Level Up Your Ride: Advanced Skating Ideas for Long Weekends
A long weekend presents the perfect opportunity to move beyond routine sessions and truly push the boundaries of your skateboarding ability. When you have three or four consecutive days, you can escape the mental fatigue of daily practice and fully immerse yourself in challenging new techniques, spot hunting, or creative filming. Advancing your skating requires a mix of technical precision, physical endurance, and a willingness to step outside your comfort zone. Whether you are a seasoned park rider or a dedicated street skater, here are some advanced ideas to elevate your game over the break. Mastering Technical Nollie Variations
The nollie stance is often neglected, yet it offers a completely different, often more technical, approach to tricks. Instead of just doing a few casual nollie heelflips, use the long weekend to build a “Nollie Weekend” curriculum. Focus on adding complex tricks such as nollie inward heels or nollie bigspin flips on flat ground. Once you feel comfortable, take them to obstacles. A nollie over a hip or a nollie flip onto a low ledge requires perfect timing and board control. The extra time allows you to fine-tune your body weight distribution, as nollies demand a sharper, more precise snap than regular pop tricks. Advanced Ledge and Manual Techniques
Ledges are the ultimate testing ground for style and technical skill. Move past simple back-side boardslides and focus on technical combos that require precision. Spend a day working on switch front-side tailslides or developing your ability to lock into back-noseblunts on steeper, higher ledges. Furthermore, manual tricks offer a fantastic way to develop balance. Challenge yourself with a switch manual to nollie-out combo, or try to combine manual tricks with quick flip-ins, such as a kickflip manual on a manual pad. Creating a “lines” approach to your ledge session—linking together a trick, a manual, and another trick—will improve your consistency and overall control. Developing Switch and Nollie Skating
Nothing screams “advanced” more than being able to skate equally well in all four stances: regular, switch, nollie, and fakie. Use the long weekend for dedicated switch training. Start with simple tricks like switch ollies, switch kickflips, and switch heelflips, and gradually move up to switch front-side boardslides or switch tailslides. Spending hours on switch tricks, though frustrating, will significantly increase your overall board awareness and speed up your development. By the end of the weekend, your “bad” side will feel much more comfortable. Filming a “Long Weekend” Montage
There is no better way to track progress than filming your sessions. Use the weekend to create a “Raw” or “Line” montage. This forces you to land tricks consistently, rather than just once, and helps you identify flaws in your technique. Focus on finding a new, untapped spot in your city—a unique manual pad, a steep bank, or an interesting gap—and spend a few hours filming a creative trick there. Reviewing your footage helps you understand your body positioning, enabling you to refine your style. A filmed session turns casual practice into a goal-oriented project. Diving into Transition and Airs
If you are a street skater, the long weekend is the perfect time to explore transition, and if you are a park skater, it is time to take your airs higher. Focus on perfecting your kickturns in the deep end, learning to carve faster, or finally committing to backside airs over the hip. For street skaters, trying to learn front-side smith grinds or back-side nosegrinds in a bowl will dramatically increase your technical skills, giving you a new perspective on speed and control. Use the time to learn to “pump” the transition more effectively to generate speed without pushing.
Taking your skateboarding to the next level requires more than just showing up; it takes intentional practice and focus. A long weekend provides the, space needed to dive into the technicalities of new tricks, train your weaker stance, and, explore new spots. By setting specific goals—whether it’s landing a new trick, filming a line, or mastering a manual combo—you can make significant progress in a short time. Embrace the challenges, endure the inevitable falls, and enjoy the progression that comes from dedicated effort.
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