No more gut feeling: how to make your skate progress objectively and motivatingly measurable with video, trick consistency and simple athletic tests.
How do you really measure whether you're getting better at skating? Not by gut feeling but by three objective quantities: what you film, how consistently you land a trick and how your athletic values develop. Because progress on the board can be broken down cleanly. The ollie, for example, splits into four measurable events and three phases that can be captured objectively by a motion sensor or high-speed video — flight time thus becomes a repeatable height proxy.
Why this matters: perceived standstill is the most common reason skaters quit — even though they're objectively progressing. Whoever measures sees the small jumps the feeling misses. On top of that: the athleticism behind skating is testable. Balance, lower-body strength and endurance are the strongest predictors of skate potential, and they're captured with simple tests like the single-leg stand, standing broad jump and plank. This guide turns your progress into numbers that motivate instead of frustrate. You need no lab for it — a phone, a tape measure and a bit of discipline are plenty.
Set the phone at the same spot and film the same trick regularly in slow motion. That way you compare yourself with yourself weeks ago — the most honest yardstick of progress there is. Important: measure rolling, not just standing, because static tests represent real skating poorly.
A trick isn't "mastered" when it works once, but when it comes consistently. Count your hit rate: how many of ten attempts do you land cleanly? Going from 2/10 to 6/10 is a huge, often invisible advance — make it visible. Also note the conditions you measure under (surface, fresh or tired), or you'll compare apples to oranges.
Your ollie height can be objectified: the ollie breaks into take-off, peak height, front- and rear-wheel landing. The time between take-off and landing in the slow-motion video is a clean height proxy. Measure it instead of guessing whether your ollie "looked higher." Ollie height is also the central technical target quantity in skating.
Every few weeks, run a few simple tests: single-leg stand time (balance), broad jump and vertical jump (leg power), plank time (core). These very quantities are the strongest predictors of skate potential. If they rise, you've built a physical base on which tricks come more easily.
Enter video dates, hit rates and test values into a simple table. The log is your antidote to perceived standstill: on frustrating days you flip back and see the real trend. But don't measure daily — every two to four weeks shows the signal, not the noise.
Define your personal "benchmark run": three to five tricks you film every four weeks under identical conditions and whose hit rate you note. This fixed run is like a fitness test for skating — it filters out daily form and shows the real trend over months. Nothing keeps you more reliably motivated than the proof that your 3/10 trick from last quarter is an 8/10 trick today.
Through three quantities: video (film the same trick regularly in slow motion), trick consistency (hit rate out of ten attempts) and athletic tests (single-leg stand, broad jump, plank). The ollie can even be broken into measurable phases, with flight time serving as a height proxy. This way you see progress the feeling misses.
Via flight time in slow-motion video. The ollie breaks into take-off, peak height and the two wheel landings; the time between take-off and landing is a clean, repeatable height proxy. Measure rolling rather than standing, because static tests represent real skating poorly. Ollie height is the central technical target quantity.
Above all balance and leg power: single-leg stand time (static and dynamic balance), broad and vertical jump (jump power) and plank time (core). These very factors are the strongest predictors of skate potential. If the values rise, you've improved the physical base on which tricks build.
Not daily, but every two to four weeks. Skate progress comes in steps, and daily values mostly show daily form and chance — that is, noise. A fixed benchmark run every few weeks filters that out and makes the real trend over months visible. It also protects you from frustration on bad days.
Skateboarden: Training Planning