In a recent TikTok video, Andy Anderson went through a trick from each decade, including the boneless to tailblock spin. ‘This trick’s really popular in the 80s’, he noted. ‘A lot of people were doing it at street contests’.
This old-school street trick easily fits into a freestyle line. It’s not too difficult either; any confident beginner can give it a go.
Board prerequisites
The trick works on most skateboards. However, if you’re planning to do a lot of tailblock spins, skid plates will protect your kicks.
Rider prerequisites
Confidence in stomping down from tailstop is a must, so if you are new to skateboarding, make sure you’ve got a good grasp on this skill.
Also be familiar with the original boneless. While this variation lands in the more forgiving tailstop position, instead of bolts, some knowledge of boneless basics will help you make the trick look and feel better.
Breakdown of the trick
As the name suggests, the trick is made up of two parts: a boneless and a tailblock spin (aka ‘tailspin’).
To start the boneless, position your back foot on the tail. Bend down and grab the toeside rail of the board. Then plant your front foot on the ground, compress and hop with an 180-degree rotation. You’ll be pulling the board up as you hop, with the back foot preferably in contact with the tail at all times and the back knee bent towards the griptape.
At the end of the boneless, you should be in tailstop, facing the other direction, ready to start the tailblock spin.
For the tailblock spin, the back hand lets go of the rail and the front hand grabs the nose. Tug up so that your wheels are clear of the concrete. Generate the momentum of the frontside spin with your shoulders.
While feeling out the spin, don’t worry too much about the front foot. Once you get more comfortable, you can start lifting that front knee towards the chest. Eventually, you’ll gain the confidence to stomp down with the front foot to finish off the spin.
At first, the combo will look like two distinct tricks. Don’t be discouraged. With enough practice, the boneless will seamlessly transition into the tailblock spin.
Additional notes
Stewart Storrar’s video on tailblock spins is worth a watch. It’s a thoughtful discussion on hand positioning, spin momentum and progression tips—our favourite kind of freestyle skateboarding tutorial.
Watching the World Freestyle Skateboarding Championships live was a trick in itself. The time difference between Australia and Brandenburg an der Havel meant that the pros were competing at times palatable only to possums and shift workers. There was also the added drama of Twitch channels being cancelled due to copyright infringement; you had to know somebody who knew somebody who was hosting the live stream.
One of the few divisions that was held at a workable time was the Amateurs. There were 39 entrants in total. I watched every run at least once; after a while, they started to merge into one continuous stream of rail flips, wheelies, truck transfers, and unintended step-offs.
But there was one run that was as memorable as the tune it flowed to, and it was the second run by Paolo Virgilio Demurtas.
Hailing from the port city of Livorno, Demurtas is a skateboarder with 20 years’ experience in street. The Italian converted to freestyle 4 to 5 years ago, and started competing in 2022. Euro Freestyle, Amateur Division, was his first contest, where he placed a respectable 5th.
Fast forward to 2024: Demurtas is DFSO and World Freestyle Ams champion, Paderborn Masters champion and a team rider for Never Enough.
I congratulated him on his World Freestyle win, gushing something along the lines of ‘magical’, ‘so much variety’, and ‘a well-deserved first place’.
To which he responded, ‘I worked a lot on this routine’. He started divulging his planning process, which became the inspiration for Flatlandia’s series of posts on freestyle contest advice.
So how do you prepare for a freestyle contest the Demurtas way? Some of the Italian’s method is much like what we’ve seen before, and some of it matches the lyrics of the song from his 2024 season.
You’ll also risk doing the same category of tricks, according to Paolo Virgilio Demurtas. ‘Variety’, he notes,’ is what makes a run more interesting.’ The Italian skater’s routines are diverse, not just for the points, but also because he gets bored doing the same stuff.
Also, it’s never too early to start training. Half of every one of Demurtas’ skate sessions is dedicated to contest routine, the other half is for learning new tricks and skills.
Work on weaknesses
In August’s post about contest advice, we wrote about reflecting upon failed sections of a run. Good contest prep should include improving on such elements.
After reviewing his performance and the judges’ feedback, Demurtas admits that work needed to be done on two areas: ‘I will for sure add more footwork between tricks next year, and smooth out my nose spacewalk that is still inconsistent.’
