Name: How to POP HIGHER (The only methods & exercises that ACTUALLY WORK)
Uploaded: 2025-10-30T08:32:22.000Z
Duration: 11 min 27 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Basic passive voice

So how much pop you have is something that a lot of us think is set in stone, that you've either got a lot of pop or you don't.

Adverbs of degree

And there's pretty much nothing you can do about it.

Well, I'm here to tell you that this is not true.

And I don't know if this was some kind of conspiracy started by the Brazilians to stop the rest of us ever exploring different ways of increasing our pop and getting it more like theirs, but

in this video, I'm going to be showing you different techniques and exercises that are guaranteed to increase your pop.

So why am I so sure that all this stuff is actually going to increase your pop?

Well, not only have I used it with the skaters that I train one on one, but

a lot of these techniques have also come from research done on how to actually improve the different physical characteristics that we need when we actually pop.

Okay, so let's start off by breaking down what actually happens when we pop tricks.

So I did a little poll on Instagram and asked you if you think popping a trick is more of a one legged jump or a two legged jump.

About 50% of you said you think it's more of a one legged jump.

And at first glance it definitely does seem that way.

But if you get up and you actually try and do a one legged jump, it's gonna fit weird.

It's gonna feel like you don't have much power, not that strong, or just something a little bit uncomfortable about it.

And if you think about when we actually pop a trick and you think about how fast the board snaps off the ground, it's definitely gonna be too slow to actually pop tricks.

And that's where the two legged jump comes in.

So let's check this clip and compare it to this graph that I got from some research that was done where they put pressure sensors in the insoles of skaters doing ollies.

So this graph shows us not only the total force created as we're actually popping a trick, but

it also shows us the different forces between each foot.

The dashed line is the back foot and the do line is the front foot.

And then that black line is the combined force of the two.

So we can see here at the beginning that before the skater actually goes down to pop the trick, most of the weight is on that front leg.

And you can kind of see that in the video by the way that they're leaning over that front foot.

Then when they actually go down to pop the trick.

As you're going down, you become a little bit weightless.

However, as soon as we catch ourselves at the bottom now we're starting to apply more force into the ground, and

that's going to increase as we push against the ground to then get ourselves to pop up and do trick.

And you can see that from that bottom position up until the moment when they actually pop the trick, the weight is roughly similar between each side of the body.

And only does the back foot apply more force into the ground at that very last second when we actually snap the board into the ground and pop it into the ground.

The key here, though, is really that back foot is only snapping into the ground after that point where we've really started to jump up.

So when we're already starting to go into the air and we're not really applying much force to the board anymore, if you're trying to apply force and pop the trick, as you're essentially jumping up and keeping the board down, you're gonna pop way too slow, and

you're not gonna be able to get that nice, fast pop that actually sends you high into the air.

Whereas if I time it better and pop at the very end, you can see that I'm able to really snap that tail much faster into the ground.

So by delaying that pop, we're able to really snap down much faster and essentially, like, bounce the board off the ground.

So, as old mate Uncle Newton told us, if we apply a force into something, that thing is going to apply the same force right back at us.

So, simplifying things, this tells us the more force we push into the ground, the more force the ground is going to push into us, sending us higher into the air.

But the breakdown doesn't end here, because there's something else that actually contributes even more to pop than just jumping as high as we can.

Okay, so I also asked on Instagram whether or not you think that the majority of the pop comes from how high you jump or how high you lift your knees.

And most of you did say that you think that the pop primarily comes from lifting the knees, which is correct.

I just think it's so interesting that someone can pop insanely high, but

they don't necessarily have to jump insanely high as well.

A lot of it is just coming from that knee getting up there.

Whereas if we compare that to this clip right here of LeBron James jumping, he just straight jumps insanely high.

You can really see that there are two completely different jumps there.

So you can see in this graph as well, the track, the movement of different body parts that more than doubled the pop height actually comes from lifting the knees.

And because of this, the science bots from these different bits of research have come to the conclusion that skaters have developed this extra efficient way to move their center of mass over different obstacles in a way that uses the least energy as possible.

So this doesn't just confirm the stuff that we've been talking about with the pop now, but

it also confirms the cliche that skaters are lazy pieces of shit.

And this also applies to how we pop our tricks as well.

So taking all this information, it tells us that to increase our pop, we need to work on our hip strength and mobility, and

also how much force we can actually send into the ground.

Obviously, to increase your pop, you actually have to skate.

And we'll get to that after these exercises.

So these exercises are going to be focused on those two areas that I've just mentioned.

I'm going to be giving you a bunch of different options that you can take and then plug them into your own training program.

If you don't have a training program or you don't really know how to actually progress these kinds of exercises, then I'll put a link for the 12 week MBD skate performance program below, which doesn't just include exercises focused on pop, but

also other ones focused on things like injury reduction and just getting your body better prepared for the stresses of skating.

So starting off, we need good movement quality that comes from mobility, stability, and

enough strength to actually pop up tricks.

So we need enough mobility of pretty much all parts of our body, the ankle, the knee, the hips, not only just to be able to go down into the squat to pop the trick, but

then as well, that hip mobility to actually get those knees up.

Now, a piece that maybe isn't so obvious is that you need stability throughout your whole body to pop your tricks and to increase your pop.

If you imagine that for some weird reason you're standing in a canoe and you're trying to jump out of it because of that instability of the canoe as you push into it to jump, the canoe is going to move, your jumps going to look like it's gonna feel like shit and you're not gonna get too high.

It's the same as if you're trying to jump on Flat.

But you don't have that foot stability or hip or core stability to actually effectively send the force into the ground and then receive it to actually jump into the air.

If you don't have that stability in your body, it's gonna affect how much force you can actually create and therefore how high you can actually pop.

Now, this is a topic for another day, but

just have a little think about how loose versus tight trucks might actually affect your pop.

Now, we can't have that mobility or stability if we don't have strength.

So we need to focus on exercises that help us build and strength around those key joints that we actually use when we skate.

Now, don't think that that means you have to become like Brandon Beaver or myself and put on just a ridiculous amount of muscle.

That's not only because having an insane amount of muscle just isn't necessary for skating, but

also a lot of the strength changes that you're going to get from these different exercises comes more from neurological changes, AKA your brain getting better at communicating with the muscles, activating a greater percentage of them, and

contracting or relaxing the right muscles at the right.

Now, the movements that you do when you pop tricks are fast, so we need to be able to express that strength quickly.

And there are different exercises that you can do to increase how much force you can create in the same amount of time.

Now, a big piece of that is how elastic we are.

So if you imagine as you're going down to pop a trick at this bottom position, my muscles have contracted to kind of anchor me in place.

And as they're anchoring me in place, there are these elastic structures that are stretching around the joint.

And then as we then bounce back, snap back and contribute to us shooting up into the air.

So jumping isn't just from your muscles contracting, but

it's also from these elastic structures stretching and then snapping back just like an elastic band.

If you pull that elastic band back and then release it, it goes flying.

And there are a lot of different exercises that we can do to increase how elastic we are and how well we can actually handle these reactive elastic forces.

And then the last piece of the equation is to make sure that we're training the muscles that flex the hip and bring those knees up high.

So we need enough strength and endurance of those muscles around the hip.

Okay, so if you've been following this channel for a while, you would have heard me say many times that Doing exercises is great, and

it's a really useful part of the equation, but

we've also got to do stuff on our board to increase the carryover of those exercises to skating.