Dude, seriously thank you for these tips. After Spraining my ankle and doing rehab for 6 months, its been frustrating relearning my tricks, ESPECIALLY the kickflip variations. Overflicking and flicking to early has been hindering me soo much and remembering to not flick to hard is getting my kickflips so much more controlled and consistent, thank you man.
Awesome, I face the same problem sometimes and did the same as you: ended up watching every single tutorial on youtube. As an engineer I always tried to figure out the reason according to physics, but in the end it was all trials and errors to fix my kickflip: I ended up lining my shoulders with the board, leaning forward and also changing my foot placement placing my front foot pointing more towards the tip of the nose, that way i thought my foot would catch less griptape. I agree with your theory that extending the front foot to much causes the problem. Some other stuff that i thought about: - some pros kick the board backside: cody mcentire, felipe gustavo and luan oliveira, but somehow they can shift their bodies back before touching the ground, and i think it is amazing. - for some reason, new decks make me kick easily without going backwards. It is really nice to see a channel talking about skateboarding with this scientific approach, testing hypothesis. If you want, let's talk more about it! Tks.
You are absolutely welcome. Comments like yours are definitely helpful to improve my videos. Shifty kickflips, for example, are something I didn’t think about before your comments. Will be posting more videos in the future so please feel free to let me know whatever you find.
Great explanation. Something to note: when doing those super-stylish ninja kickflips (check Dan Corrigan's "KICKFLIP MASTERCLASS"), the front foot is over-extended while the back foot is angled inward, toward the front foot as you bend your knee. The idea is to catch the back end of the board with your back foot and essentially pull it toward your rear. Your front foot would be kicking straight down and through the heel-side pocket to dip the board toward the ground while airborne, then level out upon catching. Please watch the video & let me know what you think of this method, as I will be practicing in this fashion! Thanks for your efforts. Edit: typo
Wow, thanks a lot for your insight. I believe the majority of what you mentioned is right, perhaps aside from these ones. 1. "Kicking down" is a tricky expression as you know. Although it is true that you have to generate downward momentum to dip the nose down, moving your front knee is always a bad choice. Imagine your front foot moves like a pendulum, making your front knee a pivot point. Then, no matter how far you extend your front foot, you won't be lowering your front knee, which may cause problems like landing angled. 2. Angle of flick. Indeed the nose dips down in boned ollies like his ones. But it is NOT because they kick down. a. As you pop, you give the nose energy to go up. b. As you flick HORIZONTALLY FORWARD, you will be stopping the nose to go up. c. Kinetic energy of the board doesn't disappear all by itself. The board needs to find a way to dissipate such energy somewhere. d. The only way it can go is the tail. Since you stop the nose from going up, just like a seesaw or something, the tail goes up instead. So the point is, kicking down is NOT the reason why the nose goes down. You should just focus on flicking forward. *I'm saying this largely based on my assumption though. :P
@@DarmokAtTanagra When I did kick flips "naturally" they would either rocket, or fly away in front of me. As soon as I started angling my foot downward, my kick flips became awesome. You can kick forward, but angling down rockets the tail more for gnarly catches. Newton's Law of the Conservation of Energy posits if your legs are moving up, you're going to be kicking in that direction, naturally. You'd literally *have* to kick down with effort. Try skating and see for yourself.
I can't edit comments on the iPad anymore. YT sux, but; my observations are from actually skating and trying things in practice, not theory. Sure, your foot can go "down naturally" or whatever the case, but intentionally angling your foot down when you flick *adds* more downward force to rocket the tail *even more* so it essentially decreases the time before it catches. Landing a kick flip is a combination of force applied to flick, pop and jump height+landing. You can successfully land a slow-flipping kick with huge air, but you'd have to land later and flick softer. Likewise, you can land a short-popped, super-quick- flicked kick, but would have to apply more force to the flick to have it spin faster. For me, angling down a bit *more* on the flick keeps the board more centered, as I decrease the window of error to cause the board to fly away forward, as less energy is being flung ahead, rather toward the ground. Of course, with enough practice, you'll understand where to flick your foot and with however much force appropriate to the pop. There's no 1 way to do it, but boning the tail feels amazing for me - a smooth rotation on the ascend and a nice even catch at the peak of the jump just feels so rad!
