Sports & Gaming
Park Basics
Lesson time 3:27 min
Sharing pointers about going to a skate park for the first time, Tony demonstrates the basics of carving and dropping in.
Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars
Topics include: Carving • Dropping In
Teaches Skateboarding
Legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk teaches you how to take your skateboarding to the next level, whether you’re a beginner or a pro.
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- As a beginning skater, there's no level you need to reach before going to the park. [MUSIC PLAYING] If you want to go to a skate park for the first time, it's best to go early-ish in the morning. That's usually when either people are in school or not awake yet, and you'll have a chance to experience it when it's empty. If it's really crowded, it can be intimidating, and maybe you're not sure where to stand or how to start. That's just more of an issue of watching the nuances of whose turn it is and what order and where you can start from where you will be seen. And if you drop in, there could be someone else coming around the corner full speed. Some people do like to be selfish. And there are a lot of snakes, which means they go probably more times than what their turn should be. And just watch out for them. That's it. Just stay out of the way if you see someone coming around. Pumping and carving at a skate park is the primary way to generate speed. Carving is a different type of pump, because it's actually sort of a sideways pump. You're going through corners and through little bull sections. Pumping on a vert amp is possibly more pronounced than park skating, because the transitions are smaller in park. But the technique is the same. It's the same use of your legs. It's just that you're doing it on a sideways plane. Basically, if you are coming towards a corner, you do a small pump in through the transition that goes up and use your legs more so through the corner, through the carve, and that will allow you to zoom through a section and actually come out with way more speed on the next wall. You see the more experienced park skaters generate speed from seemingly nothing. And what they're doing it's using every single tiny transition to their advantage. It's harder to generate speed from a very long corner, because to try to stay on the wall sideways through a transition that big, it is hard to get your speed up. The corners that are better utilized for speed are the ones that are tighter. That allows you to just zoom right through it. That is the way that you see the more experienced skaters getting speed all through the park. Dropping in is a foundation of any skate park of almost any ramp. And that's the act of starting from the top of the ramp and going in. Usually you would do it from the tail drop. So that means you stick all your wheels out from the coping with your tail still on the top with your back foot holding it in position. And once you put your front foot down, the key is commitment. And when I say commitment, I mean dropping that front foot down, hitting your front wheels on the wall, and then shifting your weight forward to your front foot. The biggest mistake people make is setting the front wheels down and immediately leaning back again. And so people will set it down and then end up just falling backwards. My best advice is that once your front wheels are on the wall, you shift your ...
About the Instructor
A pro at 14 and the first to land a 900 at the X Games, Tony Hawk is one of the most influential skateboarders of all time. Now he’s helping you take your skateboarding to the next level. Joined by pros Lizzie Armanto and Riley Hawk, Tony teaches you beginner, intermediate, and advanced tricks in street, park, and vert. Learn how to push yourself, get up when you fall, and find your own style. Start reaching new heights.
Featured MasterClass Instructor
Tony Hawk
Legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk teaches you how to take your skateboarding to the next level, whether you’re a beginner or a pro.
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