Original subtitles

TONY HAWK: The very first time that I created a new trick,

it was a backside varial.

And I remember the feeling when I landed it and I thought

that I was a wizard.

Like, I could not believe I did a trick no one had done before.

I was probably 11 years old.

And that feeling, that was the buzz.

That was the high that I'd chase the rest of my life.

NEWSCASTER 1: And if there's one person who's

contributed the most to skateboarding's meteoric rise

as a cultural and social phenomenon, it's Tony Hawk.

NEWSCASTER 2: One of the world's most recognizable sports

figures.

NEWSCASTER 3: The gnarly, the awesome Tony Hawk.

NEWSCASTER 4: He landed professional skateboarding's

first 900.

He's barely touched the ground since.

TONY HAWK: I've always said that I

think skateboarding is a lifestyle, a sport, and an art

form all at once.

You're creating your own style.

Skating is your canvas.

And you can paint it however you want.

And no two paintings are going to look alike.

Hawk.

Tony Hawk!

TONY HAWK: You don't have to follow the textbook of exactly

how to live your life.

Whatever that may be, you can think outside the box.

You can hop a fence.

You can get in a different line.

Skateboarding can be a great tool in your life,

a great lesson in your life, a lesson in perseverance,

a lesson in self-confidence, a lesson in belief.

And that you don't have to be a pro skater,

but you can carry these lessons with you throughout your life

in so many other ways.

And that skateboarding will teach you

the value of perseverance, and the value of repetition,

and the value of seeing something through,

and not giving up.

In this MasterClass, I am breaking down

foundational skate tricks and some of my own signature tricks

for the very first time.

This class is for anyone that wants to start skating, learn

the basics, and improve upon their skills

if they already have the basics.

It's going to make you a better skater.

And hopefully, you can use this motivation in any walk of life.

The three types of skateboarding that we

are covering in this class are street, park, and vert skating.

And when I talk about street, that

is the elements you find out the urban landscape-- stairs,

ledges, handrails, gaps.

And park is a mix of street elements, bowl elements,

vertical elements, and a lot of tricks

that involve the top of a ramp.

And then we're going to cover vert.

And vert is specific to a radius transition, usually something

that's over 10 foot in diameter with a couple of feet of vert

added onto that.

And that's when we get into more of the aerial type moves.

And that is what allows you to fly in the air.

And that is what drew me to skateboarding

in the first place.

I have some of the best skaters in the world helping

me teach this class--

Lizzie Armanto and Riley Hawk.

So Lizzie is a professional park skater.

She is one of the best.

And I feel like she has the ability

to take you to the next level in intermediate tracks in park

skating.

Riley Hawk is my oldest son.

And he is one of the most progressive street skaters

these days and doing things I never imagined possible.

And I thought it would be great to have him guide you

through some of the more complicated and technical

street tricks.

We're going to start from the very beginning,

from the very first time you step foot on the skateboard,

and give you, empower, you to learn how to jump those three

stairs, even down to how you push, how you get speed,

how you place your feet, I mean, we're getting deep.

All the stuff you see in video games,

we're going to show you how to do them in real life.

I'm Tony Hawk and this is my MasterClass.

My favorite thing about skateboarding

is that it's constantly evolving.

It's all inclusive.

And it is a community of individuals

that all have their own pursuits but come together

in a sense of camaraderie that I've never found anywhere else.

When you go to a skate park and you

see a kid trying to drop in for the first time

or trying a trick, people rally around that.

And that doesn't happen anywhere else.

It just doesn't.

And the kid is doing it for himself.

But at the same time, everyone wants them to do it so badly,

because they know that feeling.

They know that feeling of what it's

like to accomplish something that you were scared of.

And nowadays, it covers all walks of life, all genders.

And I love that that's where we've come.

And some kid can be become a superstar because they

have the sickest hard flip.

Because it can truly teach kids a sense of self-confidence

that they never found anywhere else.

That's what it did for me.

And you are only judged on how you skate.

And it's not a matter of you have to be super good.

You just have to be willing to try.

I skate with my right foot forward.

That means I'm goofy footed.

And if you skate with your left foot forward,

that means you're regular footed.

The best way to know if you're goofy footed or regular footed

is if someone were to push you from behind, which foot

would you brace yourself with?

If it's your right foot, then I would say you're goofy footed.

If it's your left foot, you're regular footed.

And don't worry about the name goofy.

It doesn't mean you're goofy.

It's just something that surfers said a long time ago

and it stuck.

I'm goofy.

Be proud.

I recommend pads to anyone that's starting to skate.

Helmet first and foremost, because that's

going to be the most traumatic injury you

get if you hit your head.

But I recommend at least knee pads

and if not elbow pads when you're

starting out, because you just don't

know what's going to happen.

One minute you're on your board, next minute you're

literally flying backwards or hitting your side

or hitting your knees and your knees and elbows get it first.

So that's my recommendation starting out.

The more confident you get, maybe you

lose some of the pads.

But if you're going to be skating the big ramps,

the only way you're going to survive a fall is with pads on.

So the first way to get moving on your skateboard is to push.

And generally, you want to push with your back foot.

The reason you push with your back foot

is because you can have your front foot in the position

that it will remain once your back foot goes on the board.

So you would start with your front foot

at a slight angle just over the truck bolts.

That means that your foot is at an angle

enough that it can turn the board if necessary,

but also it's pointing enough forward that it

will keep your momentum going.

And you would take your other foot,

push alongside the board on the tow side,

give it one good stride.

If you want to go faster another stride, and then

place your back foot upon the tail.

Once you put your back foot on the tail,

you're going to adjust your front foot

to the proper position.

And it's a pretty simple motion.

It's the way you get speed.

You can improve it.

You can push endlessly and go as fast as you want.

At some point, you might go a little too fast

to actually get a stride for your foot.

And in that case, you're good.

The other thing about pushing is you don't always

have to do it from a standstill.

You can actually take your board and hold it and run with it

and then set it down so that when you set it

down your front foot goes down and then you can give it a push

or just put your back foot on.

But that's a little more advanced.

And probably if you're getting to that stage,

you don't need my help.

So there are a number of ways to come to a stop on a skateboard.

I think one of the easiest ways to learn

as a beginner is just to take your foot off and just drag it.

Slowly put more and more pressure on it

until you come to a stop.

It's basically right on the toe side of your board parallel

to the board itself.

And it's just a matter of evening out your weight

so that you don't put all your weight

on the foot that's on the ground,

because that will make your body stop.

Your board will still be in motion.

The other way to stop is by dragging your heel

on your tail.

And the reason we do that is because we

don't want to stop on our tail itself,

because it wears down the tail, and you

get what's called razor tail.

And your tail will actually start to chip

away because you've been scraping it.

And it's also not as efficient as your foot,

because your sole is made of rubber,

and that will stop you quickly.

In order to do the stop maneuver,

you take your back foot and turn it 90 degrees so

that your heel is actually hanging off

the back of the board.

And then you kick it up so that your heel is the first thing

to hit the ground, and that will start slowing you down.

And the trick is to remain in the center of your heel

and the board or else the board will

start turning very quickly.

I don't think it's a very easy skill to pick up,

but it's crucial when you're starting to street skate

and you find yourself in different terrain

and you want to slow down very quickly.

Turning is the act of leaning in one direction or the other.

And that will make your board go with you,

and you can go into a circular arc or you can slalom.

And basically, it's just a matter

of leaning over one side of your board,

and that brings it turning that direction.

And the key to doing it correctly

is to keep your weight centered over

where you're leaning so that once the board starts turning,

you are turning with it and you are in the center.

And you can actually lean back and forth.

Lean to your toes is going back side.

Leaning to your heels is going front side.

And if you do one to the other, that will actually

generate speed as well.

That's a slalom.

The most common mistake when turning is to turn too sharply.

You turn so hard that you're actually

touching your wheel on your board,

and we call that wheel bite, and that will

stop your board very quickly.

My brother taught me to turn because I

was going straight down the alleyway asking him,

how do I turn?

How do I turn?

And he yelled back, lean.

That was my MasterClass from my brother.

Lean.

So that's what I'm passing on to you.

Just lean.

So tic-tacs are another way to get

moving, and that way you don't have to get off your board.

You don't have to actually push.

You'll find them very useful in skate park settings

where you basically turn one way just a little bit,

lifting up like a quarter of a kick turn.

You lift up a little bit and tac.

And then as you're leaning forward to do it again,

that will just start to get you in motion by default,

because you are leaning forward over your front foot.

That motion generates you moving forward.

The only trick to tic-tacs is don't

go too far with the turns, because that'll

make you slide out.

