Olle is the most basic skateboard trick out there, but just because it's basic doesn't mean it's easy to learn. The ollie is when the skater jump and the board comes up with the skater with no use of the skaters hands. It's basically popping, sliding your foot, and jumping all at the same time. The ollie is one of the most visually appealing tricks if you are good at it because the board comes up as high as you can jump just like it was magic. It confuses most people because no one but skaters really fully understand how the board gets so high and how it levels out.
The ollie is the most important trick of skateboarding. No one can go anywhere in skating the streets with out the ollie. It can be helpful just for the normal casual rider for jump over bad terrain such as stairs, gaps, leadges, or cracks. A lot of longboards learn this trick only just because it's an extremely useful trick. Almost every trick in sktaeboarding needs the ollie, such as kickflip, heelflip, and 180s. Ollie is often the first trick most skaters learn. The only other trick that skaters can really learn before the ollie is the pop shuv-it, which we will cover later in this website.
Instead of delaying this any longer we'll get right into the tricks to the ollie.
^THE STEPS TO THE OLLIE^
STEP 1: POP
The pop is the first step to the ollie. Before you can practice the ollie you have to know what your stance is (Regular or Goofy). Think of a long floor of ice, if you were to slide on this ice which foot would you put forward. If you would put your left foot forward, you are regular. If you put your right foot forward you are goofy. Whether you are goofy or regular won't effect your skill and how fast you learn. Just make sure you do whats more comfortable. If your not comfortable you won't learn at all as fast. Now let's start to learn the ollie.
Where you should practice the pop is in a crack, some rough ground, or in the grass. This will keep the board from moving (For most beginners moving is scary when practicing skateboard tricks). This step is all in your back foot. The back foot should be horizontal to the board, so if the board is facing North, your foot should be pointed East if you are regular or west if you are goofy. When you practice the pop you want to start with just releasing pressure off you front foot and transfer it to your bad foot. This will make the board pop on the ground. The front trucks should be in the air right now, but your back trucks should be on the ground still. Once it's popped just release pressure off of your back foot and apply it to your front foot. This will let the front trucks come back on the ground. You might be thinking "I WANT BOTH TRUCKS TO BE IN THE AIR!!!"...well we're getting to that but if you rush it you won't be able to combine the 4 steps the ollie needs to get it in the air and leveled. Aside from that, you just want to practice just the pop for as long as need to get comfortable with that step. Once you comfortable with popping, and you can do it easily you can move up to the next step.
STEP 2: SLIDE
The second step to the ollie is the slide. The slide is known to be the important step of the ollie be many skaters, including myself. The slide up is what allows the board to get in the air. This step is also known as the hardest steo of the ollie and it will take the most time to get perfect. Your foot wants to be positioned a little under the trucks. You back foot will be in the same spot as your back foot. Now that you have the foot positioon we'll get into how to perform the slide.
The beginning of this step is the pop which we just learned. Then instead of just letting the front trucks hit the ground, you want to slide the side of your front foot up to the top of the board. You want to be making contact with the griptape the whole time (This will ruin your shoes). This is where having skate shoes come in handy (Skate shoes have a gum like material on the side of the shoe, so it allows the shoes to slide up the board a lot easier). Once you've slid you foot all the way up your board you want to bring your board back down to where you slid from (Don't slide your foot on the grip on your way down). So the combination you want to master is pop then slide. You don't need to lift your back foot off the tail yet all you need to get down is the top and the slide. Once you think you are comfortable with the pop and the slide, then you can move onto the next step.
STEP 3: JUMP
The third step to the ollie is the jump. This step, yet easy, a lot of people can get stuck on if they don't know what their doing wrong. If you can pop and slide, all you need to do is add a jump to that. When you add the jump, the board should get a little air, but it won't be as high as anyone would won't. That's why this is only the third step. Let's get into how to do this.
The jump and slide should be at about the same time. You want to bend down as much as you would if you were jumping without a skateboard. If you don't bend your legs, it's impossible to jump (Try it, it won't work). So going off that, the more you bend the higher you'll porbably jump. And after the slide your front foot basically already jumped because it's in the air, but this is the part that everyone messes up on. So the foot foot is in the air but you need to lift your back foot into the air as well. If you don't do that, then the tail will just stick to the ground and won't go anywhere. With those three things the board will be a little off the ground. Once you can get the board a little off the ground every time, then you can move onto the next step.
STEP 4: PUMP
The last step of the ollie is the pump (If you don't count landing). The pump is when the front foot is slid all the way up the board, then you just pump the board forward. This will level out your board, bring the tail up into the air along with the rest of your body. A skate tutorial that I watched on youtube, made by Arron Kyro, didn't help me as much as I would have liked. I had the pop, slide, and jump ferfect but the board just wouldn't get as high as his. And that's because he didn't share one little secret (The Pump). I thoght that skating just wasn't for me, until my good friend told me to just pump the board forward and the jump and slide. That is how the pump basically works.
