The average skateboarder hates landing in ‘primo’, and for good reason:
‘Primo’ (aka rail) is a freestyle fundamental though, so if you’ve pivoted to freestyle from another skate discipline, you will need to overcome that fear of landing on the side of your board. In addition, you might want to stop using the word ‘primo’ in the presence of freestyle purists unless you’re okay with trolls coming out at night and clobbering you.
‘Primo’ vs. Rail
‘[R]ail is one of the basic positions in freestyle…this position isn’t referred to as “primo” – a primo – or primoslide, to give the trick its full name – involves actually powering into this position at speed, usually sliding 180 degrees as you do it.’
Firstly, you might want to make your skateboard more rail friendly. We’ve mentioned this before on Flatlandia and we’ll mention it again: get some offset wheels. Balancing on 8mm axle nuts is tricky, balancing on 53-56mm wheels is less so. If you do go down the offset-wheel route, you may also want to swap out your trucks to a slightly smaller size and use extra washers to make your wheels close to flush with the rail of the board.
Tighter trucks will also increase rail stability, though how tight you go will depend on your personal preference.
Once you’ve modified your skateboard, spend some time in rail. Alternate in heelside rail and toeside rail while you multitask with some doomscrolling, kendama, bicep curls, etc. Just get comfortable being in this stance.
Rail-specific proprioception exercises are another way to desensitise. Hop on and hop off. Hop from side to side in both directions, with your good foot and your bad foot. Do hippie jumps and varial hippie jumps. Hop on one leg. Done it all in heelside rail? Then try everything again in toeside rail.
Which is toeside rail, which is heelside rail?
Are your toes on the rail of the deck? Congratulations, you’re in toeside rail.
Your heels are on the rail of the deck? Now you’re in heelside rail.
Getting good at hops and jumps in rail will not only make it easier to get into position for tricks like cooper flips, they will also prep you for landing in rail via caspers, freestyle kickflips and other shenanigans.
Hopefully these tips will help you feel less apprehesive about rail and allow you to tackle some proper rail tricks. There are a bunch of great tutorials out there by the likes of Tony Gale, Terry Synnott, and Mike Osterman. Flatlandia is slowly compiling them all in one epic YouTube playlist for your reference. Now go out and be the rail!
Grew up in Vancouver Canada [where it] rained a lot so we started skating in our carport. That made us concentrate on freestyle due to the confined space, although we skated everything on dry days.
What was the freestyle scene like when you were in Canada?
1975 was early days for skateboarding so everything was just starting out. 360 spins were what got you noticed. I grew up skating with Kevin Harris who would eventually become Canada’s first professional skateboarder.
All about the spins: Powell-Peralta rider Kevin Harris.
He was always spinning more than I. I would get dizzy easily and fall off. He ended up doing 105 spins on one board and 1032 on two boards (a world record still) back in the late 1970s.
Kevin Harris talks about spinning on two boards and breaking the world record.
Did you ever figure out the not-getting-dizzy part of multiple 360s?
No, [I] was never able to get over [it]. I could do six and that was it. Even just a few years ago, same thing happened when trying [spins] so I just concentrate on daffies, pogos, and other tricks.
Are you freestyling much nowadays?
Not as much as I would like—busy at work and life getting in the way at the moment.
Indeed, Maple Road Skateboards and Aikenheads must be a lot to juggle. Which one out of the two is the current fave skate child (and why)?
Maple Road is my favourite because of the history behind it. Aikenheads makes the money to finance the Maple Road brand so really…[one] can’t exist without the other.
Word on the street is that Maple Road is bringing out a new freestyle deck. Can you tell us a bit about how that is going?
Yes, we are working on it. Had some prototypes made that are being tested by a freestyle skater in California at the moment. I won’t see them until I get back to Canada in August. They are produced by Control Skateboard MFG in Montreal.
Any hints on what it will be like?
Double kick 7.4″ wide, 12.75″ wheel base. Nose 5.75″ and tail 6″. Mellow concave. Graphics done by Shane (IG: @graphicaddiction).
Exciting times for Australian freestyle. Hopefully we’ll be seeing this board around soon.
It’s also great to see Maple Road sponsoring freestyle skaters as well: Rohan Cowley, Josh Dunstone, and the late Micky Bluebird. The tribute deck had a beautiful graphic. Can you tell us a bit about that one?
Micky was a very special lady. So passionate about skateboarding, wild life and ‘I Dream of Jeanie’.
I thought it would be a fitting graphic to remember her by. I usually let my graphic designer run with stuff with a short brief and he knocked it out of the park as usual.
Apart from Maple Road, you also stock some Waltz skateboards and other freestyle goodies at your shop, Aikenheads. Is there a lot of interest from the walk-ins?
A few walk-ins purchase freestyle stuff but the majority goes online shipping across Australia including Tasmania.
Final (random) question: ‘Saran Wrap’ or ‘Glad Wrap’? What sounds better?
GLAD WRAP.
Connect: Glen Billwiller is the owner of Aikenheads Skateboards (Wangara, Perth, Western Australia). It is pretty much the only brick-and-mortar store in Australia that carries a range of freestyle parts—check out the website for gear sans international-shipping costs. He’s also the founder and owner of Maple Road Skateboards, which sponsors Aussie freestylers like Rohan Cowley and Josh Dunstone.
A flatground skater might do a trick like a kickflip…and then they might push. Then they’ll push again. And then…a pop shuvit…Whereas freestyle is a little bit more about those in-between moments, those little footwork pieces, the little details that spice up the banger tricks that you have.
What separates a freestyler from a street skater who does freestyle tricks?
Unlike a street skater, a freestyler has a different kind of flow. Once they reach a certain level of proficiency, not only does each trick seem effortless, they transition seamlessly.
There is what freestylers call ‘footwork’ that is unique to the discipline. If you skated street, vert, or park, rolling, pushing and pumping is what happens between tricks. In freestyle, footwork happens.
Same tricks linked differently: Michael Malyszko rolls and kickpushes while Josh Dunstone uses freestyle footwork.
Footwork helps link seemingly disparate sets of tricks into one uniform whole. They get the skater spatially from A to B. They are the respite from the drama of flashy combos. And if used elegantly and creatively, they can become a skater’s signature style. The closest approximation to freestyle footwork is longboard dancing, though the two are not exactly the same.
Unlike rail, casper, truck, and ollie/flip tricks, footwork can take months, sometimes years, to become proficient, but once someone has mastered it, it is magical to watch.
Mode rider John Sawyer’s unique footwork is what defines his style.
It’s never too early to start working on footwork, and there’s no such thing as too much footwork preparation.
Footwork for Beginner Freestylers
There are already several online videos explaining how to endover/monster walk, walk-the-dog, etc., so we’re not going to repeat that here.
What we do want to emphasise is that, unlike other tricks, footwork takes an age to master, so you might want to start practising footwork as soon as you’re comfortable riding your board.
In a walk-the-dog tutorial, Sarah Park-Matott recommended combining current trick battles with footwork to incrementally improve the latter; we think this is a great idea. Learning how to get into toeside rail? Put two walk-the-dogs in front of every rail entry. Obsessed with shuvits? Do two backside endovers before your backside pop-shuv.
Footwork for Intermediate Freestylers
It takes a while to create something other than the most basic (and predictable) footwork combinations. Expand your freestyle-footwork vocabulary by keeping tabs on good footwork. Some freestylers keep a notebook. Others save snippets of footage to a folder on their phone.
If it is within your ability, try to re-create, reinterpret and or remix other people’s lines. It’s poor form to copy and paste someone’s entire routine for your own competition run, but for the sake of learning, it should be fine.
Footwork for Advanced Freestylers
Freestyle has been around for over half a century. Sometimes it’s hard creating something that hasn’t been done before.
We thought of an exercise that may help forge new connections between tricks. It’s based on the ‘cut-up technique’ that writers and other creatives have been using since the 1920s*.
On a piece of paper, write down a list of footwork that you can do. Cut it up and then toss the pieces around in a bag and pull out three tricks. You can try to combo these three tricks, either in order of how they were picked or in no particular order. Hopefully these spontaneous pairings will force you to try something different, something ingenious perhaps.
Setups for Footwork
Unlike rail tricks and truck tricks, freestyle footwork is fairly easy to learn on most skateboards. Yup, you can learn a lot of footwork on a popsicle board with regular wheels and bushings, while you contemplate committing to a dedicated setup; it’s just more challenging, especially if your popsicle deck has steep concave.
While researching this topic, we asked a bunch of freestylers what they thought about footwork-specific setups. It was hard to find consensus, but there was one thing the freestylers all agreed on: loose trucks hinder footwork.
But how tight do you need to go? The tighter the truck, the more precise tic-tac/pivot-style tricks and 360 spins will feel. Nevertheless, a little bit of squishiness is desirable for footwork tricks with a carving component (i.e. flamingoes).
Additionally, skidplates are handy for preserving your kicks when learning manuals, tailstop shuffles, and spacewalks, while less abrasive griptape will help preserve your shoes.
A (Not Quite) Definitive List of Footwork
It’s hard to search for online tutorials if you don’t know the trick names. Here’s some freestyle footwork names to feed the search engines:
Endovers
Flamingoes
G-turns
Hang Tens
Jaywalks
Monster walks
Mroz twist
Shifties
Sidewalks (aka ‘k-walks’)
Slingblade
Smoothies
Spacewalks
Switchblades
Thrusters
Tic-tacs (and kickturns)
Toespin (aka ‘pirouette’)
Turn-in
Walk-the-dog
Walk-the-cow
360 spins
Before We Go
Footwork is wild. It takes effort to tame it, but it is an awesome, fun, brain-stretching kind of thing that’s unique to freestyle. Practise it compulsively, so that one day you can dance around next to the sea like this:
*Some extra reading: BBC News’ ‘What is the Cut-Up Method?’ (2015) explains the evolution of this arty technique, from its Dadaist origins to 21st-century video cut-ups by Lenka Clayton.
Skateboarding for me started with one of the COVID lockdowns. I followed female skateboarders on social media—people like Sarah Park-Matott (IG: @sparkmatott) and Jane Falconer-White (IG: @skatejanefw). Both had accessible skate content. Sometimes they would showcase freestyle. I remember watching Jane trying to figure out monster walks and thinking, ‘That looks like a fun way to get better at 180-kickturns.’
Those first few months, I mostly focused on park skates. However, I did pick up a Waltz Bixby Mini along the way and dabbled with basic freestyle tricks: backside switchblades, monster walks, and rail walks.
I fractured my foot maybe 6 months into skateboarding? Speed wobbles at Northcote Skatepark. :’(
Doctor’s report (2022): ‘Comminuted fracture with mild impaction of cuboid…Minimally displaced fracture…of the lateral cuneiform’. Fixed with plates, wires and other stuff.
It took 4 months before I was allowed to skate again (not really, but I did it anyway). Bailing on transition was too hard on the injured side, so I just worked on my flatground. When things were 99% recovered, freestyle felt good; everything else kind of sucked.
A 4-month period of no skating would have been difficult. It’s a short time frame in the grand scheme of things but it does make a huge difference when you’re physically active. When you came back to skating after your injury, what got you to go for learning freestyle tricks? Was it experimenting with what tricks felt better to do?
Freestyle was done out of necessity. I lost a lot of muscle mass and ankle mobility that year. When I stepped back on board, I’d fall within half an hour due to fatigue/poor balance*. Putting skateboarding on an indefinite hiatus while I worked on strength, mobility and endurance was not an option so I picked tricks that could be done stationary or at a slow roll or done with an assist: toeside rail entries, rail-to-rail hippie varial, thrusters, walk-the-dogs. Lots of rail and footwork.
*You lose your sense of balance and proprioception when you stop using your leg(s). Something else to relearn while rehabbing.
Carolyn Nguyen does a rail whip at Noble Park Skatepark.
With all the footwork and rail you’ve done, the effort you’ve made has without a doubt paid off. You noticed the lack of freestylers here in Melbourne as well while you were learning freestyle tricks, didn’t you? Is that what inspired you to create Flatlandia?
Not just Melbourne. There’s a lack of Australian freestylers. Though maybe freestyle skateboarding in Australia is like an iceberg: only a fraction of it is visible.
Because it is so hidden, skate shops and skate brands don’t think that there’s a local market for freestyle decks. Freestyle-curious skaters don’t stick with the discipline because there’s a perceived lack of peers.
For a while, I was hoping for someone with better skate cred (more skilled/experienced at skateboarding or already in the industry) would pick up the slack. You know, raise freestyle skateboarding’s profile here? Start something similar to what they have in Europe, the States, Japan, or Malaysia?
No one did though, so I decided to be that person for a while. I don’t think I’ll ever be Paderborn Freestyle Skate contestant material, but I have writing and editing experience. Hence Flatlandia came into being. It’s my off-board project: online articles highlighting Australian freestyle skateboarding.
The lack of a market definitely is felt, both of us have seen local freestylers use popsicle decks. With the perceived lack of people, is it that got you to do your ‘5 minutes with’ articles on local freestylers?
Yes, I’m hoping the ‘5 minutes with’ will raise awareness. More importantly, it will hopefully help connect the interviewees with their locals. And if there are no locals to skate with, at least they all know a little bit more about each other and it’s easier to get an online conversation going.
Plus I get to ask people stupid questions like ‘Saran Wrap or Glad Wrap?’
That sort of thing is great! Being able to ask questions like that doesn’t happen to often. How else do you go about promoting freestyle and Flatlandia? By going to skateparks to show off freestyle and talk about what you do?
Yes, sometimes it’s something as simple as taking up space at the local park. Someone invariably comes up to you to ask what you are doing or why your setup looks different. Those who already freestyle get hyped because sometimes this is the first time they’ve seen someone else (and another freestyle setup) ‘in the wild’.
I’ve written an article which discusses the importance of being visible in order to find other freestylers. Hopefully it encourages freestylers to start skating at skateparks as well as the usual somewhere-out-of-the-way flatground.
Lastly, got any tips for those interested in taking up freestyle?
Skate journeys are better with people. Find like-minded friends online or in person so that you’ve got someone to talk freestyle with. The freestyle community is really supportive; even contests feel like a big reunion amongst friends instead of rivals (or so I’ve heard).
Also, find some offset wheels. That’s your first piece of hardware you should get if a complete is too challenging a purchase (financially or logistically). Most skate shops stock Powell Peralta’s Nano Cubics but if you can, try to get Waltz, Sk8kings, Decomposed or Momentum wheels as these are from dedicated freestyle brands that fund freestyle skaters/events. You can buy them from Aikenheads Skate Shop or from the Flatlandia shop. 😉
Connect: Carolyn regularly skates with the Melbourne freestyle crew (IG: @melbournefreestyleskaters) at Marvel Stadium, Docklands. She also keeps a skate diary on Instagram (@skaternoon), which mostly focuses on freestyle with the occasional tuxedo cat photo.
It’s not that learning by yourself is bad…but learning with people just seems to hit some sweet spot in the human brain.
Tom Vanderbilt (2021), author of beginners: the curious power of lifelong learning
A freestyle skateboarder can skate anywhere that has flatground: garages, tennis courts, the footpaths in front of homes. This freedom is both a blessing and a curse. No one will see you eat dirt, but no skate homie will strike up a conversation with you either.
I made some skate friends from my brief stint at park skating. But once I switched to freestyle, whenever I went to the park, I felt like an outsider. While others got hyped over treflips, I had little concept of how such tricks operated or how hard they were.
