Words Brian Dolle
It’s fucking cool to say that. Maybe I can’t actually do whatever I want, but sometimes I feel like it’s
pretty close. It was a really special time for me when I realized that I could learn tricks without really practicing them. Just by thinking about the physics behind them, visualizing them, mentally putting my feet in different positions and applying pressure in different ways until I landed the trick. I would lay in bed before I fell asleep and learn tricks. Shit was crazy. The gnarliest thing was probably going out the next day and doing the trick. Like of course I didn’t get it first try. I had to practice. Build up the muscles in my ankle to flick a certain way. Fine tune the timing involved. Make sure my feet scraped in the exact right spots of the board. Get my body weight shifted right. But I got the basic motion of the trick right away and with a few hours of trying I landed it. It’s been like that with tons of tricks. It’s sort of like someone you know who broke his ankle, was out for 4 months, watched a shit ton of skate vids and went out to watch his homies skate all the time. 4 months later, he’s back on his board with a bunch of new tricks he never had before. For real? This goes with flatground, ledges, stairs, rails, banks, and everything else. The raw conceptualization and understanding behind how a trick actually works makes anything possible. I always over think everything all the time. Go rip.