Tailwhip, barspin, manuals – what you take on first varies, once you want to challenge yourself beyond just rolling around on your scooter. We do not think many experiences beat the one you get when you land a new trick for the first time. So here is our guide to getting started with some of the most basic scooter tricks. Tricks that help you develop further once you have them down and can land them nine times out of ten.
8 cool scooter tricks
All beginnings are hard. So here are a few tips on how to approach it when you set out to become a respected rider.
1: Bunny hop
Get your scooter off the ground.
The bunny hop is one of the first tricks you should learn on a scooter. It gives you the technique for getting the scooter off the ground – and so it is one of the basic tricks that pave the way for, and give a good understanding of, countless other cool tricks. A tailwhip, for example, which we will look at later – but also grinds and many other types of tricks.
Bend your knees well and jump up while holding the bar and lifting the whole scooter with you. The trick is easier to practise when the scooter is moving slightly, and preferably on a flat surface to begin with. Otherwise it is all about practising the timing. The more you bend your knees, the higher you can jump – it is all about timing!
2: Tailwhip
Jump and rotate your deck 360 degrees around the axis of the bar.
Start by getting your scooter well up in the air before you try a tailwhip. It simply helps to have practised your bunny hops so you have them under control before you move on to this classic trick – even though many beginners want to skip straight to the tailwhip. We understand! But a good bunny hop first helps a lot.
When the scooter is in the air, use your back foot to send the deck into rotation. In fact you also use your hands and arms to help the deck on its way, so it goes all the way round and you can land on it again when the rotation is complete. You can practise the movement with your front foot on the ground to get a feel for the timing and the coordination between the back foot and the arm movement. Otherwise it is a matter of practising again and again until you have it!
3: Barspin
Rotate the bar once around its own axis.
Another trick that is about getting your scooter off the ground – this time, though, it is the bar and not the deck that has to rotate a full turn before you catch it with your hands again.
Start with a 180-degree barspin if you like, where you use your stronger hand to almost throw the bar to your weaker hand while the scooter is in the air. You can practise the trick by letting the front of your scooter hang over a kerb or similar, so the front wheel is free while you get a feel for the movement. Once you can do a 180-degree barspin, move on to a 360-degree barspin, where you "throw" the bar with your stronger hand and catch it again with the same hand after a complete rotation. Then you can start combining the trick with a bunny hop to get a real barspin on flat ground.
4: Manual
Ride on the back wheel of your scooter.
Good manuals are very much about practice. It is simply about finding the right balance between too little lift, where you struggle to keep the front wheel off the ground, and too much lift, where the scooter just flies away from under your feet.
Start by placing your feet correctly. One foot can be over the brake, while the other sits just in front of it – that is, fairly far back on the deck. Use your back foot to adjust the balance when you start to lean back too far. When you start to lean too far forward, shift your centre of gravity by bending your knees while pulling on the bar. Those are the two techniques you need to learn to use to adjust the balance all the time while your scooter rides on the back wheel.
Like the bunny hop, it is a trick that opens the door to cool combinations and a whole new bag of manual tricks on flat ground and on manual pads.
5: Fakie
Ride backwards on your scooter.
Learning to ride fakie also opens the door to all the cool fakie tricks, where you ride your scooter backwards.
The easiest way to learn to ride fakie is to ride slowly up a bank or a ramp and then roll back down fakie, with gravity helping you along. Again it is a trick that just has to be practised until the technique is part of your natural muscle memory, without you thinking too much about it. So practise it from time to time until you have 100% control and balance.
6: Nose pivot
Turn your scooter 180 degrees while (briefly) balancing on the front wheel.
A nose pivot is done by leaning forward and "pushing" on the bar so the scooter is forced up onto the front wheel. Then lean to the side so the scooter turns 180 degrees, until you set the back wheel down again and ride fakie. A quick pirouette on the front wheel that looks cool and is an effective trick for turning around at speed.
Make sure you are comfortable riding fakie before you take on this trick. Once you get really good 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 sweet combo that looks great on flat ground!
7: 180
A bunny hop with a 180-degree rotation in the air.
Your next natural step, once you have learned the bunny hop, a nose pivot and riding fakie, is the 180 (one-eighty). Here you turn your body as part of a bunny hop and rotate your whole body and the scooter until you land safely in fakie. Make sure to get really low in the knees and put plenty of power into your jump the first few times you practise your 180.
You can also use the 180 on a ramp or a bank to ride down in regular stance, the way you rode up. So it is also a way to practise 180s without having to ride fakie afterwards.
8: One-hander / no-hander / no-footer
Once you have the basic tricks in place, you can vary your air tricks by briefly letting go of the bar with one hand or both hands while you are in the air – and grabbing the bar again before you land. It takes good technique and is a bit more next-level than many of the tricks described above. But the higher you jump, the easier it gets.
You can also do a no-footer, a trick where you take both feet off the deck while you are in the air. After that a whole world of wild tricks opens up, where you can do different things with your feet that each have their own name – and then you are definitely on to your next level as a rider.