pools in the 1960s and 1970s.

On flat ground the words describe which way you rotate. Picture rolling forward. In a frontside turn, your chest swings around to face the direction you were rolling. In a backside turn, your back swings around to face that direction first. The words work the same for regular and goofy riders, because they are about your body, not about left or right.

On a ramp, the direction of travel is up the wall. A frontside turn on a ramp means you face the wall as you turn. A backside turn means your back is to the wall. The same two words name kickturns, 180s, airs, grinds and slides, so learning them once unlocks the names of hundreds of tricks.

Every 180 ends with you rolling fakie. Fakie means rolling backward in your normal stance, with your back foot now leading. Being able to roll fakie with steady knees is the first skill to own before trying either kind of 180. Practice it on a gentle, smooth surface: push forward, stop, then let the board roll back slowly while you keep your shoulders over the deck.

Before you start, gear up: a buckled helmet that fits, wrist guards and pads, and flat shoes. Pick a smooth, empty spot. Your ollie should already be steady while rolling, and you should be able to roll fakie. Learn this trick first as a frontside 180 kickturn on flat ground: press the tail, lift the front wheels, and pivot halfway around on the back wheels with no pop.

Now the ollie version. First, set your back foot on the tail and your front foot just behind the front bolts. Next, roll slowly and crouch. Turn your shoulders a little the opposite way, like winding a spring. Then pop the tail and slide your front foot up as in an ollie, and at the same moment unwind your head and shoulders frontside. Your chest turns toward where you were rolling. Your hips and the board follow your shoulders.

In the air, your front foot guides the nose around and your back foot steers the tail. Look for your landing spot. Land with both feet over the bolts and knees bent, rolling fakie. The landing should feel like a soft squat, not a stomp. Bent knees spread the stopping over a longer time, which lowers the force on your legs and the board.

Two problems are common. If the board stops at a quarter turn, turn your head and shoulders farther and earlier. If the board slides out on landing, your shoulders were leaning off the board; keep them over the deck. If you start to fall, crouch low and roll rather than catching yourself on straight arms.

The backside 180 uses the same pieces as the frontside one, turned the other way. Again, learn the turn first without a pop. Roll slowly, press the tail and pivot halfway around on the back wheels so your back turns toward where you were heading. Do it on a smooth, flat spot with your helmet buckled and wrist guards on, until the pivot feels easy.

For the ollie version, first place your back foot on the tail and your front foot just behind the front bolts. Next, crouch and wind your shoulders slightly frontside. Then pop, slide the front foot up, and unwind your shoulders backside. Your back swings toward the direction of travel. Many skaters keep their eyes on the ground ahead as long as possible, then find the landing spot again as they come around.

Bring your knees up so the board can turn under you. Your back foot guides the tail around. Land with both feet over the bolts, knees bent, and roll away fakie. If you over-rotate and land past halfway, start with a smaller wind-up. If you land with your weight on your heels and tip backward, keep your shoulders stacked over the middle of the board.

Backside and frontside 180s together give you a way to change direction anywhere. On a ramp, the same backside turn becomes a backside kickturn or, much later, a backside air. Practice both directions so neither becomes a weak side. Skaters who learn only one direction often find later that half of the ramp tricks feel strange to them.

In the air, no outside twist acts on you except tiny air drag. Physicists say your angular momentum stays the same. Angular momentum is L = Iω, where I is the moment of inertia (how spread out your mass is from the spin axis) and ω (omega) is how fast you spin. With no outside torque, L stays fixed until you land.

That is why the turn in a 180 must start while your feet still push on the board and the board pushes on the ground. The ground gives the twist. Winding up stores a twist in your body; unwinding just before and during the pop passes it to the whole system of you and the board. If you start turning only after you leave the ground, you have nothing to push against.

You can still change how fast you spin in the air. Pull your arms and knees in and I gets smaller, so ω gets bigger; L = Iω stays the same. Spread your arms and you slow down. Worked example: suppose a skater spinning at 2 turns per second pulls in until I is half as big. Then ω must double to keep L the same: 2 × 2 = 4 turns per second.

Tony Hawk’s 900 at the 1999 X Games in San Francisco was two and a half full turns, or 900 degrees, in the air above a vert ramp. Each of those turns started with a twist given on the ramp. Tucking tight in the air helped him spin faster, the same physics at work in a small 180 on flat ground.