I think the tic-tac could be a building block for learning

how to turn your board by doing kick turns,

because they are just little quarter or half kick

turns that get you in motion.

But if you can get comfortable with that

and get confident with that, then you

can take that to ramps.

You can take that to other terrain.

And you know how to guide your skateboard with your body

even when you're turning and you're only on two wheels.

The bottom line is the more you skate, the more confident

you get and the better you're going to be.

And that could be in any context.

You could skate to school.

You could just skate in your driveway

when you have a free 10 minutes.

The more time you spend on your skateboard,

the more comfortable you're going to be

and the more confident you're going to be.

And it just starts to evolve.

You don't have to be practicing the hard tricks all the time.

You just have to be comfortable on your board

and be confident with cruising.

And all of these things will just sort of fall into place.

The ollie is the foundation to almost every trick

on the street and most tricks on ramps.

But for the street, that is the way

that you bring your board up in the air using only your feet.

Through this course, I'm going to teach you

different types of ollies, and that

includes ollying on the flat ground, ollying over objects,

ollying on ramps, and ollying vert.

And they all stem from the same trick,

but they're all very different techniques.

The very basics of an ollie are snapping down your tail

so that your board starts to go vertical.

And you've snapped it hard enough

that even your back wheels are coming off the ground.

And as that's happening, you take your front foot

and slide it forward in order to level out your board

and bring it up to your back foot.

Your legs will be bent, and then you gradually

straighten your legs to keep that friction

on your board and your feet until you land on the ground.

You can continue to improve your ollies

throughout your whole skate career.

And that's way you learn how to do kick flips.

That's the way you learn how to go over stuff.

That's the way you learn how to get onto ledges,

onto handrails, over gaps.

I mean, the ollie is crucial to modern skateboarding.

In order to figure out timing of an ollie,

my best advice is to put your foot all the way

on the edge of the tail to the point where you're actually

rocking on where it lifts up.

So your foot is not flat to the tail

as you would normally skate.

It's actually way up on top.

And then that will give you a much quicker snap.

It takes a lot of pressure, but it

doesn't take a lot of pushing.

Give it just enough pressure so that the board taps the ground.

And that sends your board straight up.

And as long as you're bending your back leg at the same time,

the board will come up with your feet at the same time.

The number one mistake people make when learning the ollie

is timing, not hitting the tail properly,

putting too much pressure on the back so that the tail just

kind of thuds on the ground instead of

snaps off the ground.

And that's just a matter of figuring out what

type of pressure to put on it.

But it just takes practice.

I mean, it's one of those things that's just repetition.

And eventually, you just realize that you're doing it.

Eventually you realize you're off the ground,

and eventually you realize that your feet

are sticking to the board.

And when it clicks, it's awesome.

TONY HAWK: My mom, she always said I was determined.

But other people would say I was a nightmare as a kid.

And when I found skateboarding, I

found a way to focus that determination,

and that was a huge bonus to my parents,

because they were like, finally, he's not taking his energy out

on us.

I was relentless in trying to get what I wanted as a kid,

and that shifted to skateboarding

and wanting to learn tricks and that was it.

It wasn't until I went to the skate park for the first time

that I was truly hooked, and I felt compelled

to try to learn what I saw, because I saw people literally

flying out of swimming pools.

And I was like, I want to fly.

I want to do that.

Whatever it takes.

I'm doing that.

The skate park was electric.

It was just this hub of excitement and creativity.

And you knew that if you went, you would find a crew

or you'd find a session that you really

wanted to participate in.

When my dad would drive me to the skate park,

I would put my pads on in the car so that when we arrived,

I would just bust out of the door ready to skate.

That's how excited I was to go there.

My introduction to skating transition

was skating pools, because that was the only type of transition

at the time.

There weren't half pipes.

And street skating was not a thing.

It was more just for transportation.

And so when I actually did a little aerial,

I felt very accomplished.

Rock and rolls was sort of the next level,

because that's when you would start hitting the coping,

and you're hitting it with your board,

and it's super scary, because suddenly you're

at the top of the pool.

One time I was at the park, I did not lift up my wheels

enough and hung them up on the coping and ended up

knocked out with my teeth gone unconscious

on the bottom of the pool.

And that was my first big injury.

I feel like when I first got hurt

and I had this concussion, knocked my teeth out,

I was 10 years old.

That was a turning point in my life,

because I literally woke up as the ambulance arrived,

and I was in a totally different place.

And my first thought was, what happened?

They found you up on the pool.

And I thought, oh, I hung up on a rock and roll.

I gotta figure out how to lift my board up higher

and maneuver my feet better.

That was my first thought.

Not like, oh my god, what have I done?

I'm never skating again.

Where are my teeth?

It was more like I knew I was getting back out there.

And I feel like that was a defining moment of my career.

It was like, I didn't mind getting hurt

for the sake of progression.

That was when I knew that I was going to keep

skating for a long time.

Skateboarding was my creative outlet.

It was my way of--

that was my voice.

When I really drove into skating,

I found a way to create new things.

I found a community of people that

came from all different walks of life,

but we shared this common interest,

and that held us so strongly that I didn't even

see differences.

And I think that that was awesome.

I mean, we were like this band of misfits,

and we didn't fit in anywhere.

But the skate park was our home away from home,

and we all spoke the same language.

We all were pushing each other to be creative

and to learn new things.

And I felt like that community really defined

me and it was really different.

It was a different type of music,

different type of fashion, a different attitude

towards life, and one that didn't follow all the rules, so

to speak.

And I loved it.

And I remember going to school and trying

to explain to some of my classmates

that I used to hang out with when

I was a kid about this type of music and they were just like,

what are you talking about?

You not listening to Foreigner?

[LAUGHS]

School was-- I don't--

school was not a pleasant experience.

I was really small, so I got picked on a lot.

And now we know that as bullying.

But back then, you just sucked it up.

You dealt with it or you just ghosted through the hallways.

And I feel like I did a lot of that through high school.

Because I was very skinny for my age.

I was pretty nerdy.

I excelled in school.

I was in the advanced courses.

And so I was already marked as a nerdy kid, but I was scrawny,

and then it was just like, all right, so 90 pound weakling.

And then I skated.

That was the trifecta of uncool.

Really.

Skating was the least cool thing you could do, especially

in the early '80s.

It was more like, why haven't you grown out of that?

I mean, skateboarding was like the yo-yo.

Get over it.

And it was at the time when I started really excelling at it

and when I started hitting a stride of being creative

and doing well in competition.

And then I'd go to school and it was like, what

are you doing with your life?

And so it was very isolating.

And I basically learned to go to school kind of undetected,

get to my classes, and bounce.

I'd say early on, my style was very focused on tricks.

And so a lot of people thought that wasn't a style.

I had no style.

I was a robot.

They would literally call me a circus skater,

because I just did tricks.

And that was more because I didn't have the background.

I didn't have the surf influence.

I didn't come from Dogtown.

I wasn't in my late teens.

And so between my size and my focus,

I just started doing tricks.

And at some point, it was hard because I

was in this very small community of skateboarding that

was already isolated and outcast and weird,

and then I'm a type of skater that's only doing tricks,

and that made me an outcast in this outcast activity.

And I was just extremely isolated in that.

I want to be at least accepted by this community that I love.

And I just kept trying and eventually sort of made

waves in that sense, because I created

this new style of skating that was more trick based but also

more aerial based, because I was the first one to actually ollie

into my aerials.

I didn't think I was creating a revolution.

I was just trying to figure out how to get in the air,

because I was so small, I couldn't do it with my bulk.

And so in order to ollie and then grab your board late,

that allowed me to get the air time that these bigger

guys were getting.

And suddenly I was going four or five feet out

of these pools as a 12-year-old.

And to me, that was the solution.

And I got made fun of a lot for it.

I literally would-- they would write about me

in Thrasher magazine after I won an event and they're like,

Tony Hawk, the king of no style cheats his airs,

because he ollies into them, and then he can grab it any way.

And I'm like, what is wrong with that?

I didn't get it.

I didn't know why that was such a backlash.

I think my size and style became an asset through those years,

because I was skinny, but I was also very flexible.

And suddenly I found that I could

do these tweaks and these moves in the air

that no one else could really do, because for one, they

didn't know how to get in the air, and for the other,

they didn't have the kind of body style

that I had where I could do these not

flailing but definitely very flexible moves in the air,

like doing big spins and tweaking certain things

and doing even just down to a basic hand plant.

I could twist my hand plant and contort it in ways

that no one else could.

And people took notice of that.

I wanted validation from the skate community,

but at the same time, I loved skating too much

to make that the only focus of what I was doing.

