How to Axle Stall

There are two main steps to learning the axle stall. First you tap one truck on the coping and come right back in. Then you get your whole body up and over the ramp. The second part is the hard one.

Before you start

You’ll want to be comfortable dropping in and kick turning on a mini ramp.

Step 1: Tap and come back in

Start on the side of the coping. Ride up, start a kick turn, and right when your back wheel comes over the coping, tap that truck down and bring it right back in.

Your body is still leaning into the ramp on this one, so it shouldn’t give you much trouble. It’s practice for the part that scares people: landing back in.

Step 2: Get up on top

The goal is to come up and lean completely on top of the ramp. Instead of your body leaning into the ramp, it has to be up and over the coping. That’s pretty hard at first.

1. Get as much speed as you can. If the ramp has an extension, this is a good time to use it.
2. Come at less of an angle.
3. Wait longer before you pivot. Wait until you’re almost completely over, then start to bring it around.

That gets the board up there. Your body is what makes it hard. Even with your board up on the coping perfectly, if you’re leaning in, you’ll end up stepping off, because you can’t pull the board back in with your weight forward like that.

Keep your body upright

Pretend the whole ramp is a small curb with a little bank going up to it. You wouldn’t roll up, lean back and then lean forward again for the axle stall. You’d keep your body straight the whole time and ride the board up.

Do the same thing on the ramp. Pump a lot, stay vertical and kind of jump up onto the coping. Don’t ollie. Let the ramp pull the board up with you. That’s how it feels: keep your body straight and jump up to the coping. (That’s on a mini ramp this size. I haven’t done it on anything bigger.)

Still falling off the back?

I did all that and was still just a little bit forward, enough that I’d fall right off instead of bringing the board in with me. What helped: lean forward as I came up the ramp, then lean back right as I started to kick turn. That created some momentum that brought me up on top.

Coming back in

Once you’re up there, you have to land it. That can be pretty scary, especially if you stay up for a while. That’s why step 1 comes in handy. You already know how to tap the truck and come back in. It’s the same thing.

The only difference is your truck can hang up. You start to turn, the wrong wheel rolls over the coping, and you hang up and fall in. Two things help:

• Don’t jam your wheel against the coping. Land with the truck a little off it instead of the wheel right up against it. I still land with my wheel against it, but if you’ve hung up a couple of times, try it this way.
• Jump in. Don’t just pivot and fall back in. Unweight, guide the board in and land on it down in the transition.

Taking it further

Try staying up long enough to switch to a tail stall and drop back in. Once you can stay up on top of the deck that long, you’ve got a real axle stall. From there you can start learning pivots and other stalls, like the nosestall.