Wow-very cool video. You did the only trick tip video that addresses the problem of the board flipping sideways. Also a lot of people including myself have problems with the board moving backside. Amazing no other video ever talks about it. To me personally, i think of doing a bit of a fs shifty ollie, this solves the problem for me.
Subbed. This channel is incredible. What part of the world are you exploriskating in? Edit- also, if you would ever do a hardflip physics analysis it would make my month. This is all so cool.
Finally there are some scientific analysis about skateboarding tricks, well done! I have a question / idea for additional topic - there is a long going debate about flat vs steep kick decks and how they affect your pop. Personally I feel I can ollie higher with a steeper deck, thinking that steeper decks create larger angle after pop, although it requires more force to pop a steeper deck. My question is - would you ollie the same height if you would use an equal force, popping steep and flat deck?
Such a great channel! I just subscribed. Keep doing what you are doing! The use of 3D models had such potential. One thing I wanted to mention though, that could help improve the channel, is with that 3D model of the kickflip, the skater (I presume is you, with motion capture technology?) is popping extremely diagonally with the back foot - the body weight is all over the front foot (the shoulders may also create issues in analysis.). Though some amount of this weight distribution pattern will happen on an ideal kickflip, the extremes that it goes to in this example, in my opinion, give you a much less common, less ideal and less valuable 3D depiction. The concept is great, but that specific model is exhibiting problematic technique which will skew your results impactfully and even possibly present the channel as somewhat 'out of its depth', for lack of a better word, which I don't want for this channel because it's clear you have a capable analytical mind for the physics of skateboarding - and again, the use of 3D models has a lot of potential! If you've used motion capture technology to generate this 3D model, can I recommend asking a local skater who has consistently solid kickflips to do a second model for you to compare between, perhaps even eoverlay? Or if it would be possible to generate one from footage, like Luan's, as you mentioned, that would be idyllic. Anyway, i only hope to enhance the channel! I do a similar skateboarding analysis series on my channel. Thank you for the exciting new content, and well wishes to you! 😊
i would find a video about how to do your tricks higher very interesting, since we learnt that simply just popping harder does not necessarily help more
Super interesting! Are those 3D animations physically simulated? I'm interested in physical simulation of skateboarding and exporting of such data for motion capture reference.
Thanks for the comment. Models in this video were made manually using a modeling application. You can try converting your video into a 3D animation on my website. whythetrick.io
Thanks for the comment. You are supposed to pop harder if you want higher kickflips. The point of this video is that raising the nose unnecessarily higher relative to the height of your front foot makes it harder to flick out your front foot. On the flip side, this also means if your front foot is located high enough, you may pop harder so the nose “reaches” the nose.
Thanks for the comment. Please give me some input: - Is that the exact same problem where your board does a backside spin? - do you happen to know if the problem happens before/after catching? Thanks.
Hey thanks for all the hard work! Helped me a lot to unify some thoughts ... But ... what about switch flips turning frontside? Thats a big problem of mine
Great video! I had same problem when i learning kickflip, but somehow when i figured out why it turns, its not about the thing that you mentioned in this video,, maybe its subjective but if you said the reason it turns is over pop, how about jake hayes who can do kickflip over 1 meter height? And also not Over flick because how about anyone who do double or triple kickflip? I figured out that the real reason it turn is just because you flick to much straight forward,, thats why dolphin flip do a little shove it rotation
Thanks for the insight! I guess you are right but here are my points below: OVERPOP It is when you pop too hard "relative to the position of your body." So if you can elevate your body high enough, you can pop as hard as you want as long as the board doesn't exert too much pressure to your front foot. OVERFLICK It is when you flick too hard and your flick goes parallel to your board. As you mentioned, overflicking may turn your board when you flick too far forward. You can flick as hard as you want as long as the flick's energy goes perpendicular to the board's longest axis(the one that connects the nose and tail).
