Learn the hardflip: prerequisites, five stages from separate scoop and flick to catching, typical mistakes and protection for shin and ankle.
The hardflip is a frontside shove-it combined with a kickflip: the board spins around the vertical axis and flips vertically between your legs. The honest answer: it counts as one of the trickiest flip tricks because the board moves through the air differently from how your eye expects. If you can frontside pop shove-it and kickflip securely, you still need weeks.
In the hardflip you learn to clear the way for the board. It does not flip beside your feet but between your legs. That feels unfamiliar at first, and if you hold the legs too close you get the board against the shin.
In seven experienced skaters the ollie, kickflip and 360 flip were similarly complex in motor terms and shared a common jumping pattern of the muscles [1]. There is no measurement for the hardflip. But the lesson remains: without a clean pop, this flip does not work either.
How long it takes is experience: plan weeks to months, not sessions.
Ten frontside pop shove-its and ten kickflips. Both must sit. According to a survey of 91 skaters, skaters learn mainly through demonstration, drills and the evaluation of errors [2]. Milestone: frontside pop shove-it 9 of 10, kickflip 8 of 10.
Place the feet as in the kickflip but do the scoop as in the frontside shove-it. The board turns, the front foot does not flick yet. Milestone: 8 of 10 landed cleanly.
Flick as in the kickflip, without a scoop, and keep the legs slightly open. The board should have room to fly through the space between your legs. Milestone: 8 of 10 landed cleanly.
Pop, scoop, flick. The feet work one after another in quick succession. You wait until the board is visible between the legs and only then catch. Milestone: 3 of 10 times caught, even if the landing wobbles.
Both feet over the bolts, knees bent, gaze ahead. Milestone: 5 of 10 hardflips landed and rolled away.
Film check: Film yourself from the front. Does the board fly between the legs or does it hit the shin? If the legs are too close, you see it in the clip.
Session structure (experience): Warm up with shove-its and kickflips, then stage by stage. At most three sets of five attempts, then a break.
If it stalls: If the board keeps hitting the shin, repeat stage 3 and watch only for open legs. If the board flies beside you instead of between the legs, the flick is too early or too hard. Less is often more.
In the hardflip the board flies through between your legs, and it likes to hit shin, knee or ankle. 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 them 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]. 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].
In a US analysis of almost 25,000 patients, helmet use was associated with a clearly lower likelihood of a severe brain injury (odds ratio 0.53) [6]. Practise only on flat ground, never over stairs or gaps. This guide explains and motivates, it does not replace supervised training.
Before the first attempt, be clear where the board is supposed to fly: through the space between your legs. Imagine you are not pulling the knees up but opening them slightly. Whoever closes the legs blocks the flip themselves.
A hardflip is a frontside shove-it combined with a kickflip. The board spins around the vertical axis and flips vertically between the legs.
In five stages: check the foundation, shove-it with kickflip foot position, flick alone with open legs, both together, catch. A secure frontside pop shove-it and kickflip are the prerequisite.
In the frontside flip the board turns 180 degrees with the body, in the hardflip it spins as a shove-it without a body turn. Both flip as a kickflip.
That is experience: often several weeks to months, even if shove-it and kickflip sit. There is no study on this.
Because the legs are too close or the flick is too hard. Open the legs slightly and dose the flick. Shin guards help.
Learning the Nollie Kickflip: Kickflip from the Nollie Pop in Five Stages