But at some point, I learned how to do

these moves high in the air, and I

learned how to do them on different terrain.

And that is kind of when the haters shut up.

That was when I think I won an event at Upland.

Upland was widely considered the gnarliest pool.

And at some point, it was like, well,

Tony won the Upland event.

We can't really talk shit about him anymore.

I was 14 years old when I went pro.

I rose through the pro ranks pretty quickly.

So within the first year, I'd actually

won a couple of events.

And around the same time, so I'm like 15, 16,

around the same time, skating started

to experience this new wave of popularity

where kids were starting to get into it again,

because they saw that skateboarding wasn't just

this flat land dance routine anymore.

It was suddenly people were doing aerials and people were

flying out of swimming pools.

And I mean, 1984 the McTwist was invented.

People started doing literally somersaults out of these pools

and other people, outsiders, started to take notice.

[CHEERING]

That's when I realized that skateboarding

was something much bigger than I ever imagined.

And I was actually making money as a 16-year-old, like decent

money.

And going to school, I just lived

this strange polarized life, because I would go to Florida

and there would be fans and I'd be signing autographs

and I would win prize money.

And I'd come home, and I was still a ghost in the hallways.

And at some point, there was a shift, especially

around my junior or senior year, where

people knew that Tony Hawk went to their school

and he was a pro skater, but no one could pick me out

in the hallway.

It just wouldn't happen.

I think there's so much to learn

from failure through your life.

You learn what you're capable of.

You learn what you can endure.

And you learn to be successful through those failures.

My best advice to anyone that experiences

early success is to realize that it might be short lived.

Definitely enjoy it while you can,

but stay true to your values and save your money.

It was really strange to be at a young age making money.

I was 17 years old.

I was making six figures from royalties and from prize money.

And it just felt surreal.

And at some point when you're that young

and you get that much success very quickly,

you think you're invincible and you think

that it's never going to end.

And suddenly I found myself buying cars.

I bought a house.

I bought a house when I was 17.

My parents co-signed it, but I paid for it.

And then I was living on my own as a senior in high school.

You know when you're a senior and some kids' parents aren't

home and that's where everyone's partying?

My parents were never home.

The party was always at my house.

But at the same time, my priority was skating.

So I was very lucky that I realized early on

that these distractions of partying and fame and whatnot

are only pulling you away from this activity or your skill

set.

And I knew that my priority was always

to keep skating and getting better and skating.

And I think that's what saw me through those very formative

years and those times when I could've just fallen

into that trap.

I'd have been one of those behind the music.

Well, he had a good run, and then he

struggled the rest of his life.

Well, the first sign that the skateboarding

was declining in popularity were the skate parks closing.

And a lot of them closed because it was the popularity waning,

but most of them closed because they

couldn't afford the liability insurance anymore.

And then through the '90s, because

of the lack of facilities, people took to the streets.

People were out skating private property and trespassing

and getting tickets.

So to be a skater back then, you had to kind of be an outlaw

or you had to not worry about that element.

And if you're trying to make a living at it, good luck.

The opportunities were drying up.

The competitions were scarce.

Sponsorships were scarce.

My royalty checks in the early '90s

were being cut in half every month.

I'm not talking about a gradual decline.

I'm talking about one month I made $2,000.

The next month I made $1,000.

Next month I made $500.

And you just can't maintain a career that way.

And so I started looking for other ways to make ends meet.

I started a skateboard company in 1992

when skateboarding was sort of at its biggest

lull of popularity, because I thought

it was my transition from being a pro skater to being a company

owner.

Because I thought that my career as a skater was kind of done.

I was more known as a vert skater.

Vert skating was over.

And I believed in the cycle of skating.

I saw it come and go twice already.

So I thought, well, it's probably

going to come around again.

I had to believe that.

And also because I didn't want to do anything else.

I love skating too much.

I love skating so much that I was

willing to struggle with a skate company

to keep it afloat at huge challenges

to my livelihood and my lifestyle.

I mean, I was eating Taco Bell and Top Ramen and peanut butter

and jelly sandwiches for like two years

and sold my cars, moved into a smaller place.

But I was happy doing that if it allowed me to stay in skating.

And I think that was probably another huge defining

moment in my life, because I was willing to do that because I

loved it for no money and at a detriment

to my livelihood and even my family.

Because I just wanted to skate.

And so I chose every single job I could.

I remember building a jump ramp for a Mountain Dew commercial

and driving it to Hollywood in a truck

because they were going to pay me 500 bucks,

including the materials for the jump ramp I built.

And doing skate exhibitions in amusement park parking lots,

three a day, 100 bucks a day.

Paid the bills and I got to skate.

So it was more like I love skating so much that I

was willing to do it for nothing,

but I was also willing to chase every opportunity so that I

could make a living at it.

And many other of my peers were not so lucky.

They couldn't find those opportunities,

and they had to stop.

The lesson for me was do what you love,

because that is the definition of success.

If you get to do what you love for a living, if you wake up

and you're happy to go to your job,

that's the key to happiness.

I know plenty of people that make extraordinary amounts

of money that are not happy, because they

thought that was the goal, and they're miserable in their job.

They're miserable the way that they make the money.

And so I realized then that this is something

that I love doing regardless of the financial rewards.

And yeah, nowadays I get paid ridiculous money

to ride my skateboard.

But I'd still do it for free any day of the week.

TONY HAWK: The first trick I learned,

I watched someone go up a curb on their skateboard.

And I thought that was magical, like that defied gravity.

It was like they could maneuver the streets

and the urban landscape.

And you could go up a curb, and I

was like, I want to learn that.

I felt like suddenly, I can control what I'm doing

and where I'm going.

And I could ride my skateboard all throughout it.

I felt empowered.

Street skating is the act of skateboarding on the terrain

that you would find in a typical suburban landscape.

So that includes handrails, stairs, ledges, gaps,

literally the streets.

And it's a lot to learn, and we're

going to teach you the best techniques on how

to do it safely.

So we're using a skate park to teach street

skating because it's a controlled environment.

And we have all the elements here,

elements that you would encounter out in the streets.

But we're not going to get kicked out of this place.

[CHUCKLES]

[SKATEBOARD CLATTERING]

Skateboarding can be a dangerous activity.

Using protective gear is recommended.

In my class, you'll see trained professionals

in a controlled environment.

Please use extreme care when attempting these activities

on your own.

A backside pop shove-it is the act of doing an ollie

and turning your board a 180 in the backside

direction under your feet, and then catching it

with the feet after the turn and putting it back down.

It's a very subtle move.

It all happens as you ollie the board.

And so basically, as you ollie the board,

you kick your back foot just a tad behind you.

And you kick your front foot just a tad in front of you,

and that gets the board moving.

And if you're snapping the ollie properly,

it will immediately do a 180 under you.

In fact, a lot of times, it overturns.

And the way to remedy that is just

to give it a little less push in that direction.

I like to set up my feet so that my front heel is hanging off

a little bit off the board, and my back toe

is more pressed on the tip of the tail.

And that way, when the board does come around,

I have a better chance of catching it and landing it

properly.

Because if you don't preposition your feet, it's a good chance

you're going to land either with the board turned too far

or with your toes hanging way off the front.

And that's the first mistake of pop shove-its.

And so if you can just find that balance

of positioning your feet and snapping

the board in that direction but very lightly,

you'll find that it comes to your feet quickly

and then you can put it back down.

A frontside 180 ollie is the act of doing an ollie

and then turning in the frontside direction

180 and landing backwards.

And it's sort of a three-part technique.

It starts with the regular ollie,

but as you're snapping the ollie,

you start to open up your shoulder

and turn your torso in the frontside position.

And then as you're leveling out your board,

you're usually about halfway into that turn.

And the key right then is to start

shifting your weight towards that front foot

and allowing your upper body to hang over the back foot

so that when you land, you're ready to roll backwards.

The biggest mistake of a frontside ollie 180

is not turning far enough.

And that's just a matter of turning your shoulder more

and snapping it better.

And if you need to, you can land on your front wheels

and pivot the rest of the way.

But as you push down that foot, that's

what gets it to turn that last 90 degrees.

[SKATEBOARD CLATTERING]

That is a way to do it, but it's not

going to help you if you're trying to do it over big gaps.

So it's basically that sort of hop over, turning

your shoulder, pushing down on your nose,

and then leaning towards your back foot as you land.

[SKATEBOARD CLATTERING]

TONY HAWK: My oldest son, Riley Hawk,

is a very accomplished street skater.

He has a great style.

He really has created his own path in skating

and hasn't followed my footsteps in that sense.

