Thursday, July 19, 2012

Four Basic Stances in Skateboarding

Photo credits to Gordon Gabrinez
One of the things that you have to know in skateboarding is the different stances for skateboarding tricks. These stances make a trick harder or easier but mostly, it depends upon you and your preferred tricks.

There are four basic stances in skateboarding: fakie, nollie, switch and normal. So for every normal trick, there are three other ways to do it. So if you learned a new trick, you can instantly try it on different stances to multiply your tricks. ;)



  • Normal stance. This is your preferred stance with your front foot on the front trucks and your back foot on the tail going forward. There are two kind of skaters out there: regular and goofy. Goofy skaters skate with their right foot forward and regular skaters use their left.
  • Fakie. A fakie is the exact opposite of nollie. This is where you place your front foot in the middle of the board and your back foot on the nose, going forward. For me, fakie is much easier compared to a nollie and are good for beginners like us.
  • Nollie. Nollie is fakie on switch stance. What happens is that your back foot is on the nose and your front foot is in the middle of the board. The weird thing is most skaters that are comfortable with nollie, struggle with fakie.
  • Switch. Switch is the exact opposite of either regular or goofy stance. For regular skaters, the switch stance would be goofy and vice versa. Switch is not for the faint hearted and is recommended that you be accustomed to riding a skateboard.

Get comfortable with each of these stances throughout your sessions. This will help you get accustomed with riding a skateboard. Start rolling slowly, especially for nollie and switch, then you can move up your speed and accomplish tricks.

For beginners, understanding these stances can be quite confusing. But I do hope this article helped you with any misunderstandings with the stances. If you have any suggestions, you can comment or contact us.

Skate safe and see you next post. :)

1 comment:

  1. This is nice, thanks for the tips. I also like to skate.

    ReplyDelete