I cannot land with both feet because of this annoying ass problem, it's like the board flips away from my front foot. I will try some gently popped kickflips this wee when I get the chance and if I get them you'll be my savior
@@whythetrick first off, when you pop the board too hard, late or wrong, you can “push your shoulders open” and and your feet will fallow your shoulders. They won’t land front foot and back foot, they will be left and right. When you pop looking forward (with your shoulders) your easily off balance and your board won’t stay under you, your head can be looking anyway you want but do some Ollie’s with your shoulders straight and you will have Ollies twice as fast. If it’s uncomfortable at first that’s bc it’s going to but keep at it and something will click soon. And on the kickflip spinning, your kicking too straight and flick at more of an angle. Too much grip is one thing but if you angle your flick out a little more. I’m regular stance, I kick to my left more. Every day you have to find that 📐 of the flick. It changes from when grip tape is good to bad and also with shoes that are new to bad. Used shoes and ok-bad grip flick is very straight forward. That scale fluctuates week by week, day by day. Also shoe size and board size have there factors that need to be involved. All that changes, basically if it spins bs your kicking too straight and if your too far out, it just won’t flip all the way and yeah. Straighten your shoulders if your need to turn, swing your arms when you pop and bam a 180
Dude, seriously thank you for these tips. After Spraining my ankle and doing rehab for 6 months, its been frustrating relearning my
tricks, ESPECIALLY the kickflip variations.
Overflicking and flicking to early has been hindering me soo much and remembering to not flick to hard is getting my kickflips so much more controlled and consistent, thank you man.
Happy to help!
Thank you! Your videos are great. You break this down in a very unique way--a way that makes more sense for some of us nerdier skateboarders. 🙂
Awesome, I face the same problem sometimes and did the same as you: ended up watching every single tutorial on youtube. As an engineer I always tried to figure out the reason according to physics, but in the end it was all trials and errors to fix my kickflip: I ended up lining my shoulders with the board, leaning forward and also changing my foot placement placing my front foot pointing more towards the tip of the nose, that way i thought my foot would catch less griptape.
I agree with your theory that extending the front foot to much causes the problem.
Some other stuff that i thought about:
- some pros kick the board backside: cody mcentire, felipe gustavo and luan oliveira, but somehow they can shift their bodies back before touching the ground, and i think it is amazing.
- for some reason, new decks make me kick easily without going backwards.
It is really nice to see a channel talking about skateboarding with this scientific approach, testing hypothesis. If you want, let's talk more about it! Tks.
You are absolutely welcome. Comments like yours are definitely helpful to improve my videos. Shifty kickflips, for example, are something I didn’t think about before your comments.
Will be posting more videos in the future so please feel free to let me know whatever you find.
Great explanation. Something to note: when doing those super-stylish ninja kickflips (check Dan Corrigan's "KICKFLIP MASTERCLASS"), the front foot is over-extended while the back foot is angled inward, toward the front foot as you bend your knee. The idea is to catch the back end of the board with your back foot and essentially pull it toward your rear. Your front foot would be kicking straight down and through the heel-side pocket to dip the board toward the ground while airborne, then level out upon catching. Please watch the video & let me know what you think of this method, as I will be practicing in this fashion! Thanks for your efforts.
Edit: typo
Wow, thanks a lot for your insight.
I believe the majority of what you mentioned is right, perhaps aside from these ones.
1. "Kicking down" is a tricky expression as you know.
Although it is true that you have to generate downward momentum to dip the nose down, moving your front knee is always a bad choice. Imagine your front foot moves like a pendulum, making your front knee a pivot point. Then, no matter how far you extend your front foot, you won't be lowering your front knee, which may cause problems like landing angled.
2. Angle of flick.
Indeed the nose dips down in boned ollies like his ones. But it is NOT because they kick down.
a. As you pop, you give the nose energy to go up.
b. As you flick HORIZONTALLY FORWARD, you will be stopping the nose to go up.
c. Kinetic energy of the board doesn't disappear all by itself. The board needs to find a way to dissipate such energy somewhere.
d. The only way it can go is the tail. Since you stop the nose from going up, just like a seesaw or something, the tail goes up instead.
So the point is, kicking down is NOT the reason why the nose goes down. You should just focus on flicking forward.
*I'm saying this largely based on my assumption though. :P
@@DarmokAtTanagra When I did kick flips "naturally" they would either rocket, or fly away in front of me. As soon as I started angling my foot downward, my kick flips became awesome. You can kick forward, but angling down rockets the tail more for gnarly catches. Newton's Law of the Conservation of Energy posits if your legs are moving up, you're going to be kicking in that direction, naturally. You'd literally *have* to kick down with effort. Try skating and see for yourself.
