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How to Finger Flip from Tail Stop - In Depth Tutorial

Sarah PM14:56

How to Finger Flip from Tail Stop - In Depth Tutorial by Sarah PM is a skateboarding tutorial for the Fingerflip. Sarah PM teaches the freestyle fingerflip from a tail stop, and her whole method is built around one idea she calls preloading: you do not flip the board, you build tension in the deck and then simply jump.

What this video teaches

Sarah PM teaches the freestyle fingerflip from a tail stop, and her whole method is built around one idea she calls preloading: you do not flip the board, you build tension in the deck and then simply jump. Her hand sits with the thumb on the toe-side edge of the nose and the four fingers just off the centre axis, pushing down with the thumb while pulling up with the fingers, and she adds a slight wrist tilt so the arm muscles rather than the hand alone supply the force. The tension only exists if your feet pin the tail in the heel-side pocket, directly opposite the thumb pressure, since weight in the toe-side pocket lets the board start rotating before you jump. She lays out a five-step build: half-flip the board and find the bolts with the back foot, preload and lift that foot to get a full 360 rotation, preload with both feet and hop up and back, practise knee-tuck jumps and feet-together-to-feet-apart landings, then commit to the whole trick. She warns against consciously pulling up, which can strain a muscle and pulls the board off line, and she notes gloves are worth wearing while learning.

Key tips

  • Hand placement: thumb on the toe-side edge of the nose, four fingers just off the centre axis with a small gap between them; push down with the thumb and pull up with the fingers
  • Add a slight wrist tilt into the push so you recruit the whole arm instead of only hand strength, which is what makes the flip fast enough
  • Put your feet in the heel-side pocket of the tail so the pin is diagonally opposite the thumb; weight in the toe-side pocket makes the board rotate before you jump and kills the tension
  • Preload first and then simply jump straight up; the stored tension spins the board roughly 360 on its own, so you do not need to flip it with your hand
  • Never consciously pull up on the board, which risks pulling a muscle and drags the flip off axis
  • Practise jumping with feet together and separating them in the air, plus knee-tuck jumps, so you land on the bolts instead of with both feet together

Summarized from the video transcript.

Teaches

Fingerflip

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