This Video Will Make You a Better Fingerboarder in Just 10 Minutes!

If you're looking to improve your fingerboarding skills, then this video is for you! In just 10 minutes, you'll learn tips and tricks that will help you become a better fingerboarder.

Whether you're a beginner or you've been playing for years, this video will teach you the tips and tricks you need to become a better fingerboarder. In just 10 minutes, you'll be able to improve your fingerboarding skills significantly!

A couple months back, I posted the 5 Advanced Tips to Become a Fingerboard Pro. This video covers topics such as Perspective, Breaking a Trick Down, Loading, Pressure, and Hesitation. If you haven’t watched that video, I encourage you to check it out AFTER finishing this one!

Perspective: Changing how and where you look when fingerboarding can help

Breaking a trick down: we can rethink about how we view a trick. A bigflip is a 360 flip body varial, but we can also think of it as a varial flip b/s 180.

Loading: A subtle movement can help build tension just prior to popping a trick, allows the board to rotate quickly and more horizontally.

Pressure: This is one of the most important things to learn! By adjusting how my pressure we apply to the deck, we can drastically change how the trick looks.

Hesitation: Instead of flipping a trick in one motion, we can instead split the trick up. Pop and ollie and then flick!

Now for the main event!
Pre-aiming: Those of you who play first-person shooter video games, may be familiar with a concept called pre-aiming or reticle placement. This is where the gamer places their reticle at the optimal place in anticipation of where they believe an enemy will be. Now, this concept can be applied to fingerboarding. In fact, it’s actually a lot easier to apply, since you already know what trick you want to do, you can have your fingers in the position you want to land in.

Follow Through: Mike Schneider discusses this concept in his video on “How To Progress Your Fingerboarding Skills Faster”. Mike talks about always following through on the trick, even if you lock into a grind or flip a trick you weren’t attempting to do in the first place. This is a fantastic tip.

Flexibility: I don’t mean having flexible fingers or hands despite that being helpful. Learn how to pop your tricks from various finger positionings. Being able to kickflip with your middle finger across the entire deck will allow you to easily kickflip out of a grind. Additionally, learn your tricks across different arm positionings too.

Sound It Out: Following up on the tip I gave previously of “breaking it down”, take those steps needed to do the trick and split them apart. For example, when doing a kickflip think the following: Pop, flick, pause, catch, land. I find that this helps the brain understand the steps needed to perform a trick.

Mucho Feeling: This one is less focused on than it should be. When doing a trick focus on the feeling of the trick. For example, when doing a switch heelflip, focus on the board rolling off your middle fingers’ knuckle. By giving yourself something else to focus on besides landing the trick, it can help increase your consistency.

Go With The Flow: Watch how the best fingerboarders incorporate movement into their fingerboarding.

Preparation: When doing a line, we often adjust our fingers prior to doing the next trick. While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this, Instead, try landing with your fingers already in position for the next trick. This can be helpful if you need to do tricks back-to-back with little room between.

Push Yourself: There’s always room for improvement. This could mean pushing yourself to learn a new trick, or a new combo. It can also mean to push yourself to perfect your own style, and land a trick as clean as possible.

It’s so easy to get stuck into the pattern of doing the same tricks on the same obstacles repeatedly. Shake it up! By forcing ourselves out of our comfort zone, we can create a tension and become more resilient, breaking out of bad habits.

Intentional Practice: We are all guilty of mindlessly fingerboarding. Often, this is a great way to fingerboard as it’s low stress and fun. However, if you are looking to quickly improve, carve out some time every so often to work on a specific aspect of your fingerboarding you’d like to improve. Dedicate time to intentionally focus on that aspect.

Shadow fingerboarding: Who says you need a fingerboard to fingerboard? You can practice finger movements without a board, this allows your brain to understand the motion you need to do to land a trick. By “fingerboarding without the board” you can improve your form and technique and enhance muscle memory without needing any equipment.

Fun: There’s also research that shows that learning I the context of having fun or playing leads to faster learning, and the need for less repetitions to learn something new. If you are getting burnt out or not having fun while fingerboarding, it may be time to mix things up!