I can't edit comments on the iPad anymore. YT sux, but; my observations are from actually skating and trying things in practice, not theory. Sure, your foot can go "down naturally" or whatever the case, but intentionally angling your foot down when you flick *adds* more downward force to rocket the tail *even more* so it essentially decreases the time before it catches. Landing a kick flip is a combination of force applied to flick, pop and jump height+landing. You can successfully land a slow-flipping kick with huge air, but you'd have to land later and flick softer. Likewise, you can land a short-popped, super-quick- flicked kick, but would have to apply more force to the flick to have it spin faster. For me, angling down a bit *more* on the flick keeps the board more centered, as I decrease the window of error to cause the board to fly away forward, as less energy is being flung ahead, rather toward the ground. Of course, with enough practice, you'll understand where to flick your foot and with however much force appropriate to the pop. There's no 1 way to do it, but boning the tail feels amazing for me - a smooth rotation on the ascend and a nice even catch at the peak of the jump just feels so rad!
These two videos are incredible! The visuals and explanation of WHY is so satisfying and helpful. Thank you!
You're very welcome!
I've never had some one explain why I have this problem till now. Thank you!
It's good to know there's someone who has the same problem as I did. You are very welcome.
Wow-very cool video. You did the only trick tip video that addresses the problem of the board flipping sideways.
Also a lot of people including myself have problems with the board moving backside. Amazing no other video ever talks about it.
To me personally, i think of doing a bit of a fs shifty ollie, this solves the problem for me.
This whole series is amazing. Thanks a lot for making them!
thanks for making these videos in english, this is the problem ive had for a while, going to try to apply this soon!
Subbed.
This channel is incredible.
What part of the world are you exploriskating in?
Edit- also, if you would ever do a hardflip physics analysis it would make my month.
This is all so cool.
WOW! great video. I'm suffering from my kickflips moving back side so I'll probably watch this video a couple times. thank you!
Finally there are some scientific analysis about skateboarding tricks, well done! I have a question / idea for additional topic - there is a long going debate about flat vs steep kick decks and how they affect your pop. Personally I feel I can ollie higher with a steeper deck, thinking that steeper decks create larger angle after pop, although it requires more force to pop a steeper deck. My question is - would you ollie the same height if you would use an equal force, popping steep and flat deck?
interesting question.
I'd say a steeper deck would make my ollie higher but I need to confirm this. Let's see how to do it...hmm...
man thank you so much for making this kind of videos you are a genius I can understand much better thanks for you, keep the good work my man :)
Glad you like it! Let me know if you want me to talk about a specific topic.
Dude your this video is insane. You help me a lot. Can you do some tutorial about ollie bs ollie fs ollie.... basic trick, I want to master them. Pls
I am type 2. Thank you. I can’t wait to hit a skate park to try it.
Such a great channel! I just subscribed. Keep doing what you are doing! The use of 3D models had such potential.
One thing I wanted to mention though, that could help improve the channel, is with that 3D model of the kickflip, the skater (I presume is you, with motion capture technology?) is popping extremely diagonally with the back foot - the body weight is all over the front foot (the shoulders may also create issues in analysis.). Though some amount of this weight distribution pattern will happen on an ideal kickflip, the extremes that it goes to in this example, in my opinion, give you a much less common, less ideal and less valuable 3D depiction. The concept is great, but that specific model is exhibiting problematic technique which will skew your results impactfully and even possibly present the channel as somewhat 'out of its depth', for lack of a better word, which I don't want for this channel because it's clear you have a capable analytical mind for the physics of skateboarding - and again, the use of 3D models has a lot of potential! If you've used motion capture technology to generate this 3D model, can I recommend asking a local skater who has consistently solid kickflips to do a second model for you to compare between, perhaps even eoverlay? Or if it would be possible to generate one from footage, like Luan's, as you mentioned, that would be idyllic. Anyway, i only hope to enhance the channel! I do a similar skateboarding analysis series on my channel. Thank you for the exciting new content, and well wishes to you! 😊
i would find a video about how to do your tricks higher very interesting, since we learnt that simply just popping harder does not necessarily help more
True.
