For any snowboarding enthusiast, after you’ve mastered the basics the next step is to try your hand (or feet, we should say!) at a few tricks. An Ollie is the most basic trick you can try on a snowboard, so it’s the best place to start learning. A lot of other, more advanced tricks, are built off the Ollie too – so it’s worth having a perfect Ollie in your bag of tricks. Remember – if you are unsure, you should seek out professional snowboard coaching.
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Pick a good location
An Ollie is a trick that’ll require a little bit of incline – so you’ll want to make sure you’ve found a decent hill to try it out on. You’ll want a decent incline (enough to build up speed) but you’ll also want to make sure there’s an uncomplicated and clear path to the bottom of the slope too. When learning tricks – avoid anywhere too crowded – the last thing you want to do is injure yourself or others.
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Prepare for the jump
Once you’re moving at a comfortable speed down the slope, you’ll want to prepare for your jump. For an Ollie, you’ll want to make sure you’re stable and your posture is good, but also that your back foot is square behind your front – so you’re travelling straight down the slope in question.
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Bend and crouch
When you’re ready to make the Ollie jump, the first thing you’ll want to do is make a small bend and crouch in your legs. Not too far (you don’t want to fall backwards or lose balance) but it’s important you can gain enough power on the way back up to pull the board with you.
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Shift your weight
Next up, you want to shift your body weight to your back leg. When you make your jump, it’s your back leg that will be doing most of the pushing – so you the more of your weight you can distribute back there, the more power you’ll get later on. Remember, it’s your front foot’s job to guide to board during the Ollie.
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JUMP!
Now’s the time to make the jump. Use as much power and force as you can to propel your board upwards using your back leg. You front foot will come off the ground first, and you can also use your arms to give yourself more power and height. A good trick to remember too, is that if you bring your knees up to your chest during the jump, you’ll appear to have more height.
When you land your jump, try and rebalance your weight back to the centre of the board as quickly as you can, this will help you avoid going off balance or wiping out. Also remember when falling (if you do fall), it’s best to stay as relaxed as possible – keeping your body relaxed helps against bad injuries, and helps you get up faster too.