A brief Skateboarding Glossary for Beginners

Whether you are an amateur skateboarder, looking to improve your skills, or a pro who wants to become #1, the old adage of ‘practice makes perfect’ holds true for all. Professional skateboarders are capable of fantastic maneuvers, whether on air, on backside, do an ollie, a flip, a 360, a heelflip, a tailslide, or do a 50-50 grind over a steel ramp. Doing your turns over the half pipe, vert, or a quarter pipe is no piece of cake: everything comes with practice. Controlling Skateboard decks in terms of movement and speed is one of the most crucial lessons for a beginner.

 

So as you trick out yourself in cool skate t-shirts, pullovers, tanks and other skateboard gear, let’s check out some basic skateboarding terms for the benefit of the amateur skateboarder who seems overwhelmed by it all. Street skating is the most commonly seen skateboarding mode, where skateboarders skate on curbs, benches, streets, handrails, and other features of the urban or suburban landscape. Vert skating, ramp skating, half pipe, quarter pipe, mini ramp, mega ramp, bowl and vert ramp are all specially designed structures for skateboarders to skate and perform the different stunts on.

 

With trendy Skate apparel  such as graphic skate t-shirts and a cool skateboard deck to boot, you cannot go wrong practicing a simple ‘ollie’, which is one of the basic skating tricks, named after Allan ‘Ollie’ Gelfand, a pioneer skateboarder. An Ollie is performed by tapping the board’s tail on the ground, and then releasing it. This is the basis of most of the skateboarding tricks in the book.

Possibly related: