Cross Academy bricks
T ail Stand
Exercise to develop longboard ollie snap
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When you're working on ollies, I found there are several skills you need to build up to make it work. You need to get the tail to snap down on the ground sharply enough to bounce the board into the air. You need to drag your front foot up to pull the board up more and control it. And you need to drag your back foot up on the board as well, to pull it up and control it from the back end.
The tail stand is a brick to work on your tail snap and foot control. The idea is to not necessarily pop the board off the ground, but to stand it up vertical and stay in contact. If you can do that, you'll have laid some good groundwork for an ollie.
I found that it's a critical to "get out of the way" of the board as it bounces up. Meaning to get your weight into the air and lift your front foot up so the board is free to bounce up without getting slowed down by your front foot. When you don't get out of the way, you block the board and it doesn't reach its potential height generated by your snap. Usually a blocked snap will be kind of quiet or muffled, while a good snap will strike the ground loudly and it'll really bounce.
This sequence shows a tail stand followed by a small ollie hop and back wheel landing. The two moves are performed in quick succession.
The tail stance for this brick is really narrow. The narrower the stance, the more vertical you can get the board.
I crouch deeply as if starting an ollie. With a stance placed way back on the tail, it is necessary to lean slightly toward the nose and to put my weight on my front foot, to keep the board from wheelieing.
I straighten up out of the crouch in a jumping motion. At the same time I transfer my weight back, over the tail. I don't really jump up, because it's not my intention to leave the ground. What I'm trying to do is to get all my weight off the board. By unweighting, the board will be free to swing up to a near vertical angle. You can see that my back foot is still flexed, so it's wound up, ready to snap the tail down.
When I'm in the middle of the jump and the board is unweighted, I snap my back foot down fairly hard, pointing my toe. It's not hard enough to bounce it into the air, but it's hard enough to make the nose swing up real fast. I lift my front foot up quickly, but I try to not pull it off the board. I keep the side of my shoe in contact to control the board. If you drag scroll up and down the page to look at the images in rapid sequence, you'll notice I lift my front foot straight up. Sometimes I see skaters shoot their foot forward because they see the drag motion that other skaters do, and try to imitate it. They just end up blocking the board and the snap gets all the energy taken out of it. The drag happens naturally if you lift your foot straight up.
This is the tail stand, the position you are shooting for. I have my front knee lifted enough to get my foot almost all the way to the nose. The board is past a 45 degree angle, nearly vertical. The wheels are off the ground. My front foot and back foot are both rolled toward the nose, and the sides of my feet are in contact with the board. If I were in a jump, I would have some purchase with both feet on the grip tape to pull the board farther into the air.
Now I'm beginning to lower the board back down. I slide my front foot down, brushing the side of the foot on the board for control.
I set the board down and return to the narrow tail stance that started the trick.
I crouch again. Notice the crouch position is the same as the first tail stand. This time I'm going to ollie it.
I jump off my front foot and unweight the board. I put a bit more into the jump this time, but the movement is the same as in the tail stand. This time I snap the board a little harder.
I get into the air a little and my feet are pretty well connected to the grip tape. The front foot especially has pulling power, since it's rolled practically onto the laces.
Now this little, vertical ollie, barely pulling the tail off the ground, will be enough to mount a normal size curb. The wheelbase is so big it doesn't take much to get up onto a curb and grind it. That's why I say don't worry too much about leveling it and try to develop a tail pop. Then you can just cross step up the vertical ollie and do a cross academy landing on the ground or curb.
My back foot has recovered from the snap pretty well to connect with the board on the arch side and help pull it up. If you can work on the back foot getting involved with the pulling, you'll find you'll get better height and better levelling. When you get into 180s and shuvits, any work you do on your back foot will really help your control.
I level the board with the front foot. It's enough to clear the tail for a back wheel landing but not enough to level it completely for a front wheel or flat landing.
On this landing I'm pretty far back on the tail. This ollie actually had a pretty short front foot action. I never took it fully to the kink. If I had fully levelled the board I'd probably be up nearer the nose. On a lot of Cross Academy tricks, I don't bring my feet all the way up to the nose to level it, because I want to leave room up there to walk. This exercise gets you used to doing the start of the ollie but leaving room to walk up the board.
