Time for an update on my skateboarding progress after my first post about Learning to skateboard in my 40s a few weeks ago. It’s been 8 weeks now since myself and my two kids started skateboarding. We’ve had several lessons now, and I’ll be writing an update in the next few days about what we’ve been learning and how we’ve been getting on, but for this post I thought I’d focus on our other skateboarding teacher… YouTube. There are so many things on YouTube and Instagram for inspiration to do with skateboarding, but YouTube in particular is great for learning how to do things. Here are the main channels that I’ve been following and learning lots from.

Braille Skateboarding
If you searched for skateboarding stuff on YouTube then you’ve probably come across Braille. These guys are one of the big guns of YouTube skateboarding, and I’m sure some people don’t like them for that, but I’ve learned a lot from their videos, particularly their tutorial videos. It was Braille videos that we first watched to learn the absolute basics. And there are so many regular videos on their channel that there’s always something that piques my interest and teaches me something. They are also good at championing cool skaters. I loved this video where they chatted to a big bowl skater and that’s how I learned about the awesome skater @wallybin on Instagram. This video below is the very first skateboarding video that my daughter and I watched.

Never Stop Improving
I really like this guy’s channel. It’s possibly the channel I’ve watched or referred to the most. He’s got some great videos that cover off a lot of the things you might want to learn, but I just like his style. He’s very down to earth and keeps things in very simple terms so it’s easy to follow. But one of the best things is that his videos are really well put together. He doesn’t just show things once. He’ll get different angles of moves or tricks and show them a few times, so that you can really follow along. Highly recommended. Here’s a good example of one of his tutorial videos.

VLSkate
This guy is also great. Very similar to Never Stop Improving in the sense that he covers off a lot of beginner stuff and also shoots it pretty well.

Nollie Skateboarding
I’ve not used this channel as much as the above three tutorial channels, but I have watched a few of the videos and found them useful, so I wanted to include them. He’s got an interesting style. I think he’s Japanese so doesn’t do a voiceover but instead uses on screen text and graphics. Here’s a good example below.

Chad Caruso
I really like Chad’s channel. It’s not so much a strict tutorial channel but more just a record of him getting back into skateboarding and offering quite a bit of advice along the way. I just really like his style, in terms of on screen presence and how he explains stuff, but also how he skates.

Prodigal Suns
Being a middle aged newbie skater myself it’s very inspiring and reassuring to watch other middle aged skaters who are also learning. I really like this Prodigal Suns channel. Just to see someone aged 50 learning to skate is very interesting to watch but he also offers some great advice along the way.

Skater Stimm
I’ve only found this channel in the past week, and he doesn’t really offer specific advice but again it’s just interesting to see someone in the same sort of situation that I am, learning how to skate.

For someone like myself, it’s such a useful resource having all these tutorial videos on YouTube. I’m a visual learner and it’s incredibly useful to be able to analyse these videos to really break down what I need to be doing. Particularly the ones that do multiple camera angles or slow motions to really show you the technical requirements. There’s nothing like trying it for yourself in real life, but all these channels above have really helped me along the way.

Tune in soon for my next update for how I’ve been improving after 8 weeks of skating.