An axis is the imaginary line something spins around. A skateboard has three useful ones. The vertical axis runs straight up and down through the middle of the deck. The long axis runs from nose to tail. The width axis runs across the deck from the toe-side edge to the heel-side edge.

Each simple trick uses one axis. A shove-it spins the board flat around the vertical axis, while your body stays facing the same way. A kickflip and a heelflip roll the board around its long axis. An impossible, one of the flat-ground tricks Rodney Mullen developed in the early 1980s, wraps the board end over end around the back foot, close to the width axis.

The backside pop shove-it is the base for many combined tricks. First, put your back foot on the tail with your toes near the toe-side edge, and your front foot just behind the front bolts. Next, pop lightly and scoop the tail backward, toward your heel side, so the board spins half a turn under you. Then jump straight up, let the board turn, and catch it with both feet over the bolts.

If the board shoots away in front of you, you scooped forward instead of backward and down. If you land on the board while it is still sideways, jump a little higher and wait for the grip tape to come back under you. Learn it standing still on grass first.

A kickflip needs only a quick flick of the front foot, but a 360 shove-it needs a hard scoop. The reason is the moment of inertia, I. I depends on how far the mass sits from the axis. Mass far from the axis is harder to start spinning. A figure skater with arms out is the same idea: the spread-out mass makes the spin slow and hard to start.

Model the deck as a flat plank 0.80 m long and 0.20 m wide, and ignore the trucks and wheels. For spinning around the long axis, the mass is never more than 0.10 m from the axis. For a flat plank of width w, I = m·w²/12. For spinning flat around the vertical axis, I = m·(L² + w²)/12, where L is the length. The ratio of the two is (L² + w²) ÷ w².

Worked example: L² = 0.80 × 0.80 = 0.64 m². w² = 0.20 × 0.20 = 0.04 m². The ratio is (0.64 + 0.04) ÷ 0.04 = 0.68 ÷ 0.04 = 17. In this simple model, spinning the deck flat is about 17 times harder to start than rolling it. The real board, with trucks and wheels, gives a different number, but the long axis is still by far the easiest.

This explains how tricks feel. The flick in a kickflip is short and light. The scoop in a shove-it uses the strong back foot and the tail as a lever arm. In a 360 flip, the back foot does most of the work because the flat spin is the hard part; the front foot only adds a gentle flick.

Skaters call the 360 flip a tre flip, from the "three" in three-sixty, because the board turns 360 degrees. It is two tricks at once. The board spins a full turn flat, as in a backside 360 shove-it, and rolls once around its long axis, as in a kickflip. Learn the pop shove-it, the 360 shove-it and the kickflip until each is steady before you combine them.

Foot placement comes first. Put your back foot on the tail with your toes in the toe-side pocket, ready to scoop. Put your front foot a little farther back than for a kickflip, angled, near the middle of the board. Gear up as always, with the helmet buckled, and start on grass or carpet with the board still.

Now the steps. First, crouch. Next, pop and scoop the tail hard backward and down, toward your heel side; this scoop makes the 360 spin. Then flick your front foot lightly forward and off the heel-side corner of the nose to add the flip. Jump straight up and lift your knees. Watch the board spin and flip under you, and catch it with your back foot first as the grip tape comes around, then set your front foot down over the bolts.

If the board flips but only spins halfway, scoop harder. If it flips twice, flick more gently. If it shoots forward, you jumped forward instead of up; keep your shoulders level and over the board. Expect hundreds of tries; each try trains the timing a little more.

A varial is a flip trick that adds a 180 shove-it. There are two shove-it directions and two flips, so there are four combinations. Knowing the family helps you see which pieces each trick needs. A heelflip is the mirror of a kickflip: the front heel flicks off the toe-side corner of the nose and the board rolls the other way.

A varial kickflip is a backside pop shove-it plus a kickflip. A varial heelflip is a frontside pop shove-it plus a heelflip. A hardflip is a frontside shove-it plus a kickflip; the board seems to flip up between the legs. An inward heelflip is a backside shove-it plus a heelflip. In each, the board turns half a turn flat and rolls once along its length.

To learn the varial kickflip, first make the backside pop shove-it steady. Next, stand with your back foot in the toe-side pocket and your front foot angled behind the front bolts. Then scoop the tail backward and flick lightly off the heel-side corner of the nose at the same moment. Jump up, let the board spin and flip, and catch it with both feet over the bolts. It ends nose in back, so you roll away with the tail leading.

