Recently bought a couple of tech decks off eBay for a couple of quid as I saw a fingerboard montage and naively thought it'd be easy. I've been trying for a few days, probably 1-2 hours a day, to do an Ollie however I'm having no luck and running out of patience. I can never seem to get any flip off the tail and it's incredibly frustrating raising the nose of the board up and down for hours on end without any actual lift off the ground. Can anyone help me out here?

Tech decks are a lot harder to use. Your fingers don't catch on the grip whatsoever, the deck is plastic and has no pop. The wheels don't roll. They're crappy to learn on but once you can use one you can use any deck. Invest in a wooden deck with foam tape and bearing wheels. Much easier to learn on

Jaymes wrote:

Tech decks are a lot harder to use. Your fingers don't catch on the grip whatsoever, the deck is plastic and has no pop. The wheels don't roll. They're crappy to learn on but once you can use one you can use any deck. Invest in a wooden deck with foam tape and bearing wheels. Much easier to learn on

I'm from the UK can anyone recommend where I'd buy a wooden board?

Jaymes wrote:

Invest in a wooden deck with foam tape and bearing wheels. Much easier to learn on

That's quite an investment for only 2 days into fingerboarding imo.

Give a load of tutorials a watch on youtube, many have different techniques for learning and no doubt you'll pick one up. My advice is start by doing it on your thigh and leaning back, just to get a feel for the motion. Once you feel comfortable with that, try doing ollie's in fakie (rolling backwards). It can be frustrating, but you'll pick it up.

Once you can ollie too, grab a book or computer game box and use it as a manual pad. Not only is this top fun, but having a target to ollie will help get your technique better and help you get higher by gradually stacking more and more books.

Hope that helps

Jaymes wrote:

Tech decks are a lot harder to use. Your fingers don't catch on the grip whatsoever, the deck is plastic and has no pop. The wheels don't roll. They're crappy to learn on but once you can use one you can use any deck. Invest in a wooden deck with foam tape and bearing wheels. Much easier to learn on

Sorry mate, but that's not advice at all! He's not gonna spend money on something he isn't sure of.


As for my advice, let's be honest, you want to do tricks, and you want to start with the ollie. Perfect start!

For me, I learnt to ollie by using my knee. You can get the manoeuvre of the ollie by rolling the board down the outside of your leg until the board is upside down, then exaggerating the movement of an ollie to get it in the air. Land the board back on your knee.
Eventually you'll start to get comfortable with this movement. Using the same method as before, slowly start creating the real ollie by gradually not rolling as far down the side your leg. When it's completely flat, congratulations! Now take it to the table

As for flips, use the side of your bed to learn the basic stuff like kickflips, heelflips and 360 flips. Launch the board upwards from the side, make the flip, and try to land on your bed on the correct side of the board. You should start to understand what your fingers are doing to create those flips, taking them to flat so where the real skill is.

If you need anymore tips, feel free to send me a PM, I'll be happy to answer!

your thigh and your knee are pretty good spots to start, as mentioned above.
next steps that helped me a lot:
#1
put your board on a table and just pop it with your middle finger. don't let your forefinger touch the board and let it flip around. do that a few minutes and watch how it moves...
#2
pop the board, but now try to pop it straight and when it's in the air, place it on your forefinger and middlefinger. just turn your whole hand something like 100-180° and lay the deck on your fingers.
#3
now try a real ollie. going fakie helps a lot. instead of placing the board on your fingers, try to move your frontfinger more to the nose of your deck and don't turn your hand anymore. of course that motion needs a lot of practice.


i also recommend to watch different video tutorials. i've found different tips in many vids, which made it a lot easier, at least for me.

don't give up  

Gary Chins tutorials on YouTube always helped

yeah, I think one thing to do to land an ollie is to roll way back to get momentum and lift the board up while popping.

dont worry that your not getting it right away.

learning new tricks in fingerboard can take a while.

i think the hardest part of the ollie is learning how to pop the tail.

you have to press down on the tail with your middle finger very quick like a flash of lighting.

if you just press the tail down it woun't do anything, you have to POP it.

sometimes it takes weeks if not longer to learn how to ollie nicely.

this is why fingerboarding is cool, because you can't just pick it up and do right away.

it takes skill and practice.

^^^

way to stay positive!!
2 fingerz peece!!

IeuanRees wrote:

Jaymes wrote:

Invest in a wooden deck with foam tape and bearing wheels. Much easier to learn on

That's quite an investment for only 2 days into fingerboarding imo.

Broken knuckles are super cheap

Ill say this for everyone just starting out and wanting to upgrade over a tech deck.

Id recommend starting off with, as Jaymes said, a Broken Knuckle complete. Use that for some time, see how you like fingerboarding and if you wanna continue on with it.

If you wanna move away from China for the most part, buy any of the decks in the banners. Id recommend Redwolf,Pure,Zink,Homewood, Etc. With some China Wides, Bushings, and if youre up for the price, some Flatface or Winkler wheels. If not, CNC wheels are the "better" china wheels, as ive heard. And slap some FBS,Rip, or RW tape on that bitch,

If youve been fbing for quite some time with that, and you know youre into it and you fb alot, you can move into the more pro items. Like Berlinwoods, Yellowoods, Ytrucks, Yellowoods, Etc.

Quick update: still using tech decks but I've replaced the grip tape so I'm having much more luck with popping the tail. Only managing to land an Ollie occasionally and the height is rarely more than a few centimetres but I think I'm getting the hang of it. Thanks for help people.

Also try to Ollie up onto something very small and that will help along with everyone else's suggestions which are very good. I must have Ollie on my leg so much that I was doing the motion in my sleep lol!!!