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Tailwhip, barspin, manuals - there are many different basic tricks to learn wbhen you're just starting your scootering journey. There aren't many experiences that can beat learning a new stunt for the first time. That's why we want to give you our guide on how to get started learning some of the most basic tricks on a scooter. Tricks that will help you progress once you have them down and can perform them perfectly nine times out of ten.
8 cool tricks on scooters
All beginnings are hard. So here are a few tips on how to approach learning to become a respected rider.
1: Bunny hop
Make your scooter lift off the ground.
The bunny hop is one of the first tricks you should learn on a scooter. It gives you the technique to get your scooter off the ground - and therefore it's one of the basic tricks that paves the way and gives a good understanding of countless other cool tricks. For example, a tailwhip, which we'll look at later - but also grinds and many other different types of tricks.
Make sure you bend your knees well and jump up while holding onto the bar and lifting the whole wheel up with you. It's easier to practice this trick when your scooter is moving a little bit. And preferably on a flat surface to begin with. Otherwise, it's just a matter of practicing the timing. The more you bend your knees, the higher you'll be able to jump - it's all about timing!
2: Tailwhip
Jump and rotate your deck 360 degrees around the axis of the bar.
Start by getting your wheel well up in the air before attempting a tailwhip. It simply helps to have practiced your bunnyhops so you have a good handle on them before moving on to this classic trick. Even if many beginners want to jump straight to the tailwhippet. We understand that! But it helps a lot to have a good bunnyhop first.
Once your wheel is in the air, use your back foot to send the deck into rotation. But really, you need to use your hands and arms to help the deck along, so it makes it all the way around, and you can land on it again when the rotation is complete. You can easily practice the movement with your front foot on the ground to get a good feel for the timing and coordination between the back foot and arm movements. Otherwise, just practice over and over until you get it!
3: Barspin
Rotate the bar once around its own axis.
Another trick that involves lifting your scooter off the ground - this time, though, it's just the bar, not the cover, that needs to rotate a full turn before you grab it with your hands again.
You might start with a 180-degree bar spin, using your strongest hand to almost throw the bar to your weaker hand while the wheel is in the air. You can practice the trick by letting the front end of your scooter hang over a curb or the like, so the front wheel is free while you get a feel for the motion. Once you can do a 180-degree barspin, you can move on to a 360-degree barspin, where you "throw" the bar with your strongest hand and catch it again with your strongest hand after a complete rotation. Then you can start combining the trick with a bunny hop for a true flatground barspin.
4: Manual
Ride on the back wheel of your scooter.
Good manuals are really about practice. It's simply about finding the right balance between too little lift, where you have trouble keeping the front wheel off the ground, and too much lift, where the scooter just flies away from you under your feet.
Start by positioning your feet correctly. One foot should be above the brake, while the other is just in front - relatively far back on the deck. Use your back foot to regulate your balance when you start to lean too far back. When you start leaning too far forward, you can change the centre of gravity by going down on your knees while pulling on the bar. These are the two techniques you should learn to use to regulate your balance at all times while your scooter is running on its rear wheel.
As with the bunny hop, it's a trick that opens the door to cool combinations and a whole new bag of cool manual tricks on flatground and mannypads.
5: Fakie
Ride backwards on your scooter.
Learning how to fakie also opens up all those cool fakie tricks where you ride your scooter backwards.
The easiest way to learn how to fakie is to ride slowly up a bank or ramp and then fakie back again, with gravity helping you along the way. Again, it's a trick that just needs to be practiced until you have the technique as part of your natural muscle memory, without thinking too much about it. So practice it from time to time until you have 100% control and balance in your body.
6: Nose pivot
Turn your scooter 180 degrees while (briefly) balancing on the front wheel.
A nose pivot is performed by leaning forward and "pushing" on the bar, forcing your scooter onto the front wheel. You then lean to the side so that the scooter turns 180 degrees until you put the rear wheel back down and do the fakie. A quick pirouette on the front wheel that looks cool and is an effective trick for turning around at speed.
Make sure you know how to fakie before you try this trick. When you get really cool at it, you can combine your pivot with an extra 180 in the air to make a full 360-degree rotation. A simple trick and a cool combo that looks awesome on the flatground!
7: 180
A bunny hop with a 180-degree rotation in the air.
Your next natural progression, once you've learned the bunny hop, a nose pivot and how to fakie, is the 180 (one eighty). Here you turn your body in the context of a bunnyhop, rotating your whole body and the wheel until you land safely in the fakie. Make sure you get really down on your knees and get good power in your bounce the first several times you practice your 180.
You can also use the 180 on a ramp or bank to ride down in regular stance, like when you rode up. So this is also a way to practice 180s without having to do a fakie afterwards.
8: One hander/no hander/no footer
Once you've got the basic tricks down, you can vary your air tricks on the scooter by releasing the bar briefly with one or both hands while you're in the air - then grabbing the bar again before you land. It requires good technique and is a bit more next level than many of the tricks we've previously described. But the higher you jump, the easier it is.
