What is the 'TIMING' of an OLLIE?

People always talk about the "timing" of an ollie. But what does that really mean?

[drunkindonuts]

No offense to Braille skateboarding but their tutorial was step1: hit your tail . Step 2 drag you foot up. I would recommend this video to someone learning how to ollie

[TangoDown]

This may be the best ollie tutorial on Youtube... If you or someone you know is struggling with ollies, this is the vid to watch. No joke.

[davidzamora]

I'm watching this with captions on cuz my kid is asleep on my arm and every time Ben ollies, the pop is captioned as "applause."

[christopherpetts]

This is the TRUE secret to Ollies. Held me back for over a year. When you get it right it's almost effortless. Cheers Ben.

[airbus-driver]

I just had an epiphany about this a few weeks ago when I'm trying to teach my teenage kids to do an ollie as well.
You jump off the board not jump off the contact with the ground. As you jump off you just flick your rear foot down more to make the tail pop! And then retract as fast as you can.
One more important point I learned though is that beginner fixage on the feet sequence and forget to jump correctly.
When you are standing still and jumping, you compress your body down like a spring and in order to jump high you must release that wind up in sequence before your feet left the ground. My kids have that problem they bent down but did not move their body up before messing with their feet try to pop it.
So the correct sequence should be like this,
-Bend your body down
-Squat your knee
-Then releasing your body up
-Unsquat your knee
-Jump off the board in springy action(with your toe)
-As your lift off flick your rear foot down to make the board pop!
-Retract rear foot up by bending knee
-Then drag your front foot as much as you like
Houston we have a lift off!!

[idrkofficial]

*has to re learn Ollie after watching this*

[PHeMoX]

By the way, to clarify the pop Ben does... he's jumping UP before popping using his ankle motion. It's how you get that millisecond of a difference between pop and jump, otherwise you get this 'stomping' the tail which results in the board coming up too quickly against the back foot, causing a fairly low ollie.

[ondramrnustik]

This is definetly the thing all the beginners do wrong i see it all the time. Great video!

[ariekanibalie]

This must literally be the best ollie tutorial I've ever seen. Spot on: I wasted years of my life following common trick trip advice to 'stomp down on the tail' with all your weight, as if you're trying to dent the pavement, etc.

[andrewberg]

The metaphor I've started using lately is, it's like dribbling a basketball. Using the snap of the ankle through the toe to bounce the tail off the ground.

[ZombieAssassin]

WHY DOES NOONE TEACH OLLIES THIS WAY?!?! I've been struggling for 2 YEARS not knowing what I was doing wrong and it's because everyone teaches them the exact same way without getting into these nuances, this video has been a great help, thank you!

[jjpoltergeist]

Dude, I've been telling this to begginers since i've figured it out myself. I always tell them "Think of it as a jump, THEN pop". Most people think that the pop is off the tail, when it hits the ground haha

[TheMagicDesign]

You made it easier to visualize. Thank you!

[DavenNashi]

YES. FINALLY. Every tutorial I've seen is just "do this this and this" and not once mention WHEN to jump and HOW to with your back foot. I've been planting my back foot TOO hard and not jumping soon enough.
I needed this.

[gaj]

As I described to a young kid recently, you don't jump the board, you jump & bring the board with you. Seemed to make sense & worked well for him. Then I put a piece of wood just in front of his rear truck & got him to ollie over that to simulate the forward motion needed for a rolling one which really helped him along 👍

[byeonseonbae]

No one, I mean no one explains mechanics of skateboard well like Ben does.(eg.His wheelbase series helped me a lot when choosing my deck and truck) Glad to see that kinda detailed explanation on skills. Thank you Ben!

[mayormaggie]

Level 43 male here, first time skater, and this is the first Ollie video that has actually clicked fir me. Watched it once and was like, oh, that makes a lot more sense. Went out in the garage and nailed an Ollie easier than ever. It’s all about the toe push down/flick at the end of your jump that actually gets the board in the air!!! Thank you!

[StephenCh]

I always regarded the "jump" as simply quickly standing up from crouching. One thing from Braille that really stuck to me is how Aaron kept saying an ollie isn't a jump, it's an ollie.

Your advice of staying at the ball of your feet allowed me to put more pressure on the board so when I "stand up" and quickly lift my front foot I would release all those potential energy and slightly elevate my whole body and pop the board at the same time.

So basically I:

1. Crouch
2. "Jump" by standing up quickly
3. Just before my legs straighten I lift my front foot
4. I lightly push forward to level the board and lift my back foot simultaneously

Idk the physics of it but keeping my back foot centered on the tail instead of closer to the edge transferred more energy from my ankles and quads onto the tail thus yielding a better pop. I really thought it's the other way around cuz a lot of ollie tutorials recommended placing the back foot closer to the edge.

[ryanhingorani]

My ollies were already good but they leveled up significantly when i started thinking about it more as "jumping and bringing the board up with you" rather than "making the board pop in in the air and jumping with it", if that makes any sense. There is this 2 foot high planter where i skate and i was having trouble to ollie up it, but then i just focused on getting my back foot up it and not worry about the board, the board just seemed to come along for the ride!

[jp]

It is a difficult thing to explain. You broke it down in a good way. The timing is killer, at the end of the day it tends to be something you discover organically through trial and error. The jump and flick is the killer. We’ll spend weeks pinning our boards to the ground with our back foot before it’s figured out lol.