how does an ollie work?

March 28, 2005 6:13 PM

Skateboard filter:

My son, an 11-year-old budding skate rat, just asked my wife how an ollie works, specifically, the physics involved. I started trying to work out an explanation in my head, but I couldn't come up with anything clear. Frankly, I don't exactly know - I just know that if you sorta kick down on the board with your back foot and take your weight off the front, you get a little air.

Those of you smart people, can you tell me, I guess why an Ollie happens or what is happening when you do it?

posted by TeamBilly to sports, hobbies, & recreation (9 comments total)

A short video demonstrating an ollie and explaining foot position (although not providing an answer).
posted by cyphill at 6:21 PM on March 28, 2005

If you slam your foot on the back of a skateboard it will fly up in the air. So that's the first part.
Now with that foot that you've slammed down you actually have to jump. Getting the timing of this down is one of the harder parts.
Your front foot pulls the deck up and flattens it out in the air.
The real trick is landing back on it and rolling away.
posted by mike_bling at 6:30 PM on March 28, 2005

the key to an ollie is the grip tape. essentially what happens is that you kick up the back of the board, and as you jump, you slide your front foot upwards and outwards -- this carries the board upwards and with you. If you just kick down the back of the board and jump/take your weight off the front, the board ain't gonna be following you anywhere -- in fact, it's unlikely that the back is going to be leaving the ground much at all. Essentially what happens in a ollie is that YOU jump and you TAKE the board with you. That's not exactly the most true description, but I think it's a good general one to explain what's happening. Essentially because you have no bindings you need to make the board follow you/stay on your feet somehow (and the ollie is pretty much the base for every trick out there except maybe pressure flips, so all the tech tricks where the board gets flipped is fundamentally a variation on the ollie).

is your son looking for a physics explanation because he's interested in science, or is he looking for an explanation to show him what he's doing wrong?

cause sometimes it takes quite a bit of time to get the coordination down to ollie, and it can be *real* frustrating when you can't figure it out (it seems like magic). especially nowadays, since skaters are SO INCREDIBLY TECHNICAL. back when I was skating (93-96), kickflipping was a pretty monumental effort -- if you kickflipped a gap, that was probably good enough to be in a video.

now you have to 360 flip it.

switch.

still, if he sticks with it, he'll get there. and you'll be putting out money for shoes (or shoe goo) because he'll start developing ollie holes in his kicks (a little torn up circle that's gonna be right around where his little toe connects to the foot -- that's primarily where the grip tape is grabbing your shoe). i usually try to wear an old pair of shoes whenever i actually session (which is like, never).
posted by fishfucker at 6:44 PM on March 28, 2005

Great answer, fish. But he did ask what the physics were involved. He's as interested in the science as the execution.
posted by TeamBilly at 6:47 PM on March 28, 2005

An ollie can be broken down in to 4 basic elements:

- jump (power element)
The jump is easy to understand -- if you extend your legs quickly you jump. This works with or without a skateboard.

- kick the board from the tail (power element)
If you stand behind a skateboard and step down quickly on the tail, the board will bounce off the ground and fly into the air. You can get it to go pretty high if you kick it hard enough. It's important to notice that if you only kick the tail the board jumps but it also spins out of control.

- level out the board in the air (control element)
After you've jumped and bounced the board off it's tail, you need to control it in the air. In a normal ollie you do this by sliding your front foot up the board to stop it from spinning and slamming in to your knee. Grip tape makes this easier is is not necessary. Leveling can also be done with the same foot you used to kick the tail or your hand. Those are different tricks though.

- landing (control element)
Land on the skateboard. Self explanitory but part of a successful ollie.
posted by mexican at 6:48 PM on March 28, 2005

It's similar to when you flip a spoon across the room by slapping your hand down on the lip of the spoon.

The difference is that, whereas the spoon tumbles, with the skateboard you use your feet to control the takeoff and flight of the the board so that it follows you through the air.
posted by event at 6:49 PM on March 28, 2005

I forgot to mention that the reason the board fly up when you kick is partly because you've used the tail as a lever to lift most of the skateboard off the ground, giving it upward momentum, and partly because of the elasticity of the wood in the deck which causes the board to bounce after being slammed into the ground.
posted by mexican at 7:06 PM on March 28, 2005

The spoon physics is a little different from a skateboard. The skateboard uses both the momentum of the front end being raised and the energy from the impact of the tail and the ground to get in the air. With the spoon, the fulcrum for the lever moves as the spoon rotates. The spoon takes off when the length of the lever reaches 0 (the fulcrum and the end of the lever meet). The spoon is carried into the air only by momentum -- there is no bounce.
posted by mexican at 7:12 PM on March 28, 2005

There's a fair amount of stuff on the web devoted to this very topic since it can be a way to get kids into physics. Some notable ones include: Kidzworld.com's the Science of Skateboarding, Exploratorium.edu's Skateboard science, an old summer science institute page and a more indie type page here, as well as the skate history and physics bit at Skateboarddirectory.com's Physics of the Ollie (though this is more about the trick than engaging with physics as a topic of study).
posted by safetyfork at 8:34 AM on March 29, 2005