A common problem is a board that only flips and does not spin. That means the scoop was too soft compared to the flick. The fix is to practice a few plain shove-its, then try the varial again with the same scoop. Learn on smooth flat ground with pads on before trying any flip trick near a ledge.

A rock to fakie is often the first lip trick on a ramp. A lip trick is done on the coping, the metal pipe or edge along the top of a ramp. Before trying it, you should drop in, kickturn and roll fakie with confidence on a small ramp. Wear a helmet, knee pads, elbow pads and wrist guards, and start on a mini ramp, not a tall one.

First, roll straight up the ramp with enough speed for the front truck to pass over the coping. Next, as the front wheels clear the coping, press your front foot down gently so the middle of the board settles onto the coping. This is the rock: front wheels on the deck at the top, back wheels on the ramp, the coping under the board between the trucks. Pause for a moment.

Then press your back foot on the tail to lift the front wheels, and lean your shoulders slightly back toward the ramp so the front truck clears the coping. Roll down fakie with knees bent and weight centered. It should feel like a gentle seesaw: rock forward, lift, roll back.

If the front truck catches on the coping, lift the front wheels higher before rolling in, and bring a little more speed. If the board shoots out, you leaned too far back; keep your weight over the board. If you fall, slide down on your knee pads instead of reaching back with your hands.

In the late 1970s, skaters riding empty backyard pools and the first concrete parks began flying above the coping instead of turning at it. These moves were called airs. Around the same time, Alan "Ollie" Gelfand popped his board into the air on transition without using his hands, the move that gave the ollie its name. Airs became the center of vert skating through the 1980s.

An air is projectile motion. You leave the coping moving almost straight up, slow down under gravity, stop, and fall back. To rise a height h above the coping, you need an upward speed of v = √(2gh) as you leave it. The time in the air is t = 2√(2h/g).

Worked example for h = 0.50 m. Speed: 2 × 9.8 × 0.50 = 9.8, and √9.8 ≈ 3.13 m/s. Time: 2h/g = 1.00 ÷ 9.8 ≈ 0.102 s², and √0.102 ≈ 0.319 s; doubling gives about 0.64 s in the air. That is the whole window for grabbing, turning and setting the board back on the wall.

Airs are advanced and belong on a ramp at a skatepark, after you can drop in, kickturn and rock to fakie. Wear full pads. Many skaters learn the motion first as a small frontside or backside turn that barely leaves the coping, then rise a little higher over many sessions.

A grab is holding the board with a hand during an air. The grab keeps the board under your feet while you fly, since the wheels are no longer on the ramp. It also gives the trick its name. The main skills are knowing which hand reaches, which edge it holds, and where between the feet.

Two grabs show the naming system. An indy is a grab with the back hand on the toe-side edge between the feet. A melon is a grab with the front hand on the heel-side edge between the feet. Because you reach down to the board, grabs also make you crouch, which lowers your center of mass and keeps you balanced.

In a backside air, you ride up the wall and turn with your back to the coping. Many skaters grab the heel edge with the front hand. First, ride up with knees bent and eyes on the coping. Next, as the board leaves the coping, bring your knees up and reach down to the board. Then turn backside in the air, let go before landing, and set the wheels back on the wall with your weight over the board. Ride away forward.

A common problem is landing on the flat bottom instead of the wall; the wall gives a smooth landing, the flat does not. The fix is to leave the coping going straight up, not out. Learn the grab first on a tiny air at a low ramp, with full pads. Another problem is grabbing too late; reach as you leave the coping, not at the top of the air.

A progression is the order you learn skills, each one building on the last. Advanced tricks are rarely new motions. They are older pieces combined, done faster, or done higher. Knowing the chain lets you work on the weak link instead of trying the hard trick again and again.

Here are three chains. On flat ground: rolling fakie, then the frontside and backside 180 kickturn, then the ollie, then the 180 ollies. For flips: the pop shove-it, then the 360 shove-it, then the kickflip, then the varial kickflip, then the 360 flip. On ramps: pumping (bending and straightening the legs to gain speed) and kickturns, then dropping in, then rock to fakie, then small airs and grabs. Each later skill reuses an earlier one.

A useful rule is to call a piece steady when you can land it most of the time on several days, not just once. For example, a skater might wait until they land a pop shove-it 7 of 10 tries before adding a flick. The number is a personal guide, not a rule from any group.