He's very accomplished in street skills,

and I feel like he would be better suited

to teach you these more technical street tricks.

So I'm going to hand off the MasterClass to my son Riley,

and I think you'll enjoy it.

RILEY HAWK: The first time I did a kickflip,

I was at the YMCA skate park.

And that was the moment when I realized

that I wanted to keep skating and learning new tricks.

I think that's the first trick people

learn that kind of motivate them to want

to keep doing the sport.

Today I'm going to teach you intermediate and advanced

street skating.

The kickflip is one of the hardest tricks to learn,

because it's usually the first trick.

It takes a long time to figure it out, but once you learn it

it's the gateway to almost every skateboard trick that

involves flicking your board.

It's like an ollie, but instead of just leveling out

your board, you use your front foot to flip the board.

When you start a kickflip, your front foot

is usually hanging about halfway off the board just

under your nose and your back foot

is in the middle of the tail.

When you pop, you want to slide your foot forward,

not directly to the side.

More of a diagonal motion toward your heel side.

Otherwise your board will go downward

instead of traveling with you.

Gotta keep your weight over the board,

otherwise when you are in motion,

your board will either go in front of you or behind you.

And to keep it centered with yourself,

you want to make sure that your weight is directly centered.

A great kickflip to me, personally,

is when you flick the board and rather

than it flipping in an upward motion,

it levels out and then your back foot is the first foot that

catches the board in the air and then your front foot

and then you land level.

Heelflip is pretty much the opposite of the kickflip.

You start the heelflip, your back foot

is pretty much in the same position

as the kickflip, which should be on the tail in the center.

And you have your heel on the board with your toes

hanging off.

You use your front foot to flick out forward

towards your toe side.

Don't hang your foot off too much.

Make sure it's on it enough to where

no matter what when you flick out, your heel will

catch some of the board on the way out.

It's easy to miss making contact with your front foot,

and then your board won't flip.

Backside ollie 180 is going to be a regular ollie

except you're spinning 180 degrees with your back facing

the direction you're headed.

You're going to have your feet pretty much set up just

like an ollie.

Place your back foot pretty much in the center of your board.

Before you pop your tail, you're going

to want to start turning your shoulders in a backside

direction.

Then pop your tail and slide your front foot forward,

similar to a regular ollie.

The timing is pretty important.

You want to make sure as you're popping,

you start turning your shoulders.

If you do it too late, you're going to end up landing

sideways on the ground, and you're not going

to fully rotate your board.

Frontside pop shove-it is just like pop shove-it

except your board is spinning behind your back

instead of in front of.

In this trick, your board turns frontside 180 degrees,

but your body stays in its original position.

Place your back foot on the tip of the tail,

as you would for an ollie.

You have your heel on the board with your toes hanging off.

To start the trick, pop your tail

while also pushing it towards your toe side

to start its frontside rotation.

Use your front foot to lightly guide the board

and to help it continue to turn a full frontside 180.

Once the board has nearly completed its full rotation,

catch the board with both feet and come down.

To make sure your board doesn't flip in the air,

you want to use your front foot to stop it

from flipping when it's about halfway through the rotation.

360 flip builds on the pop shove-it

because you're using the same motion you would

use with your back foot but with a little bit more pressure

as well as using your front foot to flick the board.

The 360 flip is going to be using the same fotting

placement as the kickflip, except your back foot is

going to be in the pocket of your board more.

With your back foot, pop your tail

down and sideways forcefully enough

to launch your board into the air,

making it fully rotate 360 degrees in a backside

direction.

Just after you pop your board, use your front foot

to flick forward into the heelside

to start the flipping motion, just

like you would in a kickflip.

You have to jump pretty high so there's

enough time for your board to make a full rotation and flip.

As the board is nearing its full rotation and flip,

catch it with your feet and bring it down.

A good tip is to try to catch the board with your front foot

first.

When you're first learning a 360 flip,

try flicking your board without trying to land on it.

Once you're consistently flipping it correctly,

then start committing to the landing.

Frontside 50/50 is when you ollie

onto a ledge or a handrail and you use both your trucks

grinding in a forward direction.

You want to be pretty much parallel to the obstacle

that you're skating.

Pop your ollie and slightly rotate frontside,

making sure to land both of your trucks

on the edge of the bench in a grind position.

You're going to land on your heel side.

You don't want to land on your toes on the object,

because then you're going to flip off of it.

And you want to make sure you get high enough over the object

that you're grinding.

You land both trucks on the ledge or rail.

You grind forward motion, and then you come off.

Timing is critical for grinds and board slides.

You might want to try practicing them

on a low object like a curb before bringing it

to benches, rails, and ledges.

Frontside Smith grind is going to be pretty much

the same approach as the 50/50.

You're going to ollie, and you want

to make sure you get over the obstacle.

But you're going to land with only your back truck

on the obstacle, dipping the nose of your board

to the side of the ledge.

You're going to be leaning a little bit more

on your back foot rather than both your feet centered

on the 50/50.

You want to make sure that when you're grinding,

you have enough momentum with your back foot

to push your truck through the ledge or the rail.

But you don't want to lean too far back,

otherwise you'll loop out and end up on your back.

When you're doing a Smith grind on a ledge,

you're going to be leaning a little bit more onto your toes,

because you have the top of the ledge to support your board.

You're doing it on a rail, you're

going to be pretty much solely leaning on your heel,

because you have no support on the side.

Common mistake with a Smith grind

is you don't ollie high enough to get onto the obstacle

that you're trying to skate, and the side of your truck

will hit either the ledge or the rail.

And that's definitely a terrible slam to take.

You end up on your side on the obstacle you're skating.

For this trick, roll up parallel to the bench with it

on your backside.

Rotate your shoulders as you ollie,

turning backside 90 degrees and landing with your tail

on the edge of the bench.

You'll be sliding forward as you near the end of the bench.

Turn your board straight as you come off.

You want to catch the board with your feet

to stop the board's rotation.

It's better to ollie higher than you would think than lower,

because no matter what, you'll get on top

rather than your board clipping the side and you don't get in.

The backside tail slide is tricky,

because you have to almost stop your shoulder rotation once you

get into the slide so that you don't keep fully rotating.

You have to make sure as soon as you get in your head is looking

in the direction you're headed.

For the kickflip down the stairs,

you want to start on something small, maybe like a curb,

and then work your way up to a two stair, three stair.

You don't want to go straight to a big set,

because you want to make sure you're

comfortable with the trick.

For any stair set, you want to make sure

that you ollie the stair set first

to figure out your speed before you try to kickflip down it.

You want to make sure you feel like you're

going fast enough to clear the set of stairs

before you try to kickflip.

You want to catch the board with your feet

to stop the board's rotation.

You want to flip the board pretty quickly,

similar to how you flick it on the flat ground.

This gives you plenty of time to run out of the trick

if you miss the board instead of landing on the board

sideways or upside down.

Once you catch your board, you want to spot the landing

and ride away.

For the boardslide on the handrail,

you want to approach the rail at a slight angle

rather than straight on.

You want to have enough speed so that if you mess up,

you don't land on the rail in between your legs.

I've done it plenty of times, and it's extremely painful.

Once you're near the rail, start an ollie

high enough to make sure your wheels get over the rail.

Turn your body and land on your board sideways.

And land with the middle of your board on the rail.

You want to have your weight centered over your board.

But when you're learning, it's a lot safer

to lean forward than backwards so your board doesn't

shoot out.

As you leave the rail, you want to spot your landing

and turn your board as well as your shoulders at the same time

so you can ride away straight.

For the feeble grind, you want to approach

the rail like a boardslide but with a little bit more

of an angle.

As you approach the rail, you want the rail

to be on your backside.

Ollie up and make sure to clear your front trucks over the rail

while landing on your back truck with your weight on your heel.

Want to make sure that your back truck and the toe

side of your board land on the rail at the same time.

You want to keep your weight centered over the rail

while you're grinding.

As you near the end of the rail, you

want to slightly shift your weight back.

At the same time, you're going to lift your board

and straighten it out, land, and ride away.

Learning these tricks will open up a world of possibilities

to other tricks you can do on benches, rails, and ledges.

As a beginning skater, there's no level

you need to reach before going to the park.

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.

[LAUGHS] 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 weight evenly across your board

leaning forward but not putting all

your weight on the front foot.

It's hard.

It's hard to commit.

It looks frightening from up there.

But if you're able to pump your way up to the top of the ramp,

you're able to drop in.

I believe that.

TONY HAWK: In the last 10 years, we've

seen an influx of girl skaters that truly rip and that are

inspiring a younger generation of skaters around the world.