Don’t step off
In Demurtas’ mind, too many mistakes can destroy a performance. He’s okay with seeing super technical tricks on Instagram or in a practice session. ‘But during [a] contest I enjoy seeing clean runs with maximum one touchdown’, even if that means downgrading the difficulty level of a trick. ‘I really get bored when I see contest runs with lot[s] of bails, even if the skater is trying crazy difficult tricks…Relying on luck is not good during a performance!’
Prepare a ‘base routine’
Using the same basic structure for every run is Demurtas’ recipe for success. Not only is it easier to build upon an existing structure than to build something from scratch, its familiarity lends comfort during the inevitable stresses of competition.
To prevent his routine from going stale, he tries to push every element with each new season:
‘[L]ast year I had a stationary spacewalk, that…became [this year’s] fakie spacewalk. The heel underflip became [the] heel underflip crossfoot. And frontside g-turn became backside g-turn.
For next year I would like for example to evolve my 360 shuvit to a 540 shuvit, my casper to become 360 casper, my g-turn to become tuck-knee g-turn, and stuff like that.’
His ambition is tempered by his need for consistency. ‘A trick is contest ready only when you can do it 6 times in a row.’ If a trick is not contest ready, the Italian skater will revert back to the simpler version. This adjustment never happens last minute: runs are tweaked 6 weeks ahead of competition to avoid disturbing the muscle memory. ‘I risk to mess up stuff if I make last-minute changes.’
Make the song fit the run (and not the other way round)
Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), Demurtas does not pick a song first and choreograph after. He usually keeps a short list of songs that he likes. 3 to 4 months before the contest, he goes through the list and selects something that fits the routine best. If warranted, the trick order gets rejigged to better match the music.
Currently, he’s selecting songs with a relaxed vibe. ‘Fast songs gave me too much anxiety during contests. 🙂 Also I’m trying to push my style in the direction of smooth and flowing.’
‘I did it my way’
In last month’s post on contest advice, World Freestyle judge Denham Hill emphasised his preference for originality: ‘I love to see skaters add their own personal touch to certain tricks or even add something I’ve never seen’.
Demurtas shares Hill’s mindset:
‘I just have fun and try to think out of the box. I always try to put my style even on standard tricks. Too many skaters fall into the trap of copying the style of a particular skater: it’s okay to be inspired but trying to imitate perfectly is like copying art, no good. It’s okay to learn solid basics, but as soon as possible…try to put your style in and experiment a lot!’
Paolo Virgilio Demurtas adds his own personal touch to rail stance at Paderborn BBQ Contest 2024. Photo credit: Philipp Rathmann.
Here concludes the third part of our series on freestyle contest advice. The fourth part, which will feature thoughts from Josh Dunstone, will be posted on October 20, 2024.
Michael Malyszko learns a new trick and demos it to Josh Dunstone.
Why freestyle?
A freestyle trick is never truly concluded. There are always other possible variations or combinations it can be weaved into, thus providing a seemingly endless source of often very challenging but rewarding possibilities.
I’m no flatland purist by any means but freestyle certainly has the most influence on my skating. Finding ways to use the skateboard in a technical and somewhat unconventional manner is simply more interesting to me.
Can you tell us where you get your inspiration from?
With the internet now constantly feeding us sooo much skate content on multiple platforms, I feel my inspiration…often comes from 50 different skaters an hour, many of whom I’ve never even heard of.
I can recall however the most pivotal source of inspiration for me, the one that fundamentally changed the way I skate. Rewind some 20 years, back when I was a teen skate rat ollieing 2 sets and bombing hills, before I even knew freestyle existed. I had no skate videos. 🙁 But my local video rental had one, just one. It was a copy of Future Primitive (1985), Bones Brigade Video II, on VHS. Mullen and Welinder blew my little mind.
What was teen Michael’s most epic freestyle trick battle?
Carousel! A battle [that w]as a result of naive ambition…
I took on carousels way too early, before my abilities were realistically ready to tackle them. Attempts were exhaustingly well into triple figures before it was finally landed.
And what is adult Michael’s current freestyle trick battle a) on flatground and b) on the bank?
Ollie finger lazer flip is currently proving to be my most challenging flatground aspiration. And on the bank; it’s truck stand treflip out.
Both of these very different tricks have one thing in common: ‘in practice’ they don’t function exactly as you would expect them to ‘in theory’. Both have subtle aspects to their mechanics [that] I haven’t quite figured out yet, which is half the battle.
You also have a hybrid setup and possibly the widest deck we’ve seen someone freestyle. Can you tell us what you’re riding?
