from Thisissoul on 1 Dec 2019
Before you can think about dropping in, you first need to be able to skate with a decent amount of speed, know your basic breaking techniques, and most importantly, know how to fall.
there are two ways to fall, one being on your knees, the other on your side.
Practice these standing still first, and then make sure you can also do them at a decent speed.
STAND IN TECHNIQUE
Before dropping in from a quarterpipe, you can first practice doing it from a bank.
The difference between a bank and a quarterpipe, is that the bank goes down in a straight line and a quarter pipe goes down curved.
The position of your skates on the quarter pipe or bank is in the middle of your foot. you can practice this by stepping up and over a rail.
Because your first attempt of dropping in, is such a do or die thing to do,
I recommend do to as much other stuff in the skatepark that you can think of before trying it
like rolling off of a ledge in a skatepark or just doing a 180 in the quarter pipe.
There is a rhythm that you are making when you drop in, and it goes like this:
– foot one
– foot two
– Get low
– make yourself strong
If you are lucky, then you have an experience skater that can assist you. Helping somebody drop in should be done with your hand underneath the armpit. if you just hold hands you cant really catch the person if they fall.
The support can gradually decrease.
Then keep repeating this together with less and less support, until you get confidence enough to do it yourself.
A common mistake that i see people doing is putting one foot before the other. While it is true that this is a stable position, you are unable to quickly bend your knees to get down for a possible fall like you saw joy do in the beginning of the video.
Any fall with your feet forward will thus be hard.
SIT IN TECHNIQUE
The crucial thing to learn is how to push your upper body forward.
The first step is to learn this from a curb. throw your upper body forward, push off with your hands, and try to go forward as fast as you can
MOST COMMON MISTAKE
a common mistake by beginners is to put your hips upwards like you see joy doing here.
This is exactly the wrong way to do it and you can never do a sit in like that. Instead of upwards, your hips should go backwards. Doing it from a bench in a bank is a good intermediate step as well.
Most people fall on their tailbone when they fall with the sit in, so practice falling on your side a couple of times like joy is doing here before attempting it in a quarter.
The steeper the obstacle the easier, so a quarterpipe is actually pretty easy, If you however can not do it from the top of a bank yet, then the change is slim that you can do it first try from a quarterpipe.
More info about our lessons:
https://www.thisissoul.nl/skateles