How to Taildrop

This trick has all kinds of names. I’ve heard tail ollie, power ollie and tail stop ollie out. I call them taildrops. It’s quick and easy. All it is: set your board up in a tail stall on a ledge and pop out of it.

The straight drop

The only real trick to a straight drop with no gap: dip the nose down, then bring it back up really quickly as you pop.

Depending on how steep your tail is, and a bunch of other stuff, you can only dip so far before the tail slips off the ledge. Figure out where that point is and work on your timing so you don’t slide off and you still get up in the air.

Start low, on a curb or a small box, and work your way up to higher stuff.

Adding a gap

This is what makes the trick interesting, and hard. It’s what I like about it.

1. Start with your weight as far back as you can without having to step off.
2. Lean forward.
3. Pop and push off the ledge.

In the air, you’ll be way ahead of the board. Keep the board angled up so you can pull it underneath you. Don’t try to ollie the board out ahead and hope to catch up with it. Lead with your shoulders and your whole upper body.

You can’t get very high on these, and you don’t need to worry about height. You do need to get the board up high enough to slide your foot up to the nose and pull it out ahead of you. Like any gap trick, work your way up bigger and bigger.

Taking it further

Once you’re comfortable with straight taildrops, there are a lot of variations: spins, kickflips, shove its or even grabs.

A fun one if you have a set of stairs: start on one stair and try to land in a tail stop on the next stair down.

And once you get good at tailslides, you can start doing these out of tailslides.