Frontside 180 Ollie

Frontside 180 Ollie - An air or ollie where the skater and board spin a half rotation frontside. Take off going your normal stance and land switch.

frontside 180

Tricks you need to know

Kickturn, ollie, some balance and confidence while rolling and rolling switch.

Things to know

You need to know how to ollie. You will need to be able to step around on the board while rolling. So that you can adjust your feet. Getting them into position to do the trick.

You will be turning your body to spin during this trick so some good balance is necessary.

To do this trick wind up and spin 180 while doing an ollie. If all goes well you and the board will land rolling in your opposite stance. You will land switch so be sure to have the ability to roll switch without killing yourself.

There are a lot of other ways to do frontside 180. Off a ramp or a quarter but you need to start with the flatland version.

Frontside 180 Ollie
During a frontside 180 ollie you will be facing forward most of the time. Being able to see your feet and board helps in landing the trick.

  • Place your back foot in ollie position.
  • Place your front foot close to ollie position with you toe hanging over the toeside of the board about an inch.
  • When crouching to ollie turn your front shoulder toeside torwards the back. You want to wind your body up for the coming rotation.
  • As you start to jump for the ollie turn your body frontside. Look frontside letting your shoulders and the rest of your body follow the rotation.
  • Pop the board and begin the ollie.
  • Your feet will follow the rest of your body in frontside rotation.
  • To land put down the front truck.
  • You can finish up the rotation by pivoting around on the front truck.

Ways to complete the 180 rotation.

If you find that the board and your body don't make if all the way around there are few ways to pull it off.

Sliding the board around. If you land both wheels before you are around just slide it out on the ground.

On the front truck with a little pivot is common to land this way. You can just kind of grab the ground with you front of your board a rotate around once you get used to it.

Landing on all four wheels is a little more advanced. Do this for style points once you are good at rotating in the air.

Get your frontsides down first

Backside 180's are tougher try them when you have the front 180's down.

The opposite is true for fakie

Trying a fakie frontside 180 ollie is a little more difficult. You will be travelling backwards and blind through the take off and landing. Practice doing a fakie frontside kickturn a lot and then start putting the pop into it.

When doing rotation tricks fakie it is much easier to spin. That is because the center of your spin can take place over the "back" truck. Of course since you are going fakie your back truck is actually the leading truck.

Just like doing a kickturn from fakie you rotate over the leading truck. If you do a little pop while doing the kickturn then you can execute a fakie frontside 180 ollie. The challenge is that you are totally blind when executing this trick. Landing it is based more on feel.

Getting the Feel

You want to get the feel for 180 ollies. Work on the take off, rotation and landing. Land it a few times. Then start to get some height and style.

Focus on the technique first. Then let the style build as you get better.

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