How To Actually Progress At Skateboarding

Well hello and welcome my friends, my name is Dan Webbs and today you join me on yet another cold wet morning and today we're going over 10 tips to keep your skateboard career progressive forward even when mother nature says no. Let's get straight into it. Okay so the first one is repetition right so we're going to want to be doing everything that we do in skateboarding as much and as frequently as possible. As soon as you learn a trick the battle does not end there you just have to keep going going going. Learn tricks around that trick once you get your shove it, learn how to do a shove it and then a little 180 reverse straight after. Once you get the kickflip try and do one where you do a kickflip and then switch your stance in the air we call that a kickflip sex change. Develop your tricks and always add new things onto them and when you do something and learn it keep doing it because when you first get that trick the battle only begins there. That's just life saying all right you can do it but let's see you practice it to actually get it good. That's what I always think in my head anyway. So make sure that when you get your trick all you do for the next few days in between other tricks in between skating here there and everywhere on your way home on your way to school just keep doing those tricks keep trying them don't be afraid of being seen failing the trick because the person that is seen failing the trick a thousand times is that same person that a year later has that trick every time. So repetition repeat your tricks all the time fit them in wherever you can that's number one onto number two. The number two is going to be super relevant to the kind of day you're in today which is a really really moist morning even though the sun's out in the winter it's going to remain wet for the majority of the time especially if you don't have a nice smooth skate park the rougher the concrete the longer it takes to dry. Skating in the UK it's really difficult so we've got to make sure we put as much effort in to keep our progression going throughout the winter even more so than we do in the summer and to do that you're going to skate at home and no I don't mean pulling out the board and doing a drop in off your mum's dinner table what I'm talking about is taking the trucks and wheels off the board so you've just got the deck this part here take the trucks and wheels off or if you have an old spare one or you might know someone that has one use just the deck preferably without grip tape which you can remove with a hair dryer just so you don't put holes in all your socks and then practice your tricks at home on the carpet. Carpet boarding is the way forward you can learn shavits 360 shavits kickflips big spins 180s 360s a bunch of freestyle tricks I've just released a video on five carpet board tricks you can learn at home so after this video go watch that one on to number three. You see this weird looking obstacle that I'm sitting on well that ties into it because I want you to be skating every single obstacle at the skate park not just the ramps you're used to not just the floor not just the rails if you're one of the people that just skates one area it's time to branch out because that is the most important part about learning different things about skateboarding and I know right you may be thinking right how is getting good at this little slapping ledge going to help me with my flip tricks but one thing you don't realize right when you're doing skateboarding day by day is that every time you skate anything every time you ride the board every time you fall over in the street every time you land a shuttle sketchy and recover you are gaining experience points think of it like a video game right like an rpg you don't really notice the experience points until you hit that level up but every time you do a battle every time you fight something every time you complete a quest you're getting a little bit of exp points and as you build that up over time you'll slowly begin to reach the level up status and that's when you'll notice it frequently using stuff that you're not used to will not only get you good at that thing it will also bleed into other areas of skateboarding make sure you skate as much as possible because the more you learn the more it bleeds into everything else not just skateboarding your real life as well because getting over difficult things is a transferable skill nobody was annoyed to have now this next one is literally probably the most literally probably doesn't make sense this next one is probably literally one of the most important ones there is right so this one is exercise outside of skateboarding and no i'm not telling you to go to the gym squat 200 kilos and get as big as me because i am certifiably massive because this is what is not only going to stop you from falling over and hurting yourself more often it's going to make your legs stronger for certain flip tricks it's going to make you withstand landings easier and if you're one of them crazy motherfuckers who is jumping down stair sets often well then you're going to need this because landing on your knees is going to cause damage over time and having that strength there is what has stopped me from ever having any knee issues so not only are you going to be doing more stretching out and stuff like that in the gym but you're also going to be strengthening up your legs and bear in mind a lot of gym people skip legs i do legs as part of my routine every single day and yes there is a gym routine video coming it's been very difficult to film it because the gym is always so god damn busy and i need someone to come with me on a quiet time so it's on the way all right okay so the next one that was a tough sit down i can't lie so the next one right carry your skateboard everywhere you possibly can if you've got college carry it to college if you're going out in town with your friends carry it there because there's one thing that i always say to myself is it never hurts to have the skateboard with you and if you really are serious about getting good at some point it's going to feel like the skateboard is an extra appendage to your body and when you don't have it you're going to feel like you're missing something so try and get to that point as quickly as possible make the skateboard feel like it's literally part of your anatomy and then when you go to other places to skate you'll find stuff way more natural especially if you carry it around the streets maybe you see a little one set two set three set of stairs just go down and try a manual try an ollie do stuff like that get yourself out of the comfort zone of only skating at