This morning I learned something important, something that I think could keep me skateboarding and my skills progressing.
Thanks to a late start (my alarm actually went off), I felt sluggish at the skatepark. It wasn’t that my body was sore or achy, though. Really, after a weekend of eating out, I got back to veggies and fruit the past couple of days and have been the better for it. So, I felt fluid, smooth, and fresh physically.
I rode around the park doing my usual warm-up and stalls/basic moves—a lot of pumping from one end of the park to the other and stalls on banks.
Just wasn’t feeling it, though.
I noticed with that sluggishness that I kinda felt bored, which, in my opinion, sucked. To change how I felt, I knew there needed to be excitement in what I was doing.
While it’s awesome that I am mastering the stalls and grabs I started with, there is something about a new trick, a smoothly executed maneuver in a different direction, a move that works out when you weren’t sure if it would, that energizes skateboarding.
Blunt/tail stall to fakie has been hit or miss and has shown me I need more lateral strength before I can land it with balance and style. As I faltered into fakie mode from the blunt stall, it hit me: add in a 50-50 stall on the way down, and et voila! A new trick!
The cool thing, and what I think sealed in this lesson of constantly trying new tricks, was when the blunt to 50-50 stall turned into blunt to 180. It got a little shaky with my back trucks beyond the lip on the way down, but I love that I have that to try again and progress.
By the end, tired as I was (remember, I’m 36), I felt fantastic, excited, and eager to return to my board tomorrow.
Average Skater 