I believe separating jumping and popping is the most important key.
very inspiring. thank you!
Thank you too. I had this problem for quite a long time. Hope it helps.
Super interesting! Are those 3D animations physically simulated? I'm interested in physical simulation of skateboarding and exporting of such data for motion capture reference.
Thanks for the comment. Models in this video were made manually using a modeling application. You can try converting your video into a 3D animation on my website.
whythetrick.io
but how do i get higher kickflips then if im not supposed to pop harder?
Thanks for the comment.
You are supposed to pop harder if you want higher kickflips. The point of this video is that raising the nose unnecessarily higher relative to the height of your front foot makes it harder to flick out your front foot. On the flip side, this also means if your front foot is located high enough, you may pop harder so the nose “reaches” the nose.
Hey! can you actually make a similar video about heelflip to solve the same problem?
Thanks for the comment. Please give me some input:
- Is that the exact same problem where your board does a backside spin?
- do you happen to know if the problem happens before/after catching?
Thanks.
@@whythetrick Yes, my board does a backside spin, and it happens after catching ;//
Hey thanks for all the hard work! Helped me a lot to unify some thoughts ...
But ... what about switch flips turning frontside? Thats a big problem of mine
Thanks for the suggestion. Will try.
1:13 lol issei chillin
GREAT STUFF!!!
Glad you enjoyed it
Great video! I had same problem when i learning kickflip, but somehow when i figured out why it turns, its not about the thing that you mentioned in this video,, maybe its subjective but if you said the reason it turns is over pop, how about jake hayes who can do kickflip over 1 meter height? And also not Over flick because how about anyone who do double or triple kickflip?
I figured out that the real reason it turn is just because you flick to much straight forward,, thats why dolphin flip do a little shove it rotation
Thanks for the insight!
I guess you are right but here are my points below:
OVERPOP
It is when you pop too hard "relative to the position of your body."
So if you can elevate your body high enough, you can pop as hard as you want as long as the board doesn't exert too much pressure to your front foot.
OVERFLICK
It is when you flick too hard and your flick goes parallel to your board.
As you mentioned, overflicking may turn your board when you flick too far forward.
You can flick as hard as you want as long as the flick's energy goes perpendicular to the board's longest axis(the one that connects the nose and tail).
Hi, i have a few questions about some stuff about the kick... do you have a chat like discord or something?
I’m afraid not. Please leave your comment here or ask me via email from my channel.
@@whythetrick oh i tried through the site, but i had an issue that wasn't uploading the questions there... i will try again thou.... nice channel btw
I managed to fix why my board spins varial flip but now it spins like a backside flip...
Do you mean your body started turning?
@@whythetrick my board turns in the opposite direction.It used to spin like a varial flip but I fixed that.Now it spins like a backside flip
I cannot land with both feet because of this annoying ass problem, it's like the board flips away from my front foot. I will try some gently popped kickflips this wee when I get the chance and if I get them you'll be my savior
I wish you the best luck. Try to keep your flick fast and COMPACT. You don’t need to flick forcefully.
Wrong…….keep ur shoulders parallel with your board 🫢
May I know why?
@@whythetrick first off, when you pop the board too hard, late or wrong, you can “push your shoulders open” and and your feet will fallow your shoulders. They won’t land front foot and back foot, they will be left and right. When you pop looking forward (with your shoulders) your easily off balance and your board won’t stay under you, your head can be looking anyway you want but do some Ollie’s with your shoulders straight and you will have Ollies twice as fast. If it’s uncomfortable at first that’s bc it’s going to but keep at it and something will click soon. And on the kickflip spinning, your kicking too straight and flick at more of an angle. Too much grip is one thing but if you angle your flick out a little more. I’m regular stance, I kick to my left more. Every day you have to find that 📐 of the flick. It changes from when grip tape is good to bad and also with shoes that are new to bad. Used shoes and ok-bad grip flick is very straight forward. That scale fluctuates week by week, day by day. Also shoe size and board size have there factors that need to be involved. All that changes, basically if it spins bs your kicking too straight and if your too far out, it just won’t flip all the way and yeah. Straighten your shoulders if your need to turn, swing your arms when you pop and bam a 180