Skate Reanimate

As a kid Mullen was my hero. I remember when his freestyle board was focused on Rubbish Heap, and I dimly recognized that, yeah, freestyle is dead. That’s about the same time I got out of skating.

Now more than ever I admire and look up to Mullen. Even today he projects nothing but a positive attitude that garners respect–a good example is how thankful he is for all the breaks he’s had, and the people who have supported him. He’s not afraid to admit his Christianity, which is fine by me; I’d rather have my son look up to a religious pro skater than one who’s amoral and befouls himself in public.

Yeah, I suppose I’m an old prude, but what do I care what anyone thinks? I’m right on this one. We need more Tony Hawks and Rodney Mullens. Skaters who are not only the best of the best, but decent people too.

Anyway, I liked this documentary on Mullen; you might too:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5332678536989755802&hl=en

Alright, I was taking a break at Borders today, cooling off with a tasty beverage in the shade with a few magazines on my lap. Partly out of curiosity and partly out of nostalgia, I picked up a copy of each of the latest skate mags from the periodicals rack.

I have to say I was a little disappointed in the mags as a whole. As a kid I was probably far more fascinated with photos of skaters mid-trick, but now I find you have to read the captions to try to appreciate the combos. Also, skateboarding is so ubiquitously part of our culture that its no longer a treat to see someone on a skateboard–this simple occurence was a treasure back in the 80s.

More significantly, I was reading some interviews with pros in Thrasher and Skateboarding, and was stunned at how pervasive cursing, alcohol, drugs, and sex are in their normal conversation. To me its not a big deal how adults talk or act as part of their own private lives–so long as they’re not hurting anyone else. But this lifestyle certainly doesn’t represent what skating means to me. If this is indicative of what skating has become I can’t say that I would support my own son’s immersion in this new wave of skate culture.

This is not to say that when I was a kid skateboarding was squeaky clean. No way. Sure, we cursed. We listened to punk. We were generally rebellious and a bit obnoxious. But that was about it. When I think about how we poured over the pages of Thrasher and Transworld for pics, interviews, and news, I really don’t recall it being offensive or startling. Most of the pros featured were there to help the sport grow and progress–not to be self-indulgent, self-important white-trash or ghetto punks sucking smoke and soaking booze, spewing out smack-talk and curses.

These pros setting a bad example for all the kids who will grow up idolizing and wanting to emulate them. You might say its not the pros fault–they didn’t ask to be idolized; they aren’t supposed to be a role model. Well guess what: they _did_ sign up. When they went pro they acknowledged that, yeah, people will watch me, kids will look up to me, skaters will look at me as the new “cool”. The private life they once had is now made public, and by doing so it affects people.

At the very least I say the editors of these skate mags owe it to the kids to keep things a little cleaner. Thrasher’s always been a little edgier than the other skate mag(s), but never R-rated like it is now. The whole encounter really bothered me, not because the content offended me per se, but because I thought, What can I show my son that’s positive and encouraging in this sport? Do I have to be the filter for everything? Or does a parent just accept that modern life is becoming increasingly debased and amoral, and there’s not much that can be done to protect the kids?

I’ve been a little discouraged by a bad pattern of minor injuries (e.g. both of my ankles are just a little bit sprained due to 2 successive nights of trying grinds and slides, and my bad knee is acting up simply from all the crouching/jumping) but its probably less the worry of long-term pain or injury (at my age!) than it is that I don’t seem to be making significant progress as a result. After what felt like a very steady and positive progression, I suddenly feel like I can’t quite make the next step, can’t quite land or pull into the tricks that are still basic.

If I become more aggressive in my sessions I do tend to make progress a little faster, but at the cost of more spills.

So this week I’m balancing recovery with practice. I’ll probably go out tonight, but will either shorten my session or restrict myself to practicing stuff I’m already really capable of.

Alternately, I could just lift some weights or do some strengthening exercises that won’t put my ankles and knee at risk. bo-ring

Yesterday morning I was up in Logan, Utah and hit the concrete public skate park. The air was cool and the park was empty, however I was pretty timid being back on ramps and obstacles again so I really didn’t make any progress or take advantage of the great terrain.

Until next time I will need to focus on higher full-speed ollies, slides, and grinds. Doing so I should be much more able next time I hit that park.

It’s amazing to me how hard nollies are, after all its the same basic ollie technique simply on the other foot. The fact that one is moving forward doesn’t help. At any rate, I’ve been trying to pick up this trick (which I could never do before) and have been able to at least get the board a few inches off the ground with my front foot. So far these have been stationary nollies, but at least they are happening.

I’m practicing them 10 at a time at intervals in my session to sort of train my legs to do them on command.

The real problem I’ve been having is not pushing the board forward and away from me with my front foot–I need to focus on pushing downward, straight downward, with the front leg.

I went out skating tonight despite my banged ankles and shins, and had a blast. Again, I felt more focused than before, and actually was starting to get a couple of tricks that, though simple, I was never was able to get before:

1. board-flip to reemo. This trick starts with my feet square over the trucks, and you simply pop the board forward with the balls and toes of each feet (more on the back foot, I find) so that the board spins 450 degrees, leaping forward to land on the wheels with the board on its side in a reemo.

I landed this only twice tonight; most of my attempts put my feet on the wheels with too much momentum, pushing the board into a normal top-up landing.

2. toe-flip to casper. Actually I have no idea what the first part of this trick is called. It basically starts that cutesy remounting flip trick you do when your board lands on bottom-up and you’re some feet away.

So you approach your board and catch the toes of your back foot just under the trucks (in the curve of the tail). You flip/kick the board away from you (so its flipping on its sides). Normally you would just flip the board 540 degrees to a top-up position and land on it to skate away, but here you just want to flip it 360 degress. Your front foot has to catch the flipping board as it approaches a full flip, and it pulls up. At that moment your back foot has to come onto the tail and push down so you’re in a casper.

