Today is a beautiful day outside. The sun is shining and the weather is warm. It’s a bit hot for me to go skating in the midday sun, but its perfect weather to make a partial list of intermediate skateboard tricks for Street/Flatground and Miniramp. We already covered the easy tricks, time to move on to something more gnarly!
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Intermediate Street Skateboarding Tricks
You’ve got 180’s Pop Shuvs, FS Shuvs, Kickflips, and Heel Flips on lock. What do you learn next after mastering these so-called “easy” tricks? A good place to start is by combining the “easy” tricks to learn new intermediate tricks.
Almost all skateboard tricks build off a simpler trick: The kick flip is built off the ollie, the Pop Shuv is built of the simple Shuvit. Combining tricks together gives us a virtually endless list of tricks. Let’s look at the more common intermediate street/flat-ground tricks.
1. Varial Flip
The Varial Flip is a combination Kickflip and BS Pop Shuvit. If you prefer BS Pop Shuvs and Kickflips, this is the trick for you. The Varial Flip has been looked down upon for the past every years. People call it “Ugly” or say that “Kooks do Varial Flips”, but pull one out in a game of skate and I bet your opponent gets a letter. While a bit of a weird looking trick, it’s definitely worth learning, and you can make it stylish (Front foot catch!!!!!).
2. Varial Heelflip
The Varial Heelflip is a combination of Heelflip and FS Pop Shuvit. Once you have a solid Heelflip and a banging FS Shuv, you should be trying the Varial Heelflip. While basically the opposite of a Varial Flip, the Varial Heel appears to get more cred than the Varial Flip. I’m not sure why. Maybe because most people aren’t good with Heelfips and FS Shuvs, so it seems like a harder trick.
But I know a few skaters with perfect Varial Heels and very sketchy Varial Flips. I think it depends on the skater. Either way, Varial Heelflips are a nice challenge and a great feeling trick to land.The secret to 2 these tricks is foot placement.
You position your feet in such a way that the board does most of the work. You don’t need to flick a really hard Kickflip nor scoop a really huge BS PopShuv to pull off a Varial Flip. The real difficulty comes from staying over top of the board. You probably need to jump forward to land a Varial Flip and jump backward to land a Varial Heel, but the goal is to keep the board under you so you don’t have to jump forward or backward.
3. Hardflip
Instead of a BS PopShuv and a Kickflip you did in the Varial Flip, you now do a FS Shuv and a Kickflip. While these are one of the coolest looking tricks, they aren’t called HARDflip because they are easy to do. Watch a bunch of different skaters do Hardflips, and you will see that almost everyone does them differently.
Some Hardflips spin very flat and horizontal. Some Hardflips spin right up between the skater’s legs. Other skaters catch their Hardflips to the side like a big shifty. The biggest factor in each of these styles of Hardflips is jumping high enough that you are catching your Hardflip well before you land. But I if you land a Hardflip, in my opinion, you have won the battle.
4. Inward Heelflip
My personal favorite looking trick, and a staple of early 2000’s street skating. The Inward Heel is a combination of a BS Pop Shuvit and a Heelflip. The result is a vertical spin and flip that comes up between the skater’s legs. Some skaters have very steezy Inward Heels that they catch with the front foot, and others flip them perfectly between their legs.
Either way, the Inward Heelflip is a thing of beauty. I never get tired of seeing a skater in big puffy shoes throw an Inward Heelflip between their baggy pants, but hey… I’m old.
5. Add a Spin
Once you have your basic flip tricks and Shuvits down, the easiest next step is to add a 180-degree spin. The FS or BS Kickflip or Heelflip are things of beauty. 180 Flips look especially nice done off of an obstacle. Do yourself a favor and watch a few Andrew Reynolds FS Flips and a few Neen Williams BS Heels. These are excellent examples of the best flip-spins in the business.
A big spin is simply a 360 Shuvit with a 180 Bodyvarial in the same direction. Just spin a 180 with your board. Big spins are extremely stylish tricks these days. They aren’t really as hard as they seem to do, but are definitely challenging. When you are learning these, it has been said it’s easier to learn them off the nose or fakie first.
You can use the momentum of the way you are traveling to help the board spin around. I personally find fakie and nollie tricks scarier than rolling regular, but I probably just need to practice fakie more.
Intermediate Mini Ramp Tricks
For those Coping Dancers out there, now is time to take your game to the next level. You have Rock Fakies, Rock and Rolls, Axle Stalls, and Fakie Tail Stalls on lock. What next?! Now you want to step up your Mini Ramp game. Now you want to dazzle the audience by getting above the coping. It’s scary, but it’s not really that big of a step up from the tricks you know in your sleep.
6. Disaster
The Disaster is not as bad as it sounds. It is a really stylish trick, and the homies are always impressed when someone does a disaster. Disasters can be done FS and BS so its recommended to first learn the direction you are most comfortable doing kick turns.
Disasters aren’t that difficult, but you need to make sure you don’t catch the coping when you are turning your body and the board. You can learn Disasters by going really fast and hucking a spin to land in the Disaster, but a baby step is to pivot on your front wheels into the disaster. You decide how you want to learn Disasters, but Disasters open up a whole other world of mini ramp tricks.
7. Nosestall
The Nosestall is either an intermediate or an easy trick, depending on how comfortable you are skating mini ramps. If you are comfortable riding fakie and doing Fakie Rocks, then a Nosestall isn’t that far off. These can be started low and slow.
You can tap your nose on the transition when you are low to get used to lifting your back wheels off the ramp. When you finally hit the coping, you should be fairly comfortable lifting the back wheels and rolling back Fakie. You don’t need to stand up on the Nosestall at first, you can just touch the coping with the nose and people will still be impressed. Definitely a stylish trick.
8. Feeble Stall
After the Axle Stall, the Feeble Stall is probably the next and easiest step. Instead of locking both trucks onto the coping like the Axle Stall, you let your front truck go over the coping and rest on the deck, while your back truck is pinched on the coping. The big difference is that you have to swing your front wheels over the coping to not hang up.
Either you lift a little higher, or you swing around a little faster. Both techniques come with their own inherent risks, but if one gets you over the coping better than the other, go with it.
9. Smith Stall
The Feeble Stall’s filthy cousin. Smith Stalls are also not far from Axle Stalls, except you don’t put your truck on the coping, you let it dip down below the coping. Smith Stalls are all about putting your weight on the back foot when you lock-in. It is a bit awkward to roll back in from a Smith, but if you turn square to the ramp and shift your weight to the front foot, you should be fine.
10. Ollie
Ollieing on a mini ramp is quite a bit different than ollieing on flat ground. Your board will be much more vertical when you pop than you may be used too. Also, it is very different to level the board out. You need to match the pitch of the ramp when you are coming back in so you don’t slip out.
Try ollies very low on the ramp at first to get the mechanics down, but don’t be scared, after you land a few of them, take them further up the transition. Soon you will find that it is actually easier to land ollies higher up the ramp, and you will be flying over the coping. Wanna know how cool it’s going to feel and look to pop into a disaster? Pretty damn cool!!
There you have it folks, a handful of intermediate skateboard tricks for you to learn after you are comfortable with the easier tricks. Get these 10 tricks on lock and guaranteed you will be winning games of SKATE and hearts all around your town.
I’m an aged skateboarder and still shred responsibly. Started skateboarding 25 years ago, peaked in the 2000’s, and still ride to this day. I am a total geek when it comes to skateboard gear, love test to stuff and share my findings.