Lizzie Armanto is a member of my Birdhouse Skate Team

and one of the most prominent female professional

skateboarders today.

She won gold at the X Games, was the first girl

on the cover of Transworld Skateboarding Magazine,

and was the first female skater to complete

the loop, a full 360 degree ramp that goes upside down.

She truly rips.

LIZZIE ARMANTO: I give my mom the credit

for my love of skateboarding.

She worked full time.

So when my brother and I were young,

we'd go to the skate park as a sort of after school care.

And I was immediately hooked.

I started competing in park competitions

when I was pretty young.

I've competed in lots of competitions

since from invitationals to the X Games.

And I get to represent Finland at the Olympics

once skateboarding makes its Olympic debut.

It's pretty cool to see how far skateboarding has come,

especially for us girls.

I'm excited that skateboarding will be shown on a global scale

and for so many people to be exposed

to it for the first time and hopefully

find their passion for it like I have.

She has the ability to take you

to the next level intermediate tricks in park skating.

So Lizzie, take it away.

Today I'm going to teach you intermediate and advanced park

skating.

On a rock to fakie, approach the coping going straight up.

You'll want to shift your weight forward

as you approach the lip, lifting your front truck slightly

so the middle of your board will be balanced on the coping.

Then shift your weight back into the bowl.

Put your weight on your tail to make

sure you clear your front truck and avoid hanging up.

Just be careful not to lean too far back.

If you lean too far back, you can slam.

I want to quickly break down frontside and backside.

Usually tricks where you're approaching

the coping facing forward, it's a frontside trick.

And when you're approaching the coping

with your back towards it, it's a backside trick.

For this trick, you're going to go up

by approaching the coping at a slight angle.

As you near the lip, slightly rotate your shoulders

frontside.

With your back foot, hit your tail,

popping your board upwards.

At the same time, slide your front foot forward.

This will launch you into the air.

Continue to have both legs bent as you and the board

continue a slight rotation.

Extend your legs and prepare to land on the wall.

If you feel like you're going to hang up on the coping,

then kick the board away.

In a backside 50/50, approach the lip

so that it's on your backside.

Aim for a spot on the coping where

you want to place your back truck to start the grind.

Shift your weight to putting your front truck down.

You're now grinding on both trucks.

To come in, do a subtle kick turn to go back into the bowl.

When you're first learning, your weight

will be more centered over the deck when grinding,

and you'll be standing more upright.

As you advance, you'll start leaning

in more, which allows you to have more speed going

in and out of the trick.

For a frontside 5-0 grind, you're

going to want to approach the coping at a slight frontside

Angle and enough speed to reach the lip.

As you near the lip, lift your front truck

and aim for a spot on the coping to place your back truck.

Shift your weight so that your back truck

locks into the coping starting the grind.

To finish the grind, continue your frontside rotation

and shift your weight forward, entering the bowl.

For a backside disaster, approach

the coping going straight up.

Right as you near the coping, you

want to push your board into a backside 180 rotation.

Your back foot does most of the work,

pressing your tail down and sideways,

starting the rotation.

While you're rotating, pick a spot

on the coping and land on the middle of your board.

Forward to come in.

Remember to press on the nose of your board

to clear your back wheels when you come in.

For front Smith grinds, you're going

to want to approach the wall with a little more speed

than you'd normally have for a frontside 5-0 grind.

As you're approaching the lip, turn frontside

with your shoulders and your board will follow.

Aim to get your back truck on the coping, starting the grind.

Lower your front truck down past the lip

so the rail of your board slides on the coping.

This will pitch you forward.

So you'll need to shift your weight to your back truck

to continue to grind.

To re-enter the bowl, continue turning frontside

while shifting your weight forward.

For a fakie disaster Smith, approach the coping going

backwards, which we call fakie.

Approach the bowl with just enough speed

to land in the middle of the board on the coping.

Shift your weight so you can stall on the deck.

Push down with your back foot, forcing your back truck

into the coping.

To re-enter the bowl, shift your weight forward.

In this trick, it's really easy to hang up.

Something to watch out for is to make

sure you get your truck all the way onto the coping.

For a frontside boneless, you're going

to want to approach the coping with enough speed

to get some air.

Bend your knees.

Plant your foot on the coping, and grab your board frontside.

Use your momentum to push off the coping while turning

frontside.

Quickly get your front foot back on the board

and shift your weight forward for the landing.

As you get better doing the frontside boneless,

you can take it higher.

Really stretch out and contort your board.

This is a trick where you can really show your style.

The reason I skate vert is because I started skating

in empty swimming pools.

And the most popular skaters in the '80s

were vert skaters, ramp skaters because that

seemed like the most exciting way of skating.

Nowadays, vert ramps are about 13 feet tall on average.

You're usually wearing at least kneepads and a helmet,

if not elbow pads.

And you're flying anywhere from 6 to 10 feet above the lip.

And you are putting yourself at great risk,

and that's why you're wearing all the pads.

So pumping is how you use your legs to generate speed

on transition walls.

You sort of prepare your legs in a half squat.

And as you ride through the transition,

you start to straighten them out.

And you use that force up the wall to generate your speed.

And so the idea is you use your legs,

pump through, stand up, prepare again, half squat,

and then pump through again so you're standing up on the way

down.

Fakie is pretty straightforward.

It means that you go off the wall forward, come down it

backwards.

There's no turning your board.

The whole key is shifting your weight.

So as you come off the wall, you're

obviously leaning forward.

And then as your board comes to a stop,

you have to start to shift your weight

towards your back foot which will now

be your lead foot coming back down.

The biggest mistake people make is going up fakie, staying

in the same position, leaning towards their front foot,

and then they end up falling backwards.

A kick turn is the very first 180 that you will ever

learn on a ramp.

It is a very subtle motion.

You don't have to lift up very much on your front wheels

in order to make it turn.

It kind of does the work for you.

And you're pivoting on your back wheels

and then setting it down quickly.

The whole key is in your shoulder.

And it's almost like you throwing a little punch

with your arm to keep that shoulder moving

and to keep your body in line with the skateboard.

The biggest mistake people make is

when they go to do a kick turn and their shoulder

stays open as if it's still in the position of going down

fakie.

And then their body is twisted as they come down,

and they end up falling backwards.

Knee sliding is the best approach to falling, especially

on a vert ramp.

You can absorb the impact by taking one step.

But then if you go to your knees,

you can just slide down that transition

and you don't have to take the impact on your feet.

You want to lean back a little bit so that you're not

falling forward on your face.

Especially when we do big aerials,

you'll see that when we know something's gone wrong,

we either ditch the board or hold onto it.

Don't let it get tangled up in your feet.

Knee slides have kept me going for 40 years skating.

So a backside air is the same body motion as a kick turn.

It's just a matter of reaching down and grabbing

the board as you lift it up with your front foot.

And you come back down just like a kick turn.

They're very similar motions, just one

actually allows you to fly.

Most people grab a little bit off

to the side just in front of their front foot on the heel

side.

That's probably the standard backside air positioning

because it also allows you to get

some leverage on your back foot to keep it on the board.

I usually choose to do nose grabs,

but only because I know exactly where my nose is

and because I know how to keep my back foot on.

I don't recommend people learning nose grab airs first

because it's hard to keep your back foot

on the board at the same time.

First mistake of backside airs is hanging up and hitting

the coping on the way in.

And the way to remedy that is to keep your legs bent

until you know you're clear of the coping.

And then putting them back down and going down the ramp.

If you're trying to do a trick that

requires a little bit of air time,

you're probably going to do at least one or two

backside airs just to get your speed up into that trick.

A backside ollie is basically a no-handed backside air.

There are a couple of different ways to do it.

I prefer to hit my tail just before the coping

to get myself a little bit more clearance and a little bit

more air time.

And so I snap.

And you'll see that my foot slides forward.

And as you start to come back down,

you continue to straighten your legs

and keep pressure on your board.

I mean, that's the key.

When people say, how do you keep your board on your feet?

That is how you keep your board on your feet.

You keep putting pressure out until it's ready to come in.

If you do it properly, it feels like an invisible wall ride.

Like you're riding just a wall up in the air.

So a front side rock n' roll-- the trick is in the back toe.

You start to rotate it so that it's just your toe that's

touching the board on the tail.

And you straighten your front leg,

and your back leg is probably the most bent

it's ever been in any kind of rock n' roll trick.

And as you start to come in, you have to lift off just enough

to clear your front wheels.

And then you come in like a front side kick turn.

So the two keys to that trick are pivoting your back toe

and clearing your front wheels on the way in.

A lipslide starts off with a front side ollie.

