Now that you're riding smoothly and getting around a bit, you can spice things up by adding a few basic tricks.
street skating is basically taking advantage of what the street has to offer for skateboarding fun. If the street is flat and you can't jump, there are still ways to have fun, and there are a lot of things to learn.
The first is to master your directional changes by using the kicktail on your board, the raised part at the back of the deck. Simply put, if you turn only by leaning to one side, your turns will require a lot of space to complete. That's part of what the kicktail on your board is for, to change direction very quickly and greatly increase your maneuverability on your skateboard.
To master this new feature, there is a technique that allows you to have fun right away, the Tic Tac.
The Tic Tac is an old method of moving forward by changing direction very quickly with your kicktail. By doing this, you will zigzag on your back wheels and this movement will generate speed. This ultra fun technique allows you to move forward without pushing with your foot and to get used to moving in an ultra incisive way on your skateboard.
The second thing you can learn to have fun and improve your technique is the powerslide.
The powerslide is a basic trick that was part of the repertoire of the first street skaters. To summarize, the powerslide is a way of skidding that allows both to generate a big sliding sensation, but also to brake in a very effective way.
To send your first powerslides, you have to give a powerfull loinshock to send your back foot forward and make your board skid. To make the maneuver easier, you have to put some of your weight on the front of the board to relieve the back truck. A bit like snowboarding and exactly like longboarding, the powerslide is much easier if you take a little speed. To go even further and make it even easier to skid, you can put a hand on the ground to move your center of gravity, which allows you to unhook your wheels even easier. Of course, the quality of the floor can change everything, and the smooth concrete of skatepark is the perfect surface to practice on. And if you need an example, just look at the big slides that Stacy Peralta and his fellow skateboarding pioneers were sending down in the 70s.
To complete the picture, we offer you a little bonus that will be very useful throughout your skating career. It is a technique that you will still see in almost all the runs of the skateboarding pros during competitions: the wheeling.
Wheeling in skateboarding, also called manual, is the fact of rolling on two wheels by lifting the front of your board. The challenge is to work on your balance to hold on as long as possible. If you watch the pros, you'll see that they often use this technique to spice up the landing of certain tricks by falling back on two wheels only!
Wheelies are quite easy to do, the real difficulty is to stay balanced on two wheels for more than three seconds :)
Once you've passed this stage, you can add a little trick to your repertoire by trying the Nose Wheeling, the wheeling on the two front wheels.
Have a good skate !