I’ve been stuck in Casperland for months now. Initially, I’d do thirty exits out of casper stance every skateboarding session to overcome the fear of them. Then I wanted to be able to move into and out of casper. And now? Now, I want to be better at caspers.
But what is a casper?
The casper is a skateboarding trick invented by Bobby ‘Casper’ Boyden. The original freestyle-skateboarding version involves flopping the board over using mechanics similar to pulling up into heelside rail. While in ‘casper stance’, one foot is on the graphic side of the kick and the other foot is under the board. To exit, the skater scissor kicks, flipping and rotating the board 180 degrees, to land back on bolts.
Casper problems
Firstly, I have what I like to call ‘casper hesitancy’. I have no trouble getting into casper and holding casper stance but, sometimesmost of the time, I linger there for too long and fall out from fatigue. If I do successfully exit, I look like I’ve purposefully wasted ten seconds of an onlooker’s life. 🙁
I also have a low strike rate. If the casper entry feels off, I just scrap it and start again, which is fine when I’m not worried about consistency. But in contest-run situations? I’m going to have to be less picky with my entries. 🙁 🙁
Lastly, I want a best-practice casper; one that has
- minimal arm flailing and
- no foot down (obviously).
So, how do I get to better?
Casper solutions
Mitchie Brusco’s Skate IQ program has made me approach skateboarding a little bit differently. Its emphasis on ten-minute/fifty-rep drills has got me cooking up exercises of my own for freestyle skateboarding.
Over the past few weeks and with some help from the international freestyle community, I’ve come up with four exercises to address the aforementioned casper problems.
Count to three – for all casper entry to exit attempts, count to three and always attempt to exit at ‘three’. If fear, self-doubt, and other negative thoughts are hijacking the brain, get more focused by counting in a different language.
Casper spacewalks – save those imperfect casper entries by working on casper shuffling, that thing freestylers do to correct their foot position in casper stance.
Never Enough skateboarder Paolo Virgilio Demurtas recommends working on casper spacewalks to strengthen this skill. ‘It’s good to try to “recover” and reposition the foot while spacewalking. Gives you a lot of consistency for other casper tricks.’
Casper statues – pretend to be a statue while in casper stance. How long can you hold your casper with little or no movement? This is a game MLM skateboarder Dan Harrigan and his mate MadGreek came up with to work on micro corrections for balance, instead of ‘rolling the windows down’ as Dan likes to call it.
Casper spin initiation – in his casper tutorial, Tony Gale notes that any feet on the floor will stop a clean rotation during casper spins. So the best drill for removing this ugly foot-down habit is to practice casper entry into casper spin. If you’re still managing to cheat the spin somehow, try doing the drill on a rubberised surface, the stuff that’s used in playgrounds; if any part of your shoe is touching the ground, it’s going to catch.
A final note
While it’s early days for doing these drills, I’ve already noticed an improvement in my caspers. Count to three, for instance, has already boosted my ‘just commit’ mindset as well as improving trick flow. I’m really excited to see where casper spacewalk, casper statues, and casper spin initiation take me.
Did you find these exercises helpful? Or do you have your own casper-specific hacks that you want to share? Let us know in the comments below, or get in touch with us via Instagram (@flatlandiafreestyle).