Basically, you're going with just enough speed

to get to the top of the ramp, maybe a little bit more

because you want it to be more of a an arc, a carve.

As you ollie, you're turning your board in the 180

direction, but not a full 180 so that you're just

landing on the underside of the board

and it is perpendicular to the coping.

As you have moved your front foot forward

towards the nose in the ollie, you

want to keep your front foot there

because as you're sliding, that's

going to allow you to clear your wheels on the way in.

The lipslide entry is very subtle,

but it's probably the most important part.

If you can do a lipslide, I would

see a tailslide is probably one of the next things

to learn because they're both very similar body motions.

Basically, you want to come up the wall at an angle,

and then you ollie below the vertical

because you want to go up to your tail.

So the idea is you're not coming down your tail,

you're actually going up to it.

And that way, you can shift your weight

as it's coming onto the coping, and you

can stand up on the coping as you're sliding.

And the sliding on a tailslide is probably the most crucial

part because that is where your weight

balance is the most important.

It's all on your back foot.

That tailslide is all about your back foot positioning

and weight balance.

And if you are sliding consistently

and your weight is actually over your body in the right balance,

then you can just come in at any time.

And I do tailslides until I feel like it's

starting to slow down, and then I just let my front wheels drop

and just ride back in.

Some people like to control that and they

like to actually ollie out of a tailslide.

But I don't recommend doing that because you

lose a lot of speed that way.

I created the Madonna sometime around 1984, I think.

And I was complaining to my friend Lester Kasai, who was

also a pro skater at the time.

I said, you know, I feel like I've

been creating a lot of tricks and none of them catch on.

Nobody is trying the tricks I'm learning.

Is it because they don't like them?

Is it because they're hard?

And he said, well, maybe you just

have to name them something trendy.

It was 1984, and Madonna was the most trendy thing.

So I named it Madonna.

And I guess it worked.

People are still doing them.

We're talking about it now.

So Madonna is a one-footed lean to tail.

And what that means is you are going the front side direction,

grabbing the nose as you take off.

You don't have to ollie into it.

You can actually grab the nose just as you lift off

above the coping.

And then as you're doing that, if you take your front foot off

and kick it downward, it actually

keeps your motion going up.

So it's almost like you're leaving your foot behind.

And then as you reach your peak is

when you start to bend your front foot

and start to bring it back on the board,

and it will just come back onto the board

as you're aiming for the tail on the way down.

The Probably.

Most dangerous part of this trick is aiming for the tail

because it's very easy to miss your tail on this

and end up on the deck like a disaster.

We call it a disaster for a reason

because it's going to hang up your trucks

and you're going to fall into the flat.

So on a Madonna, it's better to err

on the side of caution of pulling too far out of the ramp

than not pulling out enough.

If you miss your tail, you're just

going to slide down the ramp.

If you end up with your tail over the deck,

you're going to hang up.

And that's the disaster zone.

Tenacity is one of the most important factors of skating.

The idea that you will continue to try something over and over

and not give up until you get it is key to success and key

to success in your life in general.

There are skills and things you want

to accomplish that are going to take years, if not decades,

to develop.

And if you're willing to stay the course

and you're willing to learn every aspect of it

and little by little chip away at that success,

you'll finally earn it.

Vert ramps were actually made to emulate

pools but to give you better walls and better transitions

to do these tricks.

And now we're seeing the top skateboarders doing things

I never imagined possible.

So backside Smith grind.

What it means is you're grinding your back truck and the middle

of your board or the rail of your board at the same time.

And so that requires a very delicate weight distribution.

Your heel can stick to the top of the ramp

and stop you from grinding.

And so you'll see some of the most accomplished people that

can do back Smiths.

They actually point their front foot forward

and angle as to keep the heel away from the rail

and away from the deck as they're grinding.

So the idea is that you get your back truck in the grinding

position.

Keep your front foot so that it stays on the board.

It's not hanging off at all.

And you just grind along until you

feel like you're slowing down, and then you can just sort of

drop it back in.

Backside Smith grinds, I like them a lot

because I think they look cool, and I like them

because I can grind as far as I want to or as little as I want

to, and really it's just a matter of how much speed I have

and when I feel like it can come in.

A bluntslide to backside 180 in is

you're coming up the wall at an angle,

and then you're sort of shifting your board back

the other direction in order to get it in position to slide.

And the key to the trick is how you slide on your tail

and how much weight you put on it.

And that is a function of keeping

your weight a little bit back and hang your front heel,

if not your back heel as well, off the board.

As you slide along, your feet might be moving.

And as you start to come in, your feet

will probably even move further towards the toes.

And so if you come up into the trick in a position

that you normally skate in, by the time you leave it,

you probably have your feet hanging off too far.

Your toes will be hanging off too far.

So what I like to do is compensate for it

in the beginning.

And so I approach the wall with my front heels off the board.

And as I slide it, I feel my heel moving again.

And as I come in, it moves back into the regular position.

The movement to come in doesn't take a lot of effort,

because your body is already moving

that direction and your momentum is heading backside.

So lifting up your board makes it come in easily.

It's more about moving your shoulder

and turning it in the backside direction

while lifting up your board, which makes your whole body

do a 180 and you're coming in forward.

An invert or a hand plant is basically the way

that you stand on one hand off a ramp.

I recommend grabbing the board on the toe side

in between your legs, because that

will give you the most leverage and the best grip on it.

And the key to inverts and probably the first mistake

people make is that they want to do an aerial

and then plant their hand after the fact.

If you do it that way, that makes you actually overturn.

So the idea is that you're putting your hand ahead of you

and you're pivoting around your hand.

And as you get more comfortable with that,

then you start to learn the balance

point and the pivot point of your hand,

and that allows you to stall it and allows you to tweak it.

That takes a lot of practice.

It takes a lot of experience.

And learning to land.

The key is learning how to put the weight back to your feet

from your hand, because a lot of people put their hand down,

and they don't realize that they need to shift it back

into their feet.

So as you put your hand down, you pivot around your hand.

And then as it's coming back down,

you start to shift that weight.

Bring your hand up.

Put your weight back on your feet,

and you ride back down like you come in like a backslide.

Inverts are daunting.

They seem super scary, because you are literally upside down.

But as you get more and more comfortable with it,

you find that there are so many different ways to tweak

and invert, and everyone has their own technique,

their own grab.

And just the way that you stall it becomes your signature.

A caballerial as a no handed 360 aerial

where you come up riding backwards and do an ollie.

This is called a fakie ollie.

Then you do a full 360 with your board

without grabbing it in the backside direction

and come down forward.

It's all on your shoulders.

You wind up your body, and then as your wheels bonk off

the coping or your tail hits, you let your body unwind.

And if you bonked it enough, you're

going to get off the wall enough to complete that full 360.

Key to Caballerials, as far as I'm concerned,

is that you hit those two wheels at the same exact time.

Your back wheels should be hitting the coping

at the same time.

And that means you're going straight up and down.

If you are going at an angle, you're

going to hit one wheel sooner than the other,

and that's going to make your board flap under your foot,

and you're probably not going to get

enough leverage or control of your board

as it's spinning around.

Caballerials can open up a whole new world of tricks.

So a 540, more commonly known as a McTwist.

The key is in the snap.

As I approach the coping, I reach down for my board

and I turn my head, immediately snapping it,

because that way you're already spotting your landing

zone before your body has made that entire motion.

When you snap the board off the top of the ramp

and grab it quickly, you want to do that

more forcefully than you would usually do a backside air.

Because you need a little more air, a little more room

to make that spin happen.

It's very common to not snap hard enough

and end up over the deck when you're in the middle of the 540

and realizing you might hang up on the coping.

So to remedy that, it's just a matter

of snapping it a little bit harder than you're used to.

So you grab your board and tuck your head.

That makes you spin by default.

The biggest challenge of a 540 is the landing,

because you don't see the landing.

You don't get a lot of time to see it.

A lot of times you're not off the wall

in the perfect position.

And so there's a little bit of using the force.

Like a sixth sense, where you just

feel like it's the right time, it's the right place,

and you let your board go and you stand up.

And that first 540 is probably one

of the most frightening things in skateboarding,

especially for vert skaters, because you just don't know.

And it doesn't usually work out perfectly on the first attempt.

I'm not going to say that you won't fall.

You'll probably fall learning 540s.

But you see people try 540s for years before they ever

commit to landing.

And if you do have 540s, if you have the snap,

you have the grab, you have the spin, you can do it,

because you know how to ride down the wall from an aerial.

And this is just coming down the wall from another aerial.

It's just one that you didn't get to see the landing

zone the whole time.