I didn’t mind being surrounded by folks who spoke a different skate language, since this was to be expected. After all, Rodney Mullen, the original freestyle GOAT, infamously skated alone in the stupidly early hours of the morning and epitomised socially awkward skateboarder. ‘Freestyle’ was synonymous with ‘solitude’ and ‘on the outside looking in’.
The realisation that things could be so much more came when Jocelyn Teague (Northern Territory, Australia) and David Schmiede (Germany) visited Melbourne in late 2023. Here were people who said ‘rail’ instead of ‘primo’ and rode proper freestyle decks. It was serotonergic. When they left, I didn’t want to go back to skating alone. This feeling of camaraderie was just too good to let go.
So I started actively seeking freestylers in real life and now I skate regularly with a local crew (@melbournefreestyleskaters) and connect with freestylers from other states. These are some observations based on my experience:
Skating in public
I was visiting the Rockdale skatepark one night, lazily flicking railwhips at the most out-of-the-way spot I could find. A skater approached me, asking if he could try my Waltz board. There was nothing out of the ordinary about him. He rode a popsicle board, did tricks on transition. How surprised I was when he proceeded to work through nosehook impossibles, no-handed pogos, walk-the-dogs, and rail flips.
Never underestimate the power of skating in public, be it a skatepark or in front of the local skate shop. Invariably, most of the skaters who talk to you will just want to try a kickflip on your freestyle board. But if you’re lucky, you’ll meet a closet freestyler or inspire someone to give rail tricks a go.
No more hiding
Rather than doing a jam in some car park somewhere, people are…saying, ‘Right, let’s get into these much more public places where skateboarding happens and make freestyle more visible’, you know?
So people are kind of getting out in different parks, places where there’s other skaters, and making sure they can be seen and they’re taking up space.
There’s some really nice freestylers on Instagram out there. David Schmiede, who visited Melbourne last year, forwarded me a profile. ‘Guy from Mike Osterman’s story is from Perth.’ Hurrah! Another name to add to the list of Australian freestyle-curious folk.
I know that social media seems like a time-destroying black hole full of pet memes and skate-progression videos that invariably make you feel bad about your own skate journey.
This dog skates obstacles better than me.
However, they are also a powerful networking tool. The freestylers you meet online may not necessarily live in the same city/state/country as you. But they may stop by for a skate when they travel through. Or they may share potential leads that help you find crew near you.
If you’re an Australian looking for freestylers in your area, try posting on private Facebook groups like Freestyle Skateboarding Australia and Australian Freestyle Skateboarding. There’s also the ‘australia-meetup’ thread in the Waltz Skateboarding Discord.
If you have a TikTok, YouTube or Instagram account that’s dedicated to skates, put your hometown in your bio to make it easier for locals to find you.
Facebook is one place to find 182 new freestyle-skateboarding friends.
Be brave
Even though I knew I lived in the same city as freestyle pro Josh Dunstone, it took an organised meet with interstate and international people to get me skating with him.
October 2023 freestyle meet at Melbourne IMAX: Josh Dunstone (VIC, Australia), Carolyn Nguyen (VIC, Australia), Jocelyn Teague (NT, Australia), David Schmiede (Germany)
And even then, being relatively fresh to freestyle (and skateboarding in general), I was nervous. We barely exchanged words at that first sesh, and I couldn’t do any tricks in front of him. I needn’t have been so tense. Josh was genuinely stoked to meet someone who enjoyed freestyle.
Talking to a stranger is daunting, but if they genuinely like freestyle as much as you do, they’ll actively listen to what you have to say, because stumbling across another freestyler is like stumbling across a good flat white outside of Australia; only emoticons can best express what one feels at such moments. 🙌.
A final word
Yes, freestyle skateboarding is a lonely sport, but it need not be. Do take up space at the local park. Do network online, and seize those opportunities to meet IRL when they come your way.
Also, don’t forget to subscribe to the flatlandia blog and follow us on our socials (Instagram: @flatlandiafreestyle) for Australian freestyle skateboarding content. Help us help you make some community happen.