I can’t get this consistently, but I’m so close I had to make an entry about it. Its still just a weak little gimmick, but its fun, and I guess a way cooler method of getting back on a impotent board.

Fun fun fun stuff. I can’t wait to get back out tomorrow night.

Back in the heyday of freestyle most skaters wore shin guards, as jumping about while a rapidly flipping board is spinning a foot above the ground beneath you is a recipe for some bruises and scrapes. I too wore shin guards for long practice sessions, simply because it helped me avoid pain and let me keep on practicing after a few failed tricks. I stopped wearing shin guards when I decided I didn’t need them, and I came back into skating this week assuming that they were unnecessary. I am starting to change my mind.

I’ve been skating each night for the last week for about 45 minutes each session, and though I’ve smacked my shins a few times on several occasions its only been the last couple of nights that I’ve really begun to suffer.

Last night I was practicing shoveits and trying to figure out kick-flips again. That should be enough to tell you that I went home with some bruises. (Though at least I have 180 shoveits and pop-shoveits OK, and believe that 360s are not too far away).

This afternoon I spent half an hour at the local public skate park just watching the kids tear it up. I’m planning on trying the park soon myself, but I refuse to let myself go until I have all my basics back under control. From watching the kids today I recognized that I would really want to take advantage of slides and grinds at the park–in fact thats all the most of the kids were trying today.

So tonight I went back to my favorite parking lots and in addition to working on kick-flips some more (…I don’t remember this trick being so hard…) I spent some time on some 8″ painted curbs. Didn’t take me long to feel out backside 50-50s and tailslides, though I by no means mastered them on the backside at least I was doing alright, though when I switched to frontside I failed miserably. After exasperating myself trying to get these down, I finally just went back to backside to end the evening. Well I was getting some nice smacks and short slides on tailslides and was having fun when all of a sudden, bam–I ollie too high and smack the tail down really hard to compensate and not miss the curb. But my front foots already too high itself, and the board strikes the curb, pops back up (and somehow towards my body), thrashing a lovely scrape all the way up my right shin. Curses. Time to lay on the grass and look at the clouds.

5 minutes later I’m thinking shin guards, at least for the time being, might be a good idea again. The pain had brought me to the grass, sure, but I’m pretty tolerant of pain and its typical for me to get back on the horse as fast as I can (if only to get my mind off the pain at hand).

But I also learned something in martial arts some years back that I’ve found to be true: even if you can take the pain, your body can become unconsciously wired to fear repetition of that pain, so much so that your body might resist your will when told to do something that might risk another instance of the same pain. When practicing and trying new stuff, its always better to go in padded and keep your body open to the new moves it needs to learn, rather than to fight the pain over and over and risk letting your body dictate what it will and won’t do.

I was analyzing why I couldn’t seem to land ollies at a good speed, and after playing around a bit I figured it out and have now met my first goal. I can now really consistently land good-sized ollies at full-speed.

I was doing two things that were screwing me up:

1. I was crouching too low before the ollie. I’m now crouching only about half-way down.
2. My back foot was curled too tightly on the tail before the pop. My foot’s now nearly flat on the tail, though the heel and arch still don’t touch.

I think that I was doing these things based on what worked with freestyle skating: if you know anything about old school freestyle, the deck was considerably smaller, and had zero concave; it was completely flat except for the tail.

The deck I have now seems to have a lot more pop in it, meaning I don’t need to exert as much force to get it in the air for an ollie. I used to get the height I needed on the board by crouching down as low as possible; on the deck I have now, crouching low is not only unnecessary, it also makes me wobble due to the larger width.

The width of the deck and the beautiful concave allow me to relax my feet a bit more, meaning I don’t have to do this huge and focused snap in the center of the tail.

I think this deck difference also relates to problems I’m having trying to flip the board in kickflips and heelflips.

Alright, so getting back on the board is both easier and harder than I thought. Well, at least I have no problem with basic balance and riding. I’ve got pretty decent control of the board on turns and so on. Can still ollie stationary at a good height, but am having trouble landing ollies at full speed (though surprisingly I can land an ollie into manual pretty well). Speaking of a manual, I can wheelie for no more than 2-3 full seconds at a time, which sucks, and landing into manual I can’t hold it for more than a second.

But I can still primo and reemo no problem, which is cool because I hear my old idol Mullen is ripping it up with new variations of those. Other than that I find I have to relearn even the most basic tricks all over again.

My first goal is to master basic ollies at full speed. I can’t accept anything short of 2 feet, though I’m planning for 3 or more so I can get on top of objects.

My second goal will be to get a better wheelie so I can manual off and onto tricks. I’ll probably combine this with stationary 360s/720s and beyond as a good attack on balance and centering.

Here’s the rest of the street tricks I’m going to be re-learning over the next couple weeks:

1. boardflip
2. kickflip
3. fingerflips
4. 360 shoveit (full speed)
5. ollie kickflip (full speed)
6. heelflip (full speed)
7. ollie to casper
8. 50-50 (not the grind)
9. primo flip
10. powerslide
11. boardslide
12. 50-50 grind (back and front sides)

This will all be parking lot stuff. Then I’ll move on to some of these, which I never had down consistently in the old days:

1. airwalk (full speed)
2. anti-casper
3. casper disaster
4. impossible (full speed)
5. tailslide
6. pogo

And here’s my dream list:

• primo/reemo slides
• casper slide
• darkslide
• hardflip
• ollie north
• noseslide
• nose wheelies/manuals

Maybe I’ve got some of those names wrong. And there’s probably a dozen other new tricks that you all can tell me about.

Anyway, I’m so damn excited I can’t stay in the office any longer.