Question: How to fix bad skateboarding habits
When learning new skateboarding tricks, it's easy to develop a bad habit. Too easy. Most skaters have to deal with it - maybe you always land with one foot off the board, or you kick the board the wrong way in your kickflips, or maybe you always pull one foot off the board and catch yourself when you drop in. Whatever your bad skateboarding habit, the time to break that bad habit is NOW.
Answer: First, you need to figure out why you are doing the wrong thing. Is it because you've simply learned a bad habit from doing it wrong too many times? Or, are you scared? There is a big difference. Take a good look at yourself and be honest.
If you are scared
- first off, that's normal in skateboarding. I tell people this all the time - if you are scared of getting hurt, that doesn't mean you are a wuss, it means that you are smart! Getting hurt HURTS! You understand that skateboarding is dangerous, and that produces fear.But where you go from there is what counts. Sure you can get hurt, but you can't let that rule you. Read this FAQ on fear for more help.
Now, you might be experiencing fear and not even be totally aware of it. If you have the problem where one of your feet always seems to land off of the board, that's called Chikenfoot, and it can develop into a serious bad skateboarding habit if you don't attack it now. Read this FAQ on chickenfoot for help.
If you just have a bad habit
- Maybe it has nothing to do with fear, but you just have some nagging bad habit that you don't know how to break. That can happen to the best of us. Here are some tricks to breaking your bad skating habit:
- Take a break - That's right, give whatever trick is giving you grief a break. Take a few days, and do something completely different. If you are having a hard time with kickflips, then try manuals, or carving. If ollies are messing you up, then head to the skate park and learn to drop in. Do something totally different. Ride a bike. Run. But you don't want to just sit on your butt - you want to stay active, but in a different way. When you do this, it gives your brain a chance to think about stuff behind the scenes. It gives your body a chance to reset its muscle memory. You should really take a break from time to time even if you DON'T have any bad skateboarding habits.
- Visualize it correctly - Sit still, and picture yourself doing the trick the right way. Walk yourself though it in your head. It's amazing how much this can help. It sounds weird, but your brain is pretty powerful, even if you don't think you use it much!
- Practice - There just isn't any shortcut to learning some things. Sometimes, time and practice are what it takes. You might need to just push through and re-learn how to do the trick correctly.
- Tweak it a little - Sometimes, it takes changing one small thing at a time. Some habits seem huge, where you know you are doing all kinds of things wrong at the same time. Focus on ONE, and do that ONE thing right. Then, do another. Re-teach your body to do the thing differently, in parts, and that should help with the whole thing coming together correctly.
