# Ollie?!



## snowklinger (Aug 30, 2011)

because skateboarding and we like airs.


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## Ninja (Mar 22, 2014)

Ollie is a fundamental trick for all other tricks. A foundation if you like. Ollies are great for boxes/ rails and jumps also. As you progress though and the jumps get bigger, you will find that you may prefer to 'pop' off both feet. You get a more solid edge, more stable and carving into jumps is a basis for spinning off jumps.

There is nothing wrong with having a good old ollie!!


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## Jed (May 11, 2011)

jj998 said:


> I have done some park some ~12 years ago and now am looking to get back into it. Just wondering what is the role of ollie. For rails, small jumps and side hits? I don't do rails, it's like domestic violence wtf man! :dunno: Somewhere was suggested doing them for moderate+ jumps but that just seems crazy. Maybe for straight air?  I've just recently started to fiddle around with it for flat spins and small jumps. For flat spins it seems to be perhaps less effort to get air but more complex manouvering (i can do flat fs 1&3 this way). With small jumps you definitively get more air with less effort. Actually i seem to be developing an ollie habit which can't be good(?), all the stuff i do is so small it seems to work alright. Definitively trying to progress both spins/grabs ollied or done with a balanced "jump/pop". So yeah to ollie or not to ollie!? :d


Basically for jumps you *can* ollie, but it's not the most stable way to be getting air off a jump, so you'd be using pop.

Think of it like this.

Ollies are mostly used to flatground tricks and some rail/box tricks, and pop (even jump off both feet) is used mainly for jumps and spin tricks and when you want the most stable air possible.

Pop is used off jumps because ollies tend to get more unstable as you move to bigger jumps, and vertical height isn't the main goal for jumping where your stability and overall speed is set by your run-in and pop already.

That's not to say you can't use ollies for spin tricks and jumps (you can and many people use ollies for small jumps and small spin tricks), but that it's a heck of a lot more stable to use pop when stability is a factor to the trick (and it becomes a big factor as you move to a lot of spin and jump tricks).

The main mistake people make with jumps is thinking vertical height is something that matters a lot with jumps, but it's not really much of a factor. Ideally the jump should be built so that your vertical height off a basic pop should set you up fine already. Your main goal on a jump is to get stable air and land in the sweet spot of the landing (the steepest downhill section). That can be controlled just by getting the run-in speed correct in a lot of cases, which means a pop is all you need and it's a lot more stable than an ollie, especially if you're setting up for a spin.


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## jj998 (Apr 11, 2013)

Jed said:


> Basically for jumps you *can* ollie, but it's not the most stable way to be getting air off a jump, so you'd be using pop.
> 
> Think of it like this.
> 
> ...


Great explanation, thanks!


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## flysolo. (Feb 1, 2014)

I found ollies much easier to do especially on flats and get much more air then a pop with half the effort. I'm still a beginner, but that feeling of getting your ollie and getting some decent air on flat- that feeling is pretty nice


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