TONY HAWK: 900 is a 2 and 1/2 spin

in the air on a vert ramp going up forward,

spinning round 2 and 1/2 times, coming back down the same wall.

It was so much more dangerous and different than a 720.

And because the 900 forces you to be blind to your landing

spot twice, it's far more frightening and far

more inconsistent to figure out.

I tried my first 900 in 1989.

By the time I went around from my second spin,

I didn't know where I was.

I opened up, and I fell backwards down the ramp.

Like, literally upside down, falling down.

And it was frightening.

I didn't really want to try it again.

I made a few attempts through the years after that.

They all kind of ended up the same way.

And when I finally actually put one down on the wall,

my weight was too far forward, and I fell into the flat bottom

and broke my rib.

And that set me back quite a bit, because I just thought,

maybe it's not possible.

I don't know.

I thought I had every element to it.

I thought had I had what it took to do it.

And I just ended up crashing into the flat bottom with all

of my weight and all my force.

And so fast forward to 1999.

The X Games decided that in their 1999 event

in San Francisco that they would add a best trick

event to their programming.

I had a plan going into it that I

was going to do a varial 720, which

is a 720 spin with an extra 180 on my board.

I made the trick probably within 10 minutes.

I made it pretty clean.

And it was like, wow.

That was my best trick.

That was it.

And at the time, Dave Duncan, who was the announcer,

he's the one who said, well, why don't we see a 900?

And for me I just thought, well, it's

just going to be me trying it for the crowd.

I'm not going to make it.

And OK, sure.

I'll try it for the crowd.

Why not?

There's 10 minutes left.

I don't have any other tricks in mind.

So I tried to couple 900s, and there

was something that was different that night

in that I kept getting the right amount of speed to spin.

Every other time I tried it, I would either

not get enough speed or not get enough spin.

And I had a consistent speed and a consistent spin that night.

And suddenly, after about the third or fourth try,

I started spotting a landing.

And that had never happened in previous times.

I would get 1 out of 10.

And this one was like, every single time I was like, wow.

There's the landing right there.

So then I just started trying to make it,

because I was like, you know, if I'm ever

going to get hurt doing it again,

I guess it's here in this venue with all these people watching.

And so I started trying to make it.

And within one of the first tries of making it,

I fell forward again.

And almost did the exact same thing as when I broke my rib,

but managed to get out of it.

And that's when something clicked

and I thought to myself, why don't you

try shifting your weight more towards your back foot

as you're spinning?

And so I did that the next time.

And instead of falling forward, I fell backwards.

And that was the moment, because it was like,

I know how to maneuver my body while I'm

in midair, while I'm literally somersaulting through the air.

And if I can just split the difference between those two

things I just did, this could actually work.

And at that point I was like, I'm going to make this trick

or they're going to take me away in an ambulance.

And I think within another 2 or 3 tries, I made it.

[AUDIENCE CHEERING]

[EXPLOSIVE APPLAUSE, CHEERING]

And when I made it, it was like time stood still.

And it was like--

well, I didn't really understand it happened

until I was riding back towards the stands and the crowd,

and everyone was rushing me on the ramp.

And that's when I knew, this really happened.

You actually did a 900.

That's-- that is crazy.

That doesn't even seem real.

I mean, it still doesn't seem real

that it happened in that element because I had tried it so

many times.

And that's probably why it worked,

because it wasn't like I was so focused on it that I put

all this pressure on myself.

The way that whole event played out,

and the way that people saw it happen,

and the way they saw the determination

and the perseverance-- it sort of transcended skating

where they thought, this is something

beyond just a skateboard trick.

This is sort of a milestone.

And they played that highlight on Sports Center.

That was the first time skateboarding

was on ESPN Sports Center.

ESPN created the X Games, but they had never

shown a highlight from that event in their mainstream

programming.

People were stopping me in airports and at restaurants

like, bro!

900!

It was crazy.

I really had no idea that somehow it

would resonate like that.

I didn't think that anyone would even care.

Suddenly, I was thrust into the spotlight,

and my name was synonymous with skateboarding,

and I was getting recognized ever I went.

I mean, I got to do Letterman because of that.

It was-- it got crazy.

It was the biggest moment of my competition career,

and I'm still hugely proud of that moment.

TEACHER: I had the idea to combine two tricks, a McTwist

and a kickflip.

Little did I know how truly difficult that would be

and how many elements had to come into place to do that.

The idea is that you're flipping the board on the snap.

And the snap is the most crucial part of the McTwist.

So to be doing something else during that time

seemed almost impossible.

And so on the snap, I'm flicking my board into a spin

and hoping that I've sent it in the same trajectory as my body

and as my hand.

And then I'm doing the spin sort of second nature,

and I'm just reaching out with my hand

hoping that the board reaches my hand.

When I finally did start catching my board

and getting it back to my feet, I

realized that I didn't have the actual spin enough

to land forward.

And it took it took a couple years of trying that trick over

and over and over.

And then one night, there was this really fun session.

There

Were very few vert skaters back then.

This is probably 1994, '95.

We all just ended up converging at the skate park in Tampa,

because it was one of the last vert ramps in the world.

And we had this session, and I remember it vividly.

Mike Frazier did the very first kickflip Indy 360.

He did that during our session, and that is sort of a building

block to what I was trying.

He did this NBD, it's never been done.

And then I came behind him probably

about a half hour later and landed the first kickflip

McTwist.

But it was kind of this milestone night

for vert skating when vert skating was

the least appreciated form of skating in the world.

And there were only a handful of us that care.

But that footage lives on and that night

lives on kind of in infamy.

I mean, I've seen people talking about it

in recent months on Instagram.

I can't believe I was there that night

and all this stuff happened.

And so it was pretty magical, and I've

done it a couple of times since, but it never felt as special

as that one night.

I say anyone that's trying to make skateboarding

a career, the first thing you have to know

is that you're only as good or as popular

as your last trick or your last video.

And you've got to keep challenging yourself.

Doesn't matter how far you get.

Even if you're considered skater of the year, you're number one,

you won the event, people will forget about you

very quickly unless you keep outdoing yourself.

And that's-- that's the key.

Like that's what's kept me relevant

all these years is that I just continue to challenge myself.

I didn't really care how I rated in competition.

I didn't really-- it wasn't about the coverage I got.

It wasn't about the accolades that I got.

It was more about what's the next trick.

My advice for anyone that wants to do contests

is the first key is confidence.

Know that what you're doing you're

capable of doing, that you've done it

in practice hundreds of times, because the first thing is you

hear your name called, and you drop in, and the first instinct

is like, what--

what am I doing?

I don't know how to do this.

And if that's your attitude, that's

how you're going to fail.

And so you have to approach it like, oh, another practice,

another practice run just like I did yesterday.

If you can maintain that sense of confidence and calm,

it's going to carry you through.

But I also think that you need to, in the beginning

especially, stay conservative with the tricks

that you know you're going to make, the ones that you

have dialed in.

And if that gets you to the next stage of competition,

build upon that.

But don't keep doing the exact same run,

because if you scored--

let's say you scored an 85 with that run in the beginning.

By the end of the event, you're not

going to score an 85 with it.

That's just how it is.

I know it shouldn't be that way.

I know the judges shouldn't be looking at like that,

but they want to see improvements.

If you're trying to make a name for yourself or you're trying

to pick up a sponsor, the best thing you can do

is to do something unique.

Choose your own style.

Don't just copy what you are seeing in videos.

Don't just copy the trick of the week.

If you're doing the kind of tricks

that people are used to seeing, you're not going to stand out.

If you showed me a silhouette of someone doing a trick,

I could probably tell you who it is just

based on how they keep their body positioning.

And that's what I love about it is that you

have your own signature style.

And that is hugely important, especially now.

Especially with how diverse skating

is, there are so many different terrains, and styles,

and disciplines to skating that it's hard to stand out.

Some people only skate ledges.

Some people can only skate transition.

But once you find that focus, you find that you excel in it

and that maybe you're going to do things

that no one else has done.

So if you have something very unique,

you've got to run with it, because that's

going to be your hook.

That's going to be the thing that gets you recognized.

And at some point, you can learn other styles.

You can become maybe one of the most well rounded skaters

in the world.

But that hook is what maybe gets you the recognition

in the first place.

Let's say you competed quite a bit

or you're used to it at least.

When they call your name, that will sometimes

give you the extra motivation to do something

even bigger, even higher.

And I see contests runs of mine, especially

through the late '80s, early '90s, where I know I wasn't

going that big in practice.

I know that I didn't even try that trick the run

before my competition run.

But you suddenly get this energy, this adrenaline,

that will carry you into doing things you

didn't think you're capable of.

