I wish my skateboard journey had started like the opening text, too Lupe Fiasco’s “Kick, Push” But I wasn’t 6 years old when I got my first skateboard. Hell, I wasn’t 16 or 26. In fact, I was well into my thirties when I started skateboarding … about a month ago. So how did it go?
I shared my adventure for Lifehacker’s Fitness Challenge, starting with how I felt getting on the board at my age and ends with how I had developed after 30 days. But it can be difficult to visualize someone’s progress through text, especially when it comes to abstractions like “comfort at the board”. So we made a video to help. Now you can see my ass fucking my ass … but maybe also inspired that I managed to learn cruising, ollie, and shuv-it within a month.
Did i fall Yeah, a ton. Did it hurt? Absolutely. But – and I know how unlikely that sounds – after falling a few times, I got used to it. It learned to fall a little “better” so it hurt less, and even the gnarled falls were over before I knew it. After falling a few times, the anticipation of the fall subsided and I was able to focus more on simple challenges, like the one I wanted to achieve in the video above: just drive up a ramp and turn around.
Check out the video to hear me talk about my goals and the lessons I learned, and to see how “good” I got in a month (or to see how I got a few Fall on my hip). Do you want to see me learn a single trick? Here is a Quick assembly on Twitter from my efforts to figure out how to slide it. And if you want to start skateboarding yourself, do what I did: buy a board, make some skate friends, and do it. You will never feel “ready”, but that doesn’t have to stop you from getting started.