My setup is a little on the chunky side by freestyle standards. I skate an 8.5″ run-of-the-mill popsicle deck. I should mention [that] I have no particular preference for the generic shape, just that they’re readily available in wider sizes. Why 8.5″ wide? Simply because I’m tall—6’4″ with size-12 feet. Decks smaller than 8.5″ just don’t feel right. Unfortunately this rules out pretty much all traditional freestyle-shaped decks in existence as they’re just too small for me.
Michael Malyszko rides an 8.5″ popsicle with Sk8kings offset wheels.
I’m a recent convert to offset freestyle wheels. Currently running the 55mm Sk8kings Crown Jewel wheels. The benefits of the offset shape were immediately apparent:
Not mangling the ends of your trucks while doing rail tricks
Added stability while in rail (the wheel provides a wider surface area [that is] in contact with the ground and the bottom of your shoe, rather than just the pointy end of the truck axle)
How do the Sk8kings offset wheels feel in the park compared to ‘regular’ wheels?
I honestly haven’t noticed much difference at all, probably because my previous wheels were a similar size (55mm Spitfire Tablets).
However, if you were changing from smaller (around 52mm), more classic (‘m&m’ shape) street wheels to the larger offsets, they would take some getting used to. Firstly, that little bit of added weight in the larger wheels may throw your flip tricks off a bit. Secondly, because of the larger diameter of the wheels, you may need to install riser pads for more clearance to prevent wheel bite. This also raises the height of the deck from the ground, which slightly changes the timing and angle of your pop during ollie tricks. This can really mess up your tricks at first and may take a few days of skating to fully adjust to.
You once mentioned that non-freestyle skaters are blown away when you throw in a freestyle line at the park. The tricks must look/feel so alien to those who focus on ollie-based tricks.
Do you have any advice for non-freestylers wanting to get into the game?
The great thing about anyone wanting to learn freestyle is that there really is no barrier to entry. Yes there are certainly some advantages to having a dedicated freestyle setup, but it’s not an absolute necessity to have one right away (or if you simply can’t afford it). Most freestyle tricks can be practised and performed on a street skateboard.
Like any other hobby or sport, it’s just a matter of careful observation (freestyle skate videos) and a ton of practice, practice and more practice.
The only real advice I have for someone new to freestyle is: shinguards will save you a lot of pain and injury early on, particularly when working on tricks like caspers, truck stands and the various pogos. With time and practice, your board will be less likely to whack you in the shins, and the shinguards can eventually be done away with. Although, some freestyle skaters choose to wear shinguards their entire skate life, that just comes down to personal preference.
Is this advice coming from someone who regrets not wearing shinguards back in the day? 😂
Haha! Nah, I was equipped with shinguards pretty early on. Wore them consistently from about 2003 to 2007. After that, I’d only occasionally dust them off when practicing super risky tricks.
Last question: in your opinion, what is the most catfish-sounding freestyle trick name out there?
Sidewinder!! Raddest name! But a pretty underwhelming and relatively easy trick…It shares its namesake with two of the gnarliest things: heat-seeking missiles and rattlesnakes! Yet the trick itself isn’t very gnarly.
A sidewinder rattlesnake. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Now don’t get me wrong, I like the sidewinder as a trick. I just think the name ‘sidewinder’ should’ve gone to a more difficult hard-hitting trick.
Connect: Michael Malyszko (IG: @skitznoodle) is a skater who enjoys a bit of bank and flatground freestyle. He mostly skates at his local in Melbourne’s West, but you’ll also find him skating with the Melbourne Freestyle Skaters crew (IG: @melbournefreestyleskaters) on Monday nights at Marvel Stadium, Docklands.
Last month, Sarah Park-Matott and Sean Robinson listed reasons why we should participate in contests (‘Freestyle contest advice – Part One’). Skating with friends, competing against oneself, becoming a better skater—these are all pay packets worthy of hard yakka.
A positive mindset, focusing on such goals, can help with competition jitters. Preparation also helps. ‘Just skate’ is a given, but don’t forget to do the research.
Find out how the event is structured.Is it a bracket-style competition where you go head-to-head with another entrant, like in JFSA-run competitions or Tucson Thunderdome? Or is it a traditional skate contest, where all skateboarders go through their runs and are ranked accordingly?
Read up on the judging criteria. Contests will generally post this on their websites; contact the event organisers if you need help finding/deciphering it.
Cassandre Duhem skating in front of the Paderborn BBQ Contest 2024 judges. Photo credit: Philipp Rathmann.
