HOW TO HARDFLIP

What this video teaches

Jonny Giger frames the defining move as the scoop, pushing the tail hard into the ground and throwing the board forward like picking it up, with more weight on the back foot than a normal kickflip. He admits it took him fifteen years to find this after years of mistakenly trying to muscle it with a straight front shove-it, and recommends starting on slippery ground while slowly rolling rather than standing still.

Key tips

• 1Nail kickflip and frontside pop shove-it first, since a hardflip needs both as a solid foundation
• 2Start practicing on slippery flat ground so less force is needed to shove the tail around
• 3Set back foot centered on the tail, front foot at kickflip angle but shifted further back
• 4Learn the scoop as pushing the tail hard down and throwing the board forward, almost like picking it up off the ground, not a straight-down pop shove-it
• 5Load noticeably more weight onto the back foot than the roughly even balance used for a plain pressure flip
• 6Flick the front foot out sideways rather than straight off the nose like a kickflip
• 7Keep the body angle between fully vertical and fully horizontal, somewhere in the middle
• 8Drill the front-foot-only catch by scooping the board out in front and catching it with just the front foot, repeated daily before committing both feet, and move slowly rather than standing still

Summarized from the video transcript.