There’s more to skateboarding than just pushing off and cruising around. If you want to take your skating to the next level, you need to learn some tricks. One of the easiest tricks to know is the tic-tac. We’ll show you how to tic tac on a skateboard in this article. Let’s get started!
Tic-tac is a simple trick: you ride up to a rail or ledge, do a frontside 180 on your skateboard, and land back on your board. It may seem easy enough when you read through the directions, but it’s pretty challenging to get the hang of. Even if you’re fairly good at skating, learning how to tic-tac can take hours of practice.
A Step by Step Guide on How to Tic Tac on a Skateboard
Step 1: Prep Work
Make sure you have a skateboard, and remember to wear all safety gear just in case. Hardcore skaters swear that helmets are for pussies, but wearing them can’t hurt if you’re worried about your brain or don’t want to die. Wear elbow pads, too, if you value the integrity of your arms.
You’ll need somewhere high up with railings or handrails, so it is easy to hold onto while performing tricks. The street benches at parks work well for this purpose because they are usually relatively high off the ground, and cars won’t run over your head as long as you keep moving.
Step 2: The Approach
Start with a bit of speed as you approach your obstacle, but don’t go too fast because if you fall, you’re going to be in a lot of pain. Instead, use the railings or handrails to gain enough momentum and force yourself up into a tic tac without falling over. This takes a good bit of practice and can hurt, but that’s the point.
You should always have another person with you when attempting to Tic Tac for safety reasons. Otherwise, they’ll have to call an ambulance when you get severely broken in half by some crazy move you never thought was possible. If it does come down to this situation, remember not to break eye contact with them, so they know how badly you’re injured and that you care about their well-being as human beings.
Step 3: Train Your Muscle Memory
Now that you’ve successfully tic traced on the railings, it is time to train your muscles. Strap your iPod on and bust out an intense cardio workout on a skateboard. You might be getting tired at first, but once you hit that second wind, nothing is going to stop you from doing Tic Tac after Tic Tac. If you don’t have access to a skateboard, just run up and down some stairs for about an hour until you develop the stamina necessary for this level of activity.
Step 4: Gain Street Cred
You’re almost ready to perform Tic Tac routines in public, but first, you have to prove yourself. Try doing some ollies or kickflips near your local skate park entrance and show everyone that you are a true skater at heart. Nobody likes posers, so make sure you do it right before they throw down their boards and start beating you up because if there’s one thing skaters love more than skating, it’s beating up fake skaters.
Step 5: Get the Proper Stance
Make sure to get your stance right. First, stand so that you are facing away from the railing and place both of your feet on the nose of the board. Then, lean forward slightly while shifting your weight onto one foot and start spinning rapidly in circles with the other leg outstretched. If you have done everything correctly, your board should slip from underneath you and then fall back into place immediately as you tumble to the ground.
Step 6: Anticipate Your Body’s Needs
The key to a successful Tic Tac is anticipating the need before it happens. So put, if you have been skating around on your board nonstop for about three hours, then there’s a pretty good chance that your muscles are going to start hurting, and you’re going to want to stop. That would be disastrous, though, because you’d ruin all of the momentum you’ve built up so far and never successfully tic tac again.
So to combat this problem, do some stretches before going out onto the street, or else brace yourself for a harrowing landing should a trick suddenly fail. This is a crucial step in how to tic tac on a skateboard.
Step 7: Swing to the Other Side
Now that you’ve tic tac ed successfully all over your local park, it’s time to take the act on the road. The best way to do this without actually taking your skateboard with you is by balancing against a street pole and doing Tic Tac snow and then as people walk past. Then, to make sure they notice, just wave at them, smile, or sometimes even beckon them closer so that they can see what you’re up to.
Step 8: Repeat the Motion Until You Get It Right
If your Tic Tac fails for some reason, never fear! Just make sure to maintain eye contact with the person you were hoping would notice and then immediately repeat the motion until you get it right. Sometimes this takes a few times, but if you keep at it long enough, eventually, someone will stop and applaud your determination; if this doesn’t happen within about eight minutes, though, just give up because everyone hates that kind of hard-headed perseverance.
Step 9: Integrate into Your Daily Life
As soon as you can do 5–7 solid tics without stopping or looking tired at all from your workout, then it’s time to take things to the next level! Try doing a Tic Tac wherever you go, whenever you can. For example, instead of eating breakfast in the morning, just give that oatmeal a good swirl and then get back to it later when you’re stuck at work or waiting for the bus. These steps will help in how to tic tac on a skateboard.
You Can Check It Out to Go Off a Curb on a Skateboard
Tips and Warnings
Tips
- Make sure to use your skateboard as a balancing tool.
- Keep your feet close together and try to stay off the front of the board.
- If you feel yourself falling, jump right before hitting the ground.
- If you don’t, you will most likely break a limb or a bone!
- Keep your arms straight and hands close to the board if you want to propel yourself forward.
- Don’t scratch your nose or eyes when you fall. It is a waste of time, and it hurts!
- Remember never to give up because you will get better with practice.
- When trying these tricks, make sure there are no cars around and that you’re in a wide-open space.
Warnings
- As previously stated, do not scratch your eyes or nose after a fall, as this is a waste of time and will hurt.
- If you fall incorrectly, you could break a limb or a bone.
- Don’t do this on streets or roads; there’s too much traffic, and you can get run over.
- If your nose itches, blow it!
Which Is Better: Indoor or Outdoor Skating?
There is a difference between indoor and outdoor skating. For example, when you’re indoors, you don’t have to worry about rocks and potholes in the road outside interfering with your board’s performance. However, it can be challenging to forego skaters’ natural desire for speed when you go indoors.
When skating outdoors, it may require more patience than usual to learn how to skateboard well. This is because of the various challenges that different terrains provide: mountain driveways versus city sidewalks; dry clay soil versus cracked cement pavement; narrow alleyways and parking garages; grassy hillsides; graveled pathways through parks; and even different styles of cement pavement.
Each of these presents different challenges, and you must learn how to control your skateboard appropriately for each type of terrain. It may require taking your time to learn about the intricacies of learning how to skateboard on concrete versus asphalt versus grass versus dirt surfaces. However, you can improve at skating by practicing these different types of terrains, both indoors and outdoors, which will help you become a well-rounded skater.
Indoor skating is excellent because it’s easier with fewer variables to deal with as a beginner skater still learning how to balance. Going indoors can be a better place to start if you are just getting started. Plus, there aren’t any cars or dogs barking at you or people walking down the sidewalk while you’re trying to learn. Odds are it’s a lot easier to find a skate shop or indoor skatepark near your home than an asphalt-covered hill that you can practice on, so skating indoors can be your best bet for getting started and learning how to ride fast and do some tricks.
Conclusion
This is the only article you’ll need to learn how to tic tac on a skateboard. You can stop reading now if you want, but I’m going to try and convince you not to! We’re all about learning new things here at Tic Tac Skateboards, so we wanted to share this with everyone. If nothing else, it’s an exciting read that may inspire some of us non-skaters out there into trying something new for once in our lives. So hang tight because, after the conclusion paragraph below, we have many links where you can get your hands on one of these boards!
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