the skate park because some of the most fun skating i've ever done in my life is just pissing about in the streets with my friends especially if you live in a city like london manchester somewhere like that or any of the big places in america i'm sure you've got street all over the place here in the uk i get it it is extremely difficult especially if you live in a little countryside town like i do we have absolutely no street here whatsoever which is why we got that stair set added in the renovation but if you can if you've got college in a big town if you're going somewhere where you wouldn't normally be you know there might be some street spots have a bit of fun and just play out in the streets but one thing i will say number one don't do it in an extremely busy place if you're not an experienced skateboarder if you're an experienced skateboarder and you know you can keep control of your board it's all up to you but if you're one of the new skateboarders and you're just thinking about taking your board into the streets and stuff don't do it somewhere where you feel like the board might fly out and hit an innocent old lady because even though skateboarders can be a bit reckless sometimes and it is just about getting the trick you do have to watch out for the old people because we're trying to build a good name for the skate community here so we can make it as big and inclusive as possible so if you're not as experienced as someone like that just pick your battles a bit more wisely maybe go to a quieter place like a multi-story car park just avoid the cars anyway on to the next one oh well what have we here an escapism skateboard now i've heard these are literally the best boards in the business throwing shade on the likes of hockey and fa stirring up the skate scene in ways you cannot imagine that is the escapism skateboards brand and in case you didn't know it's owned by yours truly if you want to pick one up all the details are in the description below on to the next one so what we're talking about right here my friends is skating all disciplines now what do i mean by disciplines right obviously skateboard skateboarding is just skateboarding what more is there to it than that well my friend you couldn't be more wrong about that skateboarding isn't only skateboarding we have a bunch of different realms in which you can reside your skateboard career we have freestyle we have classic we have street we have bowl we have park personally i like to mix up everything into one big melting pot because that's how i feel like you get the best at your sport just look at people like andy anderson another man who skates all different disciplines one of the most fun to watch creative and incredibly talented skateboarders there is in this entire world personally my favorite skateboarder of the modern era and i feel like every discipline has its time and place right so for example if you're looking for a trick that you want to learn fairly quickly maybe you haven't learned anything in a while and you want to keep the morale up get into freestyle because freestyle tricks are very low risk quite easy to learn as well and i've got plenty of videos about them on the channel so make sure you subscribe for that if you want to get into street skating maybe go to a skate park that has like a little stair set for you to practice on a rail a little ledge practicing stuff like that will make you good for when you go to the streets obviously in the streets it's going to be a bit more dangerous because you've got to deal with the people and any obstacles that might get in the way and the one that i always neglected when i was a kid because i found it so scary is bowl skating get into ball skating and do not neglect tricks because the longer you neglect stuff like shove it kickflip 180s the longer you don't do them the harder it becomes to learn them later in life now not every skateboarder wants to get into tricks and stuff like that so don't worry if that's not you but if you do want to make sure you do it frequently and train but one thing i will tell you to keep in mind is that they do not come easy you might learn to shove it quickly you might learn a 180 quickly a learning curve when learning stuff like kickflips tray flips and any variations of those become so steep that you can easily get yourself bogged down and feel like you're not learning or just feel like you're not good enough to learn these things i'm going to look you in the eye when i tell you this they take a long time to learn so make sure you practice as much as you possibly can and never let yourself get bogged down if you're making any progress whatsoever then you're going in the right direction but webs how can you even tell if you're making any progress well my friend on to the next one all right now you join me in the greasiest corner of leicester skatepark for what i think is the most important one yeah i didn't mean to do that i can't lie for what i think is the most important one yet film yourself now i say this all the time right in other videos do not worry no i'm not telling you to film yourself and post your progress on instagram on facebook on bebo myspace msn for all my older boys out there for people to see now what i want you to do is film yourself for your own personal benefit the amount of people or younger kids that i've said to do this and then their parents have come up to me and said oh my god they've improved so much faster since you told us to do that so the plan is right when you're learning a trick say you're trying to learn how to pop shove it i want you to set a little camera up you don't even need a tripod by the way you can literally just get a can bottle whatever it is rest your phone up against it and film yourself so when you're doing your shove it you're going to film yourself doing a few attempts once you get once you get an attempt that you feel like oh that was actually fairly decent you're going to go back and you're going to look on your phone you're going to watch that clip see exactly what you did that made it decent and exactly what you did or didn't do to maybe stop you from landing it and that is going to help you so much to decipher what's going wrong that's making it so much easier to learn and not only that right when you do first land one if you filmed it being able to watch yourself land that trick for the first time can give you such a morale boost to landing it again and you can always and if you get stuck in a rut of not landing it you can always go back to that clip watch it and be like actually yeah i remember that time when i could do it then it re-sparks the neurons in your brain and all of a sudden you're the best skater in the world