7th April 2006
That’s Impossible
Mark asks…
How do you do an impossible on a skateboard?
The impossible was invented by Rodney Mullen and is so called because someone had claimed it would be impossible to get the skateboard to flip vertically. Over to Tony to answer this one…
There are a few types of impossible, but as you never mentioned any particular variation, I’ll presume you mean an ollie impossible, as they are the most common. The first thing to understand is that a good impossible should wrap around your foot, vertically – end-over-end. If your impossibles look more like shuvits, they probably are shuvits, and you should work more on getting a vertical wrap.
To actually do the trick, have the front foot up by the front truck; the back foot should go straight across the tail. As you pop, jump and lift the front foot STRAIGHT UPWARDS – don’t scrape it up the deck like you would for an ollie or ollieflip – and push the back foot towards where the front foot was. You need to get a circular motion going with the back foot to get the wrap going, and this first motion – bringing the back foot to where the front one was, pushing on the tail of the now-vertical board – will get it started.
From here, everything else becomes second nature. Just let the motions complete themselves. The board should come round and you should land on it just fine. Roll away psyched…
– Tony
Al; They’re not. Harder to land, that is. Basically, what happens is your toes drop and point downward, and the board looks more like a strange, slightly off-axis shuvit. It happens all the time. Pure vertical ones, or near as, are generally seen as better impossibles, and are truer to the original definition. The more sideways they get, the sloppier they are. 🙂
Posted by Tony on 26th of April 2006
well Al is true. But if i had to say the vertical ones are easier to land but i don’t think there is much speed in the flip.But the horizontal are more riskier but you can flip the board faster. I
Posted by Ryan on 01st of June 2006
There’s another way of doing impossibles,where the board wraps around your leg horizontaly instead of verticaly,which is the way I’ve seen Keith Renna and Rodney Mullen do them,and their harder to land.
Posted by Oldschool Al on 26th of April 2006