Some start learning freestyle with a solid set of skateboarding skills. Others begin without any skateboarding background.
If your experience is the latter, it can be hard diving into most freestyle tricks. Yes, you can watch a bunch of online tutorials on freestyle kickflips from the likes of Mike Osterman and Tony Gale for instance, but actually tackling said kickflip in the real world requires a certain level of confidence.
And while there is no shortcut to gaining such confidence—just hours and hours of time spent on the board—there are some beginner-friendly things to work on while you’re waiting to get good enough to try the tricky stuff.
Popcorn
Remember this trick?
Almost every beginner starts with the popcorn. It’s one of the most accessible ways to flip the board; the only prerequisite is a stationary hippy jump, and that’s not even a firm prerequisite.
There’s one particular version of the popcorn that can help you get used to the build up of tension needed to flip the board over during a freestyle kickflip, as well as get used to the rotation required to land afterwards.
To do this variation, start with the board on the ground with the griptape facing down, and stand in the original kickflip starting position. Keep one foot on the board and hook the other foot under the board.
Pull the board over into a half flip and jump. While jumping, rotate ninety degrees to land bolts.
Unlike the freestyle kickflip, the feet are always in contact with the board for this popcorn variation, so there isn’t the added complication of spotting the land. It’s a good way to ease into freestyle kickflips.
Judo kick
If you’re learning basic truckstand exits—the half-fingerflip-out variety—you might be stuck at the point where you can flip and catch the board with one foot, but not with both feet. And you never will, unless you start keeping both knees above and in line with the board while in truck stand, ready for the land.
Judo kicks can be used as flourishes while in truckstand stance and are a good manoeuvre to work on in conjunction with truckstand exits as they teach you to a) keep the knee of your free leg above the board, b) explore the space above the board, and c) improve your balance in truck stand.
To do judo kicks as a truckstand exercise, grasp the kick with one hand and step onto the truck. While balanced in truckstand stance, pull the knee of your free leg close to your chest so that it is above the board. Hinge kick from the knee to create the judo kick.
Yoyo hops
This one is no secret: yoyo hops are the stepping stone to fingerflips. They have the tug and the land of the fingerflip without the flipping part of the equation.
If you’re really fresh to skateboarding, start in tailstop and land in tailstop. If you’re confident with landing bolts (i.e you are comfortable with high hippy jumps or rolling hippy jumps), start in tailstop and aim to land bolts.
Not sure what yoyo hops are? Sarah Park-Matott has got you covered.
Needing more homework?
We’ve covered a bunch of beginner-friendly drills in previous posts, for caspers, walk-the-dogs, and rail stance. Francisco Patrone also has given recommendations on some skills to focus on in his interview with us during WFSC 2025. All of this should keep you going for a while…or at least until our next blog update. Have a read, give things a go, and let us know if our homework helped you with your freestyle.