Learn the backside flip: prerequisites, five stages from separate scoop and flick to the fakie landing, typical mistakes and how to learn with drills.
The backside flip is a backside 180 ollie combined with a kickflip: the board turns 180 degrees and flips once around its long axis while you land fakie, rolling backwards. The honest answer: if you can kickflip and backside 180 securely on their own, you put them together in a few weeks of training, but not in one session.
The backside flip is a combination trick, not a new type of movement. Your feet do two things at once: the back foot pushes the tail sideways (turns the board), the front foot flicks the board around the long axis. You manage both separately, now you have to bring them together.
A study of seven experienced skaters showed that the ollie, kickflip and 360 flip have a similar motor complexity and share a common jumping pattern of the muscles [1]. That applies only to these three tricks; there is no measurement for the backside flip. Only one thing matters from this: the pop is the basis of all three, not the flick.
How long it takes is experience: plan weeks, not sessions.
Do ten kickflips and ten backside 180 ollies in a row. Both must sit before you combine. According to a survey of 91 skaters, skaters learn mainly through demonstration, drills and the evaluation of errors [2]. Your drill here is the test of the foundation. Milestone: 8 of 10 clean each.
Roll and do a kickflip while opening the shoulders about 45 degrees in the backside direction. The board flips, you land at an angle. Milestone: 8 of 10 landed without stepping off.
Place your feet as in the kickflip and do the scoop of the back foot as in the backside 180: the board turns, the front foot does not flick yet. Then you flick without the scoop. You train both movements separately, with the feet in the kickflip position. Milestone: 8 of 10 times turn and flick each clean.
Now both in one jump: pop, scoop sideways, flick sideways, shoulders lead. You do not catch the board immediately but wait until the grip appears. Milestone: 3 of 10 times caught, even if the landing wobbles.
Catch the board with both feet over the bolts, knees bent, gaze ahead. An attempt counts only when you are standing. Milestone: 5 of 10 backside flips landed and rolled away.
Film check: Film yourself from the side or from behind. Does the board turn before the flip, or does it flip first? If the flip comes too late, you see it in the clip.
Session structure (experience): Warm up with kickflips and backside 180s, then stage by stage. At most three sets of five attempts, then a break. End the session at the first sloppy attempt.
In the backside flip the board flies away from under your feet, and the landing comes backwards. In a survey of 197 skaters in Spain, ligament sprains were the most common injury type at 39.6 percent, especially of the ankle (39.3 percent), and 70.1 percent of the ankle injuries came back [3]. On flat ground 15.2 percent of the 323 injuries happened [3]; that is a share, not a risk per hour.
Professionals had a smaller ankle inversion angle than amateurs in one measurement [4], so their foot rolls over less far. If you are tired, you lose this control. Wrist and forearm account for more than half of skaters' injuries because people fall onto the outstretched arm [5].
Practise only on flat, free ground and never over stairs, gaps or obstacles. The guide gives no instruction for big sets. It explains and motivates, it does not replace supervised training.
Do the flip in your head first: a gaze study with nine experienced skaters showed that in the kickflip without an obstacle they tended to look at the board longer than in the ollie, but the difference was not statistically confirmed [6]. For you this means: your gaze may stay on the board in flips until it has turned. Lift it to the landing only when the grip appears.
A backside flip is a backside 180 ollie combined with a kickflip: the board turns 180 degrees and flips once around its long axis. You land fakie.
In five stages: check the foundation, kickflip with opened shoulders, scoop and flick separately, bring them together, land fakie. A secure kickflip and backside 180 ollie are the prerequisite.
The direction of turn: in the backside flip you turn backside, in the frontside flip frontside. Both flip as a kickflip.
That is experience: often several weeks if kickflip and backside 180 sit. There is no study on this.
Yes, you land fakie. Practise fakie riding and fakie landings beforehand so that the landing does not become the bottleneck.
Learning the Frontside Flip: Frontside 180 and Kickflip in One Jump