And sometimes that can work against you.

Sometimes that adrenaline is too much.

And it gives you too much confidence.

And suddenly you think like, oh, I could do this with no speed.

And of course, you can't.

But you have the sense of invincibility and excitement

in you that you think you can.

And so you've got to find that balance.

And you've got to figure out how to control that sense of hype.

Don't go all out.

Like use it.

Use it to give you a little bit extra boost.

Use it to maybe do that one trick

that you were considering but weren't sure about, but don't

use it to suddenly do something you've never done before,

because that's just-- that's not going to work.

In my era of skateboarding, competition

was the most important thing.

The only way that you're going to be recognized,

the only way that you're going to get a sponsor,

the only way that you're going to get in a magazine

is if you go to the competition and you do well.

There was no-- there were no skate videos.

I took competition very seriously

because that was the only gauge of success back then.

So I would go to wherever the contest was

going to be in a few weeks and practice and practice.

Practice the routine.

I would draw a diagram of the pool

and write numbers down in each spot of where

I'm going to do which trick.

And that's the kind of discipline

that I had for competition because it was that important.

And then I would have certain tricks

that I could swap out for harder tricks.

So let's say the finals are three runs.

First run is a little conservative.

It's the run that I know I could do but has

all the elements that I like.

If I made that, the second run is like,

well, this trick over here is going to be a no-hander.

This one's going to be a little bit trickier.

This one I'm going to add a varial into it.

And sometimes that didn't work.

So the third run, I got another shot at that.

But I think that my whole key to competition

was be conservative in the beginning,

do the things that you know you can make, and build upon those.

And always have a backup plan.

I think that a lot of the skaters that I

was skating against back then did not have a backup plan

if they fell.

And I always knew that if I fell,

OK, if I fall on this run, I'm starting over there

and I'm going to go into this routine,

because I've got to try to maintain a score that's

going to keep me in the event.

And a lot of people when they fall in an event,

they fall apart.

It's over.

They don't know where-- they don't know where to go.

You gotta have a backup plan.

Competing can be all consuming.

It can be your only way of life.

And it's exhausting.

And it's debilitating.

I mean when you're in that mode, especially if you're

successful, and you have a bad day, by all accounts,

you're done.

You suck.

You lost.

You know what I mean?

And when you're living in that black and white world,

it's rough.

And it's depressing.

And it's lonely.

And that's why I stopped competing,

because I didn't want those pressures anymore.

And I did feel like I had an outlet

for other ways of skating.

But there are people that--

I mean, especially now.

Skateboarding's in the Olympics.

There are people that are only solely focused

on competing and training.

And it's brutal.

And if you can handle it, more power to you.

Like if you really can maintain that level and that creativity

but also that consistency, then it's your calling.

But it's not for everyone.

Eventually, skate videos came into play in the mid '80s.

It was cool for me, because I knew

that I could compete and do well because I

had a big bag of tricks and I could

adapt to different terrain.

But I also knew that I had an even bigger bag of tricks that

are not as consistent that I could do on video

that would be more impressive.

And for me, that was the perfect blend,

because one allowed me this outlet for the tricks

that I really wanted to do but I couldn't do consistently

and I couldn't do in competition.

And suddenly this element of video

became far more important than the competition element.

1999, I won a bunch of the biggest events.

The best trick contest happened at X Games.

I did my first 900.

That obviously got a lot of hype.

And I was already considering not competing anymore,

so I just said I'm not going to compete after '99.

That was it.

It was kind of like I'm either going to end on a high note

or I'm just going to fade away.

To decide to step away from competition

was probably a defining moment in my life

in that it truly allowed me to do things

that I never imagined possible, and not just skating-wise.

Like definitely, my skating improved greatly

after I stopped competing because I

was free of this conservative attitude

where I had to land the tricks all the time.

And I was able to step into a mode

where I was doing a lot of exhibitions.

And I was allowed failure.

And when you're allowed that failure,

and you can keep trying stuff, I learned so many more tricks

within like three years after competing that I wanted to do

but was afraid to try because I knew

they wouldn't be consistent.

I knew I might get hurt.

It was so liberating to not compete anymore at that point

and definitely the reason why I was able to maintain a career,

because I didn't have to prove myself in competition.

I just had to stay relevant.

I just had to stay progressive.

It allowed me to have this crazy longevity.

I mean I never imagined when I was 20 that I would

be able to skate into my 30s.

And then when I was 30, I was like that

would be cool to skate when you're 40 like as a novelty.

And I'm 51.

And I just learned a new trick last week.

TONY HAWK: The very beginning of what

became Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was Activision calling me,

because they had heard that I was pitching a video game

to different developers.

And they said, hey, we heard you're

trying to work on a video game.

We're actually doing a video game with skateboarding,

and we'd like to see if you want to be involved.

And I went up to Activision.

They handed me a Playstation controller.

They had a bunch of suits in this meeting in a conference

room.

On the screen was Bruce Willis with a gun

strapped to his back on a skateboard skating

through a desert landscape.

And I started controlling him and doing tricks and doing

ollies and doing kickflips.

And I just immediately sensed that this it.

This was the control scheme.

It was intuitive.

It was fun, even though I was just doing basic tricks

on the ground.

And the reason it was Bruce Willis is because Activision

had just done a game called Apocalypse,

and Bruce Willis was the star of it.

And so I realized right then that with my resources,

with my experience, with my connections,

we can make this something that the skaters would really like.

And I basically signed on right then.

NARRATOR: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.

Now everyone thinks they can skate like Tony.

By the time the game was set to come out,

Activision had offered me a buyout of future royalties.

Substantial amount.

The kind of money I never heard anyone speak to me.

They're like, we want to give you a half a million dollars.

I was like, a half million at that time in my life

sounded like someone said a trillion billion dollars.

That seemed absurd.

And I had just hit a stride in my skating

again where I was doing pretty well with royalties.

I was doing pretty well with competition.

And I had just bought a pretty nice house, and I thought,

I don't really need that kind of money right now.

And I'd rather let this ride and see what happens.

And I mean, at that time, it seemed crazy

that I would do that.

It was the best financial decision I made in my life

for sure.

When the game came out, it was a big success critically.

It was a pretty big success in sales but not massive.

But they immediately started working on the second one.

And when we got to work on the second one,

I knew we had something that was beyond just skating.

It was something that video game players actually enjoyed.

And when the second one came out,

that's when everything changed.

Because the second one got, I mean,

it's one of the best reviewed video games of all time.

Suddenly we had a franchise.

And suddenly people were picking up skateboards

because they played a video game.

And that was not something I expected.

I expected that this game would inspire

skaters to buy video game systems because they

want to emulate.

They wanted to do tricks that they wished

they could do in real life.

And then suddenly there was this massive shift

where video gamers or people that

just are kind of curious about video games

bought our title first and that inspired them to start skating.

And there's a whole generation of kids right now

that started skating because they played that game.

I would come home when I was a kid--

13, 14-- and I'd tell my dad, "I learned a new trick."

And he'd say, "There are no more new tricks to learn."

That was his attitude in 1982.

And here we are.

There are still new tricks to learn.

And now we're seeing things happen that I truly

thought were impossible.

I mean the stuff that I see people do,

that I see on video, 10 years ago, I would have said,

"It's not possible."

20 years ago, I would have said, "You're

crazy for even thinking about it."

And I don't see it slowing down.

CHRIS LEARY: Skateboarding is among five new sports that

will make their Olympic debut.

The competition will feature both male and female

skateboarders in two different styles--

park and street.

I think this new generation of skaters

has much more opportunity, thanks to its inclusion

in the Olympics.

On an international scale, it's going to change everything

because countries that have, for the most part, discouraged

and shunned people from skating are now going to embrace it

and are now going to give them facilities and give them

opportunities.

And skateboarding will be just as commonplace

in those countries as soccer.

[APPLAUSE]

And so I think that the new generation

is very lucky in that sense.

I wanted to teach this MasterClass because I truly

wanted to pass on the qualities of skateboarding

that I've seen empower people, that I've seen people

take with them to their lives.

And they weren't pro skaters.

They maybe weren't even very good skaters,

but it taught them a sense of values

and a sense of perseverance that was to their advantage

much later in life.

And they always credit skateboarding for that.

I hope that the lesson people take away

in this class is that you are capable of so much

more than you imagine.

And if you can just see it through,

if you can persevere through adversity,

through great challenges, even injury,

you can go on to accomplish things you never imagined.

You can go on to do things that you'll

be immensely proud of that you never expected to accomplish.

And it can give you a great sense of self-confidence

that maybe you didn't know you had.