How to Varial Heelflip

The varial heelflip is a frontside shove it and a heelflip in one trick. To me, it’s a very picky trick. It does exactly what it wants. If your balance and foot position are just right, it’s easy. If not, it won’t happen.

When I teach tricks, I take ones I haven’t done in a while and relearn them, so the troubleshooting is fresh in my mind. Here’s what I ran into.

Before you start

You should be able to heelflip and frontside shove it. If you can heelflip, you’re good on the flip part. I’m not a heelflip expert. I don’t love heelflips. But this is basically a plain heelflip with a pop.

Practice: land your frontside shove its in place

Something that helped me: put your board down stationary, pop a frontside shove it and try to land in the same spot you started, on the bolts. It’s really hard, almost impossible unless the ground is super smooth. But it helps.

When the board spins frontside out in front of you, it naturally wants to fly backward. You don’t want to chase it in the air or push off and try to catch up with it. That way you’re popping and jumping backward instead of popping down, so you lose height and spin. You can put way more effort into the trick than it needs and get almost nothing back.

Foot position

• Front foot: not in the middle, not on the bolts. Somewhere in between, tipped ever so slightly backward.
• Back foot: on the corner of the tail.

If you have trouble getting the full spin, it’s tempting to move your back foot in more. You’ll see people put their foot there for bigspin heelflips or laser flips. For a normal varial heelflip, that actually makes it harder. Keep it on the corner.

Keep your weight centered

Growing up, I always read “keep your weight centered” in Transworld trick tips. Centered around what? It means centered over the middle of the board. If your feet aren’t on the bolts, that’ll feel like you’re leaning forward, more over your front foot. That’s where you want it.

How to varial heelflip

1. Pop hard

Pop the tail pretty hard. It doesn’t feel much like a scoop to me. My varial heels flip more end over end than flat. If you do them flat, they’re a lot harder to catch, and you’ll tend to land at 90 or a little past it. To get the full thing around, I pop it more down so the board flips that way to a degree. It’s a hard pop and a little push in the frontside shove it direction. Not a scoop, just a pop and a push.

2. Let the front foot do a plain heelflip

I don’t think about my front foot much. If the board doesn’t flip right, it’s usually not that I didn’t flick hard enough. It’s that the pop wasn’t straight enough, so it didn’t run into my foot the right way. I might open up slightly forward and flip it a little more off the nose, but it’s not a big thing. Experiment with that if you have problems.

3. Pull your feet up and wait

This is the biggest tip for this trick. Pull your feet up a lot higher than you think you have to. You’ll see the board coming around and think it’s time to catch it, but it’ll be way too early. Pull your feet up and wait, and wait, and wait.

Not getting enough spin? Jump higher and pull your feet up higher. Not getting the flip? Pull your feet up higher.

Because the board flips end over end, it’