I'm a sponsored skateboarder from the San Francisco Bay area.

And today I'm going to teach you guys how to ollie higher

The first thing I'm going to go over is the steps of the regular ollie

So you guys can see the difference

Notice my front foot just down from the front bolts

And my back foot with the ball of my toe just on the edge of the tail

So that's the foot position just for a regular ollie

And the first step you're going to do to practice a regular ollie

Is just clacking your tail on the ground just like that

So just stand still and just lift up your front leg

And slap your tail on the ground for a little bit

That's the first step of learning how to ollie

The second step is actually this motion of your foot right here

So notice how my sole of my shoe goes into a 90 degree angle

And then I slide my foot up

It's actually that slide that gives your board the lift. Nothing else.

It is that slide that brings your tail up off the ground

Because the front of your board is already off the ground

So you just have to level your board out in the air bringing the tail up

And it's that slide of the front foot which does that

So that's the basic ollie

I'm sure many of you guys have already gotten the ollie down

But if you haven't, you can just practice those steps

And you'll get it down

So the difference between a regular ollie

And when I'm trying to ollie higher or ollie over something

Is that I put my front foot further back

Notice how much further back my front foot was on that one?

Instead of being up near the truck, it was down towards the middle of the board

And what that does, is it gives me more room on the board to slide my foot up

So instead of having it right there up near the front truck

I'm going to slide that front foot back about half-way

Right in the middle as you can see there

And then I can have a little more room to slide

And power the ollie a little bit higher into the air

So yeah it's just that motion right there

You can even hear my shoes sliding on the grip tape

You also need to be able to jump high

And you actually have to be able to jump

And bend your knees up into the air when you do the ollie

Because obviously when your board goes up into the air

Your legs are going to crouch up

So the higher you can get your board

While crouching your legs up into the air

Is going to be how high you can get your ollie

Now it definitely helps to have a nice fresh board

Like not an old soggy board where the wood is like all damp

And it just doesn't pop very well

You'll notice that you can pop higher and ollie higher on a brand new fresh board

The other thing that helps on a brand new fresh board

Is fresh grip tape

You want really sticky grip tape

So when you do that motion of your foot is actually slides really well

And your feet catch on the grip tape

And it just pulls your board right up into the air

So let's take a look at the difference in height between

The regular ollie with my foot up towards the truck

And the ollie with my foot back towards the middle of the board a little further

So you can see I get a little more height on it

There is the height of the regular ollie from my foot forward

And there's the height with the ollie with my foot back in the middle of the board

You can also see that on the second one with my foot a little bit back more

I also like was able to tweak it out a little bit more

That's another thing like when you ollie you have to lift your back foot up into the air

And then you have to push your legs out

It's a bit of an awkward feeling at first

Because there's not really anything else like it

So here we go

So you're going to pop your tail on the ground

And simultaneously begin sliding your front foot up

Notice the sole of my front foot is at a 90 degree angle to the board

And it's sliding right up

And at this point it's already on the nose of the board catching on the grip tape

Now you also have to lift your back foot up

You have to lift your back foot up in a jumping motion

And it becomes kind of a teeter totter

Now at this point right here

My front foot is going to start going down

And it's going to poke out a little bit as my back foot is coming up

And that's what I mean on the teeter totter

Like your front foot comes up and then your back foot follows

And then you get into that position right there

Where then you're gliding through the air

But your board is not like perfectly flat

But it's kind of boned out a little bit

With your front leg extended a little more than your back leg

And that's that whole teeter totter motion thing

And that's what I mean when I say it's a little bit awkward

Because it's not like just running and jumping

Where you just jump both legs in the air

But like one leg goes up and then the other leg follows

In this like smooth fluid motion

So you want to keep that as fluid and smooth as you can

And just slide your front foot simultaneous to your pop of your back foot

While lifting both feet up and then you'll get the ollie down

Now in terms of getting your ollie higher

It does help a lot to set some things on the ground

And start ollieing over it

Usually you can start with like a board

Or if you're very very first starting

You can start with like a hose

I think that's what I started with, a hose or a crack

Then yeah you can just put bigger objects up

Until eventually you are ollieing over your GoPro camera on a tripod

This was really scary by the way

I nearly hit the camera

Look at how close my wheel comes right here

I think it's about an inch away from smashing into the screen

So luckily I didn't hit that

That's another point right there

Look at how my front foot pushes down on the board

Lifting the back of the board up into the air

So there's the GoPro version of that ollie

So yeah just practice this a lot

And you will get your ollies really high eventually

So yeah just keep working on that guys

If any of you guys are still working on mastering the basics of skateboarding

Any trick from the ollie, frontside 180, backside 180, pop shove-it

frontside shove-it, heelflip or kickflip

Definitely check out Skateboarding Made Simple

It's super super detailed

And it will take you through every step of every one of those tricks

So yeah, check it out at brailleskateboarding.com

And thanks a lot for all your help and support