When a combined trick stalls, go back one step on the chain. If your 360 flip will not spin, spend a session on 360 shove-its. If rock to fakie scares you, rock on the coping while standing still at the top with a friend steadying you. Small steps keep the fear manageable and the learning going.

A motor skill is a movement you learn to do well, like pushing, an ollie or a kickflip. In 1967 the psychologists Paul Fitts and Michael Posner described three stages that people pass through when learning such a skill. Their model is still taught in sports science and physical therapy today.

In the first, the cognitive stage, you think through every part. Where does my back foot go? When do I pop? Movements are slow and stiff, and mistakes are large and varied. A skater learning to push might look at their feet and say the steps under their breath. Clear, simple instructions help most here.

In the second, the associative stage, the pieces start to link. Mistakes get smaller and more alike, and you begin to feel when a try was wrong. A skater on this stage can push while looking ahead, but a bump still breaks the rhythm. Practice with feedback helps most here.

In the third, the autonomous stage, the skill runs almost by itself. You can push while talking to a friend and steering around a crack. Your attention is free for the next thing, like spotting a ledge. Every trick moves through the stages on its own schedule, so a skater can be autonomous at pushing and cognitive at a kickflip in the same afternoon.

When you practice a trick, your muscles get only part of the credit. The bigger change happens in the nervous system. Each try sends signals from the brain to the muscles and back again through the senses. Over many tries, the brain strengthens the connections that produced good tries and weakens the ones that did not.

Several parts of the brain share this work. The cerebellum, at the back of the brain, compares the movement you planned with the movement you felt and helps correct the difference. It is one reason your second try at a curb often looks smoother than your first. Deeper areas help string steps together into one smooth sequence.

Researchers who scan the brain during learning often see the areas used for careful planning grow less busy as a skill becomes practiced. The skill has not disappeared; it has become cheaper to run. That is why an experienced skater can watch traffic around a park or plan the next trick while still landing the current one.

One result is a motor program, a stored plan for a whole movement. An ollie becomes one smooth command, not five separate ones. A motor program can also store mistakes, which is why it pays to practice the correct form slowly before practicing fast. Changing a habit is possible, but it takes many careful tries.

After practice, the brain keeps working on what you did. Scientists call this consolidation: a new memory or skill becoming more stable over time. Sleep studies have found that people often perform a newly practiced finger-tapping sequence faster after a night of sleep than at the end of their practice, with no extra practice in between.

This helps explain Monday tries like the one in the story. The weekend gave the brain time and sleep to settle the pattern Marcus had worked on. Researchers still study exactly how much each kind of skill gains, so the effect is not magic or guaranteed. Still, good sleep is one of the simplest things a learner can do for any skill.

Fatigue, or tiredness, works against learning in the moment. Tired muscles pop lower and tired attention misses details. A skater who keeps trying for two hours may finish worse than they started and also practice a sloppy version of the trick. Tired skaters also fall more, so ending a session on time is a safety choice.

A practical plan: stop working on a hard trick when your tries clearly get worse, and switch to something easy or rest. Drink water. Aim for a full night of sleep, which for teenagers is often eight to ten hours, as recommended by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Come back another day and notice what has changed.

In 1885 the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus published experiments in which he memorized lists of nonsense syllables and tested himself. He noticed that spreading his repetitions over several days took less total work than cramming them into one sitting. Since then, many studies of words, facts and movements have found the same pattern, called the spacing effect.

Spaced practice means splitting practice into several sessions with breaks between them. Massed practice means one long session with few breaks. Massed practice often feels better in the moment, because you get warmed up and land more tries late in the session. But tests days later usually favor the spaced schedule.

One explanation is that each new session makes you pull the skill back out of memory, and that effort strengthens it. The gaps also give time for consolidation and sleep. For skating, this means four 20-minute sessions on a trick during a week often beat one 80-minute session on Saturday, even though the total time is the same.

Spaced does not mean rare. Too long a gap and you start from scratch. A useful plan is a short focused block on the hard trick each time you skate, a few days a week, then easy skating for fun. The park visit can be long; the time spent on the new trick stays short.

Variable practice means changing the conditions while you practice: different speeds, different surfaces, different obstacles, or different tricks mixed together. Its opposite, constant practice, repeats the same version in the same spot. In the 1970s, the motor-learning researcher Richard Schmidt proposed that varied practice helps the brain build a general rule for a movement, not just one copy of it.