Tony Gale
Rookies always make the same mistakes in competitions, so here’s a few points to consider:
Don’t go back for tricks you miss. Chances are you’ll miss them again and it’ll only make things look worse; I’ve even seen people spend 45 seconds trying one trick over and over again! Just move on to the next trick—the faster you recover, the faster everyone will forget about it.
Move around. Rookies always roll into one position and do rail tricks in one spot, and it looks terrible. Even if 90% of your trick set is rail tricks, try to move around the area as much as possible to do them at different points in the space. It’ll look better.
Diversify.90% of your run shouldn’t be rail tricks. It shouldn’t be 90% kickflips either! Even if you can tell the difference between 20 subtly nuanced casper variations, the audience won’t—and the judges will be bored of seeing that many caspers. Mix things up.
Plan. Don’t go out there and improvise—you’ll forget some tricks and repeat others. Also, having a solid plan you’ve practised means you can swap to autopilot and relax a lot more. Nothing worse than panicking halfway through a run because you don’t know what to do next!
Do footwork—and do it right.‘Footwork as a trick’ is not footwork. Don’t just tick a box in the middle of the run; footwork is supposed to be something fluid that fills the gaps, so make it smooth and fit it in between tricks.
Don’t do footplants. Just don’t.
Denham Hill
Judging a freestyle contest is notoriously difficult, not only due to the subjective nature of categories such as ‘style’ but also due to the judging systems which vary from contest to contest. Skating a contest feels easy by comparison!
As a rough idea, judges will be scoring you on:
Variety. Did you display tricks from several categories in your run?
Technicality. How difficult or technical were your tricks?
Consistency. This is the biggest killer! Is your run seamless and fluid with limited bails or step-offs?
Style. Very subjective! This can include musical interpretation. Is your run executed with flow, ease, and good technique?
Originality. Have you included some ‘signature’ tricks in your run? Have you added your own personal touch to the execution of some tricks or the run overall?
Judges are looking for a run which balances all the key elements and showcases the very best work of the skater.
Some judges assign a lot of weight to consistency, looking for a run free of any mistakes. Consistency is important, but I [personally] value a stylish and technical, well-planned run with good variety over a ‘perfect’ run with no step-offs.
I can’t speak for every judge, but here’s an idea of what I’m looking for:
I want to see a fluid and seamless run which uses the entire contest space.
I like to see a good mixture of tricks from all categories, executed well.
I particularly like to see some originality worked in there; I love to see skaters add their own personal touch to certain tricks, or even add in something I’ve never seen.
I can’t remember for the life of me who said it, but you should be able to see a silhouette of someone skating, with no other information, and know who is skating right away. I think that’s a sign of a skater who truly has their own individual style and technique, and that’s what I’m looking for in a contest run. No pressure!
Orson Merry pogos in front of the World Round-Up 2024 judges, including Denham Hill (left). Photo credit: Cheyenne Williams.
Kevin Wessels
I will give you a little inside info about our way of judging tricks and the breakdown we use to give tricks points.
Firstly, stances are not factored in, so it doesn’t matter if something is nollie, frontside, backside or switch, etc. Also, setups don’t make a difference. We just judge the tricks.
Some tricks are easy for one person and hard for another. It’s not fair to judge a trick difficulty on own experience. Because of this, we look at the difficulty of the manipulation of the board. First we start off with a 1-point trick—this will be a stationary shuvit or kickflip/heelflip rotation. Tricks like tailstop fingerflips are great examples of this category. Then you got the rolling variant which adds 1 point to the trick, so a rolling fingerflip will be 2 points. Then you can combine the trick like a varial rolling fingerflip. We will give 1 point for the shuvit, 1 point for the flip and 1 point for doing it rolling, so it will be 3 points.
There are a lot of oddities that will fall out[side] of a category like impossibles, truck transfers, manuals and so on.
Impossibles will get more points…because of the technicality.
Truck transfers are some of the hardest tricks because of the little room for error and physical requirement and usually start at 7 or 8 points.
Manuals have a cap on difficulty of the manual…A normal manual has a 3-point cap; if you can show proper balance, like [in] a g-turn, you can reach this cap. But a Swedish nose manual can go up to 8 or even 9 points because of the difficulty.
Hang ten nose manual and nose manual at the World Round-Up 2024. Photo credit: Cheyenne Williams
This is usually what we use as a reference for judging. Sometimes tricks will get debated during the run; we will always communicate with each other to make sure we’re on the same page. But this is a little insight on how we judge the difficulty of tricks.
