How to do an Ollie
The ollie is like the foundation of all the everything you will be doing, especially for almost all the park and flatland tricks. To ollie you want your back foot on the tail of your board. Your front foot goes between middle and front trucks of your board. That’s like a general rule, but not everybody does it this way. But it’s a good place to start.
When you start out you want to be moving slowly. Some people like to start out by standing in place but I wouldn't practice it that way for too long because you could end up turning in the air and not even know it. If your rolling you will know you are turning and never have to break that bad habit.
To ollie you slam your back foot down on the tail as hard as you can and also jump into the air off of your back foot. This is really the hard part of the trick. It does take a lot of practice for some people but you want to get your timing right so you need to do this right. You have to make sure that you jump your back foot high into the air quickly.
You drag the side of your front foot up the board, (your really using your shoe and grip tape to pull the board up with you) and making the board go where you want it to go. Take your time here, because you probably will just end up jumping in the air a little and doing some half ollies or falling down the first few times you try it.
When you jump pull your knees into your chest. Try to keep your shoulders and body level and don't lean to the nose or tail too much. You’re jumping, not leaping. When you get to the highest point you want to flatten out the skateboard so that both feet are level on it.
As you go down you bend your knees again. You want to absorb the shock so you must bend the knees. You don't hurt your knees that way and you can control the board. Now all you have to do is roll away.... cause you just did your first big trick. If you want to get higher, you have to bend more when you jump. In other words the more force you put into it the higher you go.