A 1979 study by John Shea and Robyn Morgan found something surprising. People who practiced three movement tasks in a mixed, random order did worse during practice than people who did each task in a block. But on later tests, the mixed group did better. Researchers call this contextual interference: mixing makes practice harder and learning stronger.

For a skater, variable practice can be simple. Once an ollie is steady, try it at a slow roll, then a medium roll. Try it on a different smooth surface. Mix trick order: a pop shove-it, then an ollie, then a kickturn, instead of twenty of one. Practice a little fakie, rolling backward in your normal stance, or switch, riding with your other foot forward.

Keep the first steps constant. A brand-new trick still needs repeated tries in one easy, safe spot until you can land it sometimes. Add variety after that. Choose changes that stay safe: new smooth ground, not stairs or traffic. The goal is a trick that works wherever you need it.

Feedback is information about a try. Some comes from inside: how the pop felt. Some comes from outside: a coach’s words or a video. Skaters have learned from video since the 1980s, when VHS tapes such as Powell Peralta’s The Bones Brigade Video Show (1984) let viewers pause and replay tricks. Today a phone does the same in seconds.

Video helps because what you feel and what you do are often different. A skater may feel that their shoulders turn early and see on video that they turn late. Use slow motion and look for one thing at a time: shoulder timing, where the back foot lands, or whether the knees bend on landing. Film from the side for ollies, and from behind for flips.

Video can also measure. Many phones record 30 frames per second, so each frame is 1/30 of a second. Count the frames from the moment the tail leaves the ground to the moment the wheels touch. Worked example: 15 frames ÷ 30 frames per second = 0.50 s in the air. For a jump that rises and falls the same height, h = g·t²/8. So h = 9.8 × 0.50 × 0.50 ÷ 8 = 2.45 ÷ 8 ≈ 0.31 m.

Watching too often can distract. Many coaches suggest filming a few tries, watching once, picking one change, and skating again. Ask before filming other people at the park, and never film anyone who says no. Keep your old clips, too; comparing a clip from this week with one from last month shows progress that is hard to feel day to day.

A cue is a short phrase or idea that reminds you what to do, like "turn first, then pop." Good cues are short, about one thing, and easy to picture. A skater thinking of six instructions during a half-second pop rarely does any of them well. Choosing one cue per session keeps attention clear.

Studies by Gabriele Wulf and other motor-learning researchers, starting in the late 1990s, compared two kinds of focus. An internal focus is on body parts, such as "point your ankle." An external focus is on the effect of the movement, such as "snap the tail to the ground" or "pull the board up to your knees." In many tasks, people did better and learned faster with an external focus.

For skating, external cues often sound like this: "push the board forward," "slide the grip tape up toward the nose," "let the board turn under you." They point to what the board should do. If one cue does not help after a few tries, try another that describes the same goal differently.

Cues also come from friends. When someone gives you five tips at once, it is fine to ask, "What is the most important one?" That question helps you and helps the friend coach better. Write your working cue in a notebook so you remember it next session.

Standing at the top of a ramp, many skaters feel their heart race and their legs tighten. That is fear, a normal signal from the body that something might hurt. It is not a sign of weakness. Fear speeds the heart and tightens muscles to get you ready to react. A little of it can sharpen attention; too much makes the body stiff, and stiff skaters fall more.

A useful way to read fear is as information: this step may be too big right now. The answer is usually not to force it but to shrink the step. Skaters have done this for decades: practicing a drop-in on a small ramp before a tall one, or a trick on grass before pavement.

Here is a fear ladder for a drop-in on a mini ramp. First, stand on the board at the top with the tail on the coping, holding a friend’s hand. Next, lean forward a few centimeters and return, several times. Then roll in holding the friend’s hand, front foot pressing down over the bolts so your weight goes onto the board. Finally, roll in alone, committing your weight forward. Gear up with helmet and pads on every rung.

Some days fear wins, and that is fine. Stopping for the day is a choice, not a failure. Notice what you did manage: one rung higher than last week is real progress. Fear also tends to shrink with repeated calm tries on the same rung, so returning to a rung you already passed is useful practice, not a step back.

Every skater falls, so falling well is a skill to practice like any other. Wrist injuries are among the most common skateboarding injuries, often from catching a fall on a straight arm. Wrist guards help prevent them. The goal of a good fall is to lower your height, spread the impact over time and over a large area, and keep your head off the ground.

