Tailwhip, barspin, manuals – it's a little different what you do when you want to challenge yourself beyond just rolling around on your scooter. We don't think there are very many experiences that beat the one you get when you've learned a new trick for the first time. Therefore, we would like to give you our guide on how to get started with learning some of the most basic tricks on scooters. Tricks that help you progress once you have them down and can execute them perfectly nine times out of ten.
8 cool tricks on scooters
Every start is hard. So here are a few tips on how to go about it as you begin learning how to become a respected rider.
1: Bunny hop
Make your scooter lift off the ground.
The bunny hop is one of the first tricks you should learn on a scooter. It gives you the technique to get your scooter off the ground - and therefore it is one of the basic tricks that paves the way and gives a good understanding of countless other cool tricks. For example, a tailwhip, which we will look at later - but also grinds and many other different types of tricks.
Make sure to bend your knees well and jump up while holding onto the bar and lifting the entire scooter up. It's easier to practice this trick when your scooter is moving a little bit. And preferably on a flat surface to begin with. Otherwise, it's just a matter of practicing the timing. The more you bend your knees, the higher you'll be able to jump - it's all about timing!
2: Tailwhip
Jump and rotate your deck 360 degrees around the axis of the bar.
Start by getting your scooter well in the air before attempting a tailwhip. It simply helps to have practiced your bunny hops so you have a good handle on them before moving on to this classic trick. Even though many beginners want to jump straight to the tailwhip. We understand that! But it helps a lot to have a good bunny hop first.
When your scooter is in the air, you use your back foot to send the deck into rotation. But actually you have to use your hands and arms to help the deck along so that it reaches all the way around and you can land on it again when the rotation is complete. You can easily practice the movement with your front foot on the ground to get a good feel for the timing and coordination between the back foot and the arm movements. Otherwise, it's just a matter of practicing over and over until you get it!
3: Bar spin
Rotate the bar once around its own axis.
Another trick that's all about getting your scooter off the ground - this time it's just about the bar and not the tire rotating a full turn before you grab it with your hands again.
Start possibly with a 180-degree bar spin, where you use your strongest hand to almost throw the bar to your weaker hand while the scooter is in the air. You can practice the trick by letting the front end of your scooter hang over a curb or similar so that the front wheel is free while you get a feel for the movement. Once you can do a 180-degree bar spin, you can move on to a 360-degree bar spin, where you “throw” the bar with your strongest hand and catch it again with your strongest hand after a complete rotation. After this you can start combining the trick with a bunny hop to get a real barspin on flatground.
4: Manual
Ride on the back wheel of your scooter.
Good manuals are very much about practice. It's simply about finding the right balance between too little lift, where you have trouble keeping the front wheel off the ground, and too much lift, where the scooter just flies away from you under your feet. Begin by placing your feet correctly. One foot should preferably be over the brake, while the other is placed directly in front - i.e. relatively far back on the deck. Use your back foot to regulate your balance when you start to lean back too far. When you start to lean too far forward, you can change the center of gravity by dropping to your knees while pulling on the bar. These are the two techniques you must learn to use to regulate balance at all times while your scooter is riding on the rear wheel.
As with the bunny hop, it's a trick that opens the doors to cool combinations and a whole new bag of cool manual tricks on flatground and on mannypads.
5: Fake
Ride backwards on your scooter.
Learning to ride a fakie also helps open up all the cool fakie tricks where you ride backwards on your scooter.
The easiest way to learn how to ride a fakie is to ride quietly up a bank or a ramp and then ride back again fakie, gravity helping you along the way. Again, it's a trick that just needs to be practiced until you have the technique as part of your natural muscle memory without thinking too much about it. Therefore, train it from time to time until you have 100% control and balance in your body.
6: Nose pivot
Turn your scooter 180 degrees while (briefly) balancing on the front wheel.
A nose pivot is performed by leaning forward and "pushing" to the bar, so that your scooter is forced onto the front wheel. Then you lean to the side so that the scooter turns 180 degrees until you put the rear wheel down again and ride fakie. A quick pirouette on the front wheel that looks cool and is an effective trick for turning around on the fly.
Make sure you have a good handle on fakie driving before you try this trick. When you get really good at it, you can combine your pivot with an extra 180 in the air, so you get a full 360-degree rotation. A simple trick and a delicious combo that looks extremely cool on the flatground!
7: 180
A bunny hop with a 180-degree rotation in the air.
Your next natural progression, once you've mastered the bunny hop, a nose pivot, and running a fakie, is the 180 (one eighty). Here you turn your body in connection with a bunny hop and rotate your whole body and the scooter until you land safely in fakie. Make sure you get down to your knees really well and get a lot of power in your jump the first few times you train your 180.
You can also use the 180 on a ramp or bank to go down in regular stance like when you went up. So it's also a way to practice 180s without having to fake it afterwards.
8: One hander/no hander/no footer
Once you've got the basic tricks down, you can vary your air tricks on a scooter by letting go of the bar briefly with one or both hands while you're in the air - and then grabbing the bar again before lands. It requires good technique and is a little more next level than many of the tricks we have previously described. But the higher you jump, the easier it is.
You can also do a no footer, which is a trick where you take both feet off the board while in the air. After this, a whole world of wild tricks is open, where you can do different things with your feet, which are called something special - then you are definitely on to your next level as a rider.
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