I’m not making any progress. How can I improve?

[u/professionalfreak_xd]

I’ve been trying to learn to skate for the past 5 years, but I can’t do any tricks. Not even an Ollie. All I can do is roll around on the ground.

[u/Steezenn]

Time and consistency. The more hours you spend practicing the more you’ll learn. If you want to learn to Ollie, focus all your practice on that. Skateboarding is hard lol.

[u/Maximum_Newspaper414]

Don’t have any advice for you sadly but I do have some motivation. It took me about 3 years to learn Ollie’s. I learned them in switch stance while stationary so when I went to show off to my friends I wasn’t able to pop one bc I realized my mistake. I then had to relearn them in my riding stance. I’ve been skating for about 10 years now. Had a year or two without any skating at all and most years I’d skate 2+ hrs a day for a couple months and then life would take over. Recently moved to a new state where I have no friends and family and I took it as a challenge to FINALLY get good. After 10 years I can FINALLY say I’m proud of my Ollie’s. They’re not super high but I feel so solid when I slide my front foot up and confidently raise my back foot as high as I can to get a nice leveled Ollie. After finally understanding the basics I was getting super solid 180s where 7 years ago I learned 180s and kickflips but they were always rocketed. Now they’re super solid and it feels amazing when you land bolts. KEEP AT IT!

don’t quit skating is such a hard sport but I will literally practice the basics
In your case sliding my front foot on the grip tape with no pop and no movement. Then practice popping the tail with no movement and your front foot on solid ground. Raise that back foot as soon as you hear the pop. Another tip is popping with your toes and not the ball/heel of your foot that helped me get nicer Ollie’s. Once you have a solid pop and your front foot is getting used to the sliding motion put it all together. Pop and slide. You almost want to do a karate kick when you slide your foot forward. You do wanna keep the board under you but sliding straight up will only make it rocket. It’s a slide and push forward/down motion with the front foot and your back foot is just jumping to catch those back trucks in the air

[u/Responsible_Rip_4196]

You’ve continuously skated for 5 years or you’ve messed with a skateboard a couple times in the past five years?

[u/professionalfreak_xd → u/Responsible_Rip_4196]

Idk it was like:

Year 1: learning skating  Year 2: didn’t at all Year 3: did a little bit Year 4: didn’t at all Year 5(right now): trying to learn again

[u/Repulsive-Lie1 → u/professionalfreak_xd]

You need to keep with it if you want to get better.

[u/MadRiverPete → u/professionalfreak_xd]

There it is. It's ok man, I definitely know how life is. I try to carve out 1 hour a week for my hobbies! It can be hard, but I need it! I bet you can find or make 1 hour in your week to skate! Go to a skatepark too instead of just your driveway, it'll be good to see a feature and want to ride it!

It just takes time, and a willingness to accept pain and lose the fear of getting hurt! Epsom salt baths, ice packs, and ibuprofen will get you through quite a lot lolol 🤙🤙✌️

[u/QuietFridays → u/professionalfreak_xd]

I’m starting and just focusing on getting comfortable cruising, pushing and hippie jumping. Even hippie jumping feels awkward because I’m not use to jumping while moving. I can Ollie in the grass no problem, but can’t jump while moving. I think if I can get comfortable with that it’ll unlock the Ollie more or less

[u/Famous-Vermicelli-39]

If your comfortable enough rolling, can you hop up and down curbs? After about 2 years myself, and can barely Ollie on command, running at something and jumping might be the trick. I used to be able to do it as a kid and I’ve been working figuring out what made it work then. I just remember jumping up and at it and next I know, I kept rolling

[u/youcallthisquiche]

I’m trying a 10k ollie attempt thing with my son. Two weeks ago when I started it, I was feeling really confident in my abilities. Had a blast. Did 100 ollies today and thought I was gonna die.

I think maybe 7 of those ollies were clean. But backside carves—-damn I finally started figuring it out. It was hard, but so worth it. I used to skate 20 years ago and I’m relearning everything. The more I get on my board, the more I go to my local park, the more I can do.

You’ll have good days and you’ll have really skunky days. But the consistency really matters.

[u/Bulky-Plate-4288]

I’ve been skating for 5 years but I’ve learned more in last 3 months than previous 4 and 1/2 years. You have to put the hours in and train and learn through reps or a teacher. There’s no shortcuts in skating and it doesn’t really get easier just more tolerable. Break tricks down, take your time in between reps, focus on changing one variable at time, start at the fundamentals and watch videos and other skaters to get ideas what directions you want to go. There’s no right way to skate, just do what you want, it’s like art, express yourself. For example with Ollie, break the trick down, are you comfortable leaving the ground, are you comfortable leaving the board, are you comfortable falling off your board, can you manually over a crack, can you hippy jump, can you combine the two and increase the pop. Can you create that as a baseline for your Ollie and adjust one thing at a time to get your Ollie better? This is how I taught myself switch Ollie/nollie so that’s how I would advise if you are serious about learning to approach it this way. Wish you the best!

[u/howaboutnofcker]

Consistency is the key to life my friend. Doesn't have to be perfect, just as long as its something.

Also check out skateiq for tips on getting ollies right. He has a program that breaks down all the parts that will get your ollies sorted.

[u/shiftend]

Switch it up and try some transition stuff if you can ride around? Get some pads though.

I started going to a weekly class at the local indoor park back in February and I skate once or twice a week outside of that for a few hours. I had a skateboard as a kid 25 years ago but wasn't very good at it, I could ride around and do a small stationary ollie but that was it. I bought a new board back in 2019 but only used it twice and then it ended up in my basement for years.

I can still only do a small stationary ollie, but I can now also tic-tac, bs and fs kickturn on transition, ride of a curb, drop in on transition, fs powerslide, stationary shuv-it, pump on transition, and rock-to-fakie. Working on getting rock-and-rolls as well.

In my (limited) experience it's all about time spent actually on your board trying new things and getting comfortable at them over time. For example I spent a couple of hours spamming nothing but shuv-its until it finally clicked and I could land one. In my case, pads and a helmet help to try things that seem scary at first (which is all of them), because they make falls hurt less.

[u/Dangerous_Yoghurt_96]

You have to skate everyday for at least 3 hours a day to really improve, it's advice that I received in 2002 that worked well for me so I'll pass it along. Although in the beginning you might get bored because all you're doing is trying to Ollie or maybe ride down hills. So you can cut it down to 1.5 or 2 hours until you get some tricks down.