This is only a small part of the judging of course—a perfect run won’t only be working with difficult tricks if there is no style, flow, footwork, etc.
Here concludes the second part of our series on freestyle contest advice. The third part, which will feature thoughts from Paolo Virgilio Demurtas, will be posted on September 30, 2024.
The most accessible form of skateboarding…Skills learned transfer to other types of skateboarding.
A.T.S. was the first freestyle-skateboard manufacturer in Australia. Can you tell us young ones a little about this passion project?
A.T.S. (All Terrain Skateboards) was born out of the ashes of the 1970s boom, when skateboarding was going through the dark ages of skateboarding and everything was influenced by the USA market. The majority of skateboarders would skate all the different types of skateboarding—freestyle, slalom, and transition/banks and pools, which later became vert skateboarding—so my generation of skateboarders were all-round[ers] in a nutshell.
At the time, freestyle was the main focus in the magazines, and it was changing from the surf style to [a] more gymnastic style of freestyle [with] lots of handstand variations, etc. So after working in the skateboarding industry in Australia for about 4 years, I went to the USA to fulfil my dream of competing there.
When I came back after my second trip that lasted 6 months, I decided to start up A.T.S. and make boards for the different types of skateboarding, mainly vert and freestyle. Freestyle was not as popular as it used to be, but I decided to still make freestyle boards out of the sheer love for the art.
Can you share with us some details of these vintage freestyle boards?
A.T.S. Freestyle 1986
Photo credits: David Mock
27.25″ x 7.25″
WB 12.25″
Nose 5″
Tail 5.5″
Slightly concave flair
Made from silver ash
1989-1990 A.T.S. Freestyle
Photo credits: David Mock
27.25″ x 7.25″
WB 12.25″
Nose 5.25″
Tail 5.5″
Spoon-nose kick
Slight rocker for lower centre of gravity
Made from rock maple
Personal prototype freestyle boards
Photo credit: David Mock
I’ve been riding a larger size freestyle board since 1989 through to now.
8″ x 29″
WB 14″
Double kick, symmetrical shape
My current board is a blank that you can buy online from Kick Push Skate. I bought the mellow concave, flattened it by parking my car on it…[, t]hen cut my own shape out of it.
Good for rolling fast, footwork and other high speed moves.
Are you still working regularly on your freestyle? What does an average David Mock sesh look like?
Not as much prior to the last online World Round-Up [in 2020]. I’ve been working a lot.
David’s competition run entry for World Round-Up 2020
When I have a session, I do a full body warm-up, stretching, and specific movements for my knees, wrists, and ankles that are similar to the motion you have to do for certain tricks and footwork. After the warm-up, I’ll do footwork with single tricks, but do it 10 times in a row to build consistency and stamina/endurance. Then I’ll work on some rail tricks, truck stands, manuals and then I’ll try some new things that I haven’t done.
What’s your favourite trick to work on at the moment?
Re-learning M80s, and pressure flip.
How do you usually approach learning/re-learning a trick? Any tips for other freestylers?
I usually break it down into beginning, middle, and end (landing).
E.g. M80—practice the kickflip then the switch stance to pivot (kickturn) 180 degrees.
Whose M80 variation/line inspires you the most at the moment?
Probably Mike Osterman, clean and smooth.
You’ve been moderating a Facebook group for Australian freestylers. Can you tell us a little about the group?
Basically, it covers everything to do with freestyle skateboarding in Australia: history, equipment (board setups), contests, discussions on freestyle, what tricks people are working on.
50-50. 1985 Botanical Gardens, Sydney. Photo credit: Matt DavisM80. 1990s Bondi Beach. Photo credit: Shaun GladwellMock’s well-loved boards from 1983’s Californian competitions. Photo credit: David Mock
Do you know of any other Aussie freestyle communities that people can sign up to out there?
Not at this time.
Okay, final random question: was the 80s better for freestyle or is now the freestyle ‘golden age’?
Definitely now.
The standard of freestyle is much higher
more people doing it worldwide
freestyle brands run by freestyle skateboarders, not to mention
more contests around the world and all the different groups that exist on social media.
Connect: David Mock (IG: @david_mockphotography) is Australia’s original freestyle legend. During the COVID lockdown years, he competed in Masters at the World Round-Up 2020, and is still agitating for a freestyle competition held locally. You’ll find him shredding in Deception Bay, Queensland.
