Last December, I signed up to the Skate IQ program* run by Tyler Stroud and Mitchie Brusco. After a month of lurking on their community forum and muddling through drills, I penned my thoughts on how Skate IQ could help freestyle skateboarders. Since then, it has been the highest read post of 2025, far more interesting to casual readers than Mike Osterman playing UFO 50 in his downtime or interviews from World Freestyle Skateboarding Championships 2025.
The review is at risk of being dated though because the team at Skate IQ are very good at taking on board feedback. So, as the end of 2025 approaches, here are some more freestyler thoughts on the Skate IQ program.
More pricing options
In my original post, I touched on membership pricing as a potential barrier for entry. Not everyone can afford US$49 each month, especially during a cost of living crisis. Luckily, Skate IQ has since switched over to a tiered membership.
If I was joining now, I’d opt for the ‘premium’ option, which grants access to the ‘Three Phase Program’. This is Mitchie and Tyler’s magical formula for success: a series of drills that help improve fundamentals like kick-pushing, wheelies, and ollie pop. None of it is freestyle-specific (except for wheelies), but much of it will cement flatground skills needed for technical skating. And what is freestyle if not technical skating?
There is no fixed minimum term, hence members have the option of going up or down the tiers, depending on their skate needs and or financial circumstances. For instance, if you’re unable to skate due to injury or if you’ve bills to pay, you could downgrade to the the US$9 ‘standard’ tier, which gives you access to the community forum and allows you to watch Mitchie coach other people. If you’re stuck on a particular street flatground trick, such as a treflip, you could move up to the US$49 ‘VIP’ tier and submit clips for personalised feedback. Or you could try submitting freestyle tricks and make Mitchie’s brain melt a little.
More freestyle content
When I first signed up in 2024, the Skate IQ team admitted that they knew very little about freestyle. But Mitchie and Tyler were open to learning more about it, resulting in a collaboration with Andy Anderson that has resulted in various freestyle trick-tip videos.
The videos are nowhere near as detailed as Tony Gale’s Freestyle Tricktips. Sometimes videos are captioned with question marks and made-up trick names**. Nevertheless I’m glad that they exist because they introduce freestyle to thousands of freestyle naives. Every time a Skate IQ member who usually classifies 50-50s as grind tricks posts a fingerflip after seeing Mitchie and Andy do it, it’s like a unicorn gave birth to a drop bear; I love it.
More IRL skates
The Skate IQ team started doing meets***, including a recent trip Down Under. They spent a day and a half at Sydney Park and Sydenham Green Skate Park, coaching a bunch of Aussies.
It was sweet meeting some of the online community at a real-world skatepark. I put faces to names, got to have coffee with an X Games medallist, and spent much of my weekend indulging in my favourite hobby. Additionally, it kickstarted regular Skate IQ meets back home in Melbourne.
The transition skaters had a great time following Mitchie around the bowl, Everyone did runs to the best of their ability under his watchful eye, and got to work on his suggestions. There was even a mini ollie workshop for the street-inclined. My friend who also attended the workshop noted that the group was a bit big, but ‘as long as you take initiative to seek Mitchie out and ask him the questions you want, he is patient and gives good tips’.
As for me, it was very much like being at a group skate lesson at a bowl/ramp heavy skatepark with a regular skate instructor. I hid most of the time in the out-of-the-way flatground in the corner; I even skived off to the basketball courts next door for an extended period of time. It made me really hanker for a freestyle-only bootcamp, the kind that’s hosted in Japan or Germany. Most likely I’d still be too shy to ask for advice from the freestyle-equivalent of Mitchie Brusco, but at least I’d be learning via osmosis.
More freestyle talk
I highlighted the scarcity of freestyle up for discussion in the Skate IQ forum back in 2024. Some things have not changed. Threads like ‘The path to gnarly transition ollies! Tips for inching upwards?’ far outweigh ones like ‘Flamingo time’.
To counter this, I have tried to carve out a freestyle-safe space on there. Every week, I post a ‘Freestyle Friday’, sharing clips of my own progress, highlighting other freestyle-related threads, and encouraging members to share their own freestyle progress. Do I receive a lot of practical advice from these posts? Not as much as when as I ask for help on shuvits. 🧐 But I feel like I’ve done good work, imparting enthusiasm and knowledge to those unfamiliar with the discipline.
What’s been great is seeing the Skate IQ team and members’ support of this initiative. ‘Freestyle Friday’ often gets pinned by admin, which leads to more views and engagement. Prolifically active members like Netherlands’ Ruth Fraterman are always pairing me up with other freestyle-curious folk. It’s a wholesome community with nary a troll in sight****.
Final thoughts
Will I be keeping my Skate IQ membership for 2026? Yeah, probably. I’m curious to see where my freestyle-shaped Trojan Horse takes us. Hopefully there will be more Skate IQ x freestyler collabs, and a bunch of Skate IQ members well-versed in both vert and freestyle, as well as a half decent shuvit or ollie from yours truly.
*If either of my reviews convinced you to try Skate IQ for a month or two (or forever), please subscribe using this affiliate link. It will go towards paying my ongoing Skate IQ subscription fees. 🙌
**Made-up trick names are quite common in freestyle, a byproduct of freestyle-skateboarder isolationism.
***There’s an additional cost on top of membership for attending these structured meets, though there are also free, more informal seshes aptly named ‘Coffee and Skate’ that happen whenever Mitchie and Tyler are in town. For instance, Brisbane was lucky enough to host one in October this year.
****Yep, not one single troll. The Skate IQ forum is a veritable safe space for female millennials who have no hope of ollie kickflipping in the foreseeable future.