Heelflips – How to Heelflip

Learn how to heelflip in a few easy steps with this heelflip trick tip from GoSkate.

Introduction to Heelflips

Heelflips are a great trick to learn after you learn kickflips. Heelflip is not harder than kickflip but it can be little riskier because it sometimes spins wrong way and hit your crotch area when you do not understand how to spin your board. That’s why we introduce this trick after kickflip. Once you get how to flip your board, this kind of accident is not going to happen very often. In addition, motion of heelflip except for your front foot is similar to kickflip so it should not take as long as kickflip to learn if you get kickflip first.

What is a Heelflip?

Heelflip is a trick you spin your board with your front foot heel while doing ollie. It spins opposite side to kickflip. Heelflip uses your heel to spin your board while kickflip uses your toe. It is basis of many tricks like varial heellflip and inward heelflip.

Stance for Heelflip

Your back foot is on same place as ollie. Front foot is behind front hardwares and your toe is little out from your board. Do not forget to keep your balance steady and make your board parallel to the ground.

Direction of Body

It is more similar to kickflip than ollie. Your body and shoulder is vertical to forward. Look around nose and get ready to see your board flipping.

Popping Tail and Dragging Nose

After kicking tail and making cracking sound, drag your nose with your front foot heel. This way of dragging is little different from kickflip or ollie and can be a reason your board can spin very wrong way. Put your back foot on ground right after you pop your tail to avoid risk when you do not understand how to drag and flip.

Use Snapping and Kick Off

When your heel reaches edge of nose after dragging, use snapping and kick off to diagonally forward. It is opposite side to kickflip. The way of dragging and kicking off is key for learning heelflip so just focus on learning way of dragging and spinning.

Following Board with Eyes

When you do right front foot motion, your board flips. Keep your balance and follow your board flipping with your eyes and catch it in the air. Same as kickflip, how high you can bring your nose with your front foot is key for the height.

Landing Heelflips

The smooth landing is all up to catching the board in the air. Try to land with four wheels at once.

Practicing Heelflips

The way of learning heelflip is same as kickflip. Just explained above but learning right way of dragging and kicking off is the key to this trick. Put your back foot on the ground after kicking tail and learn how to make a spin with your front foot first. This step reduces risk that your board hits you. After getting used to flipping with your front foot, start practice for landing with two feet. If yon can do kickflip, this step is not going to take long time because you already know other part of motion. Cut off unnecessarily motion of your body and make it solid next, then bring it to some spots.