The physics is impulse. To stop a moving body, its momentum, mass times velocity, must change to zero. Average force = change in momentum ÷ stopping time. Worked example: a 60 kg skater hits the ground moving 3 m/s. The change in momentum is 60 × 3 = 180 kg·m/s. Stopping in 0.05 s gives 180 ÷ 0.05 = 3,600 N. Stopping in 0.25 s by rolling gives 180 ÷ 0.25 = 720 N, five times less.

Practice on grass or a mat with your helmet and pads on. First, from a crouch, sit down and roll back onto your rounded back, chin tucked. Next, from a slow walk, step off to the side, crouch low, and roll over one shoulder. Then try stepping off a slowly rolling board and running it out. When you fall forward, land on your pads and slide or roll; keep your arms bent and your fists soft instead of reaching out stiffly.

A crouch helps before any fall, because a lower body has less distance to drop. If the board shoots out, step off and run it out if you can. Let the board go; chasing it into a street is never worth it. A loose board can also roll into other people, so call out "board!" to warn them.

Ramp skaters fall differently from street skaters. On a curved ramp, the wall is called the transition. If you lose the board near the top, you can drop to your knees and slide down the transition on your knee pads, like sliding down a playground slide on your knees. Done right, the slide turns a fall into a smooth ride to the flat bottom.

Knee slides need the right gear. Good knee pads for ramps have a hard plastic cap over a thick foam pad and straps that hold them in place. The hard cap slides on the ramp surface instead of grabbing it. Soft pads without caps grab and can stop you suddenly. Wear a helmet, elbow pads and wrist guards too.

Learn on a low ramp. First, walk a few steps up the transition without the board. Next, drop to both knees, sit back a little toward your heels, and let the pads slide you down. Keep your chest upright and your hands up near your chest, not reaching for the ramp. Then try from a little higher. Last, practice while riding: roll up slowly, step off the board on purpose, and drop into a slide.

Common problems: leaning forward and hitting the chest, so sit back toward your heels; landing on one knee and spinning, so practice landing on both. Many skaters practice knee slides at the start of every ramp session as a warm-up. Check your pad straps each time, because a pad that twists off the knee cap cannot protect it.

Skateboarding grew mostly without coaches. Skaters learned by watching each other on the street, in pools and at parks. Magazines such as Thrasher (founded 1981) and TransWorld SKATEboarding (1983) printed photo sequences of tricks. Videos such as The Bones Brigade Video Show (1984) let skaters far from California study tricks frame by frame.

That tradition of peer teaching, people learning from people at a similar level, is still strong. At a good park, a more experienced skater might show a newcomer where to put their back foot, film a try, or call out one cue. Many parks have an unwritten etiquette: take turns, look before you drop in, and do not sit in the landing zones.

Groups have built programs on this. Skateistan, founded by Oliver Percovich in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2007, used skateboarding to bring children, including many girls, into lessons and school programs. The Tony Hawk Foundation, started in 2002 and renamed The Skatepark Project in 2020, has helped communities build public skateparks where this kind of learning happens.

Teaching also helps the teacher. Explaining a trick makes you put each step into words, and that can show you a gap in your own understanding. A good peer coach gives one clear cue, cheers effort, and never mocks a beginner. Everyone at the park started on their first push.

Each idea in this chapter fits into one session plan. A sample plan for an hour at the park: ten minutes of warm-up rolling, pushing and a few easy tricks; fifteen minutes on the new trick with one cue; fifteen minutes of mixed tricks you already know; a few filmed tries of the new trick; and ten minutes of fun skating to finish. Gear stays on the whole time.

The warm-up raises body temperature and gets joints moving, so you are less stiff when you start trying hard things. The short focused block uses spacing, because you will come back to it in two days. The mixed block adds variable practice. Filming a few tries gives outside feedback. Stopping on time protects against fatigue and gives sleep something to consolidate.

Keep a practice log: a notebook or phone note with the date, the trick, your cue, how many tries you landed, and how it felt. After a few weeks you can see patterns, such as better results after a good night’s sleep or after mixing tricks. A log also shows progress on days when a trick still feels far away.

Adjust the plan to you. If fear is high, spend the focused block on one rung of your ladder. If you are tired, shorten the hard part. The best plan is one you can repeat a few times a week, safely, for months. A plan that is too long or too hard is usually dropped after a week, while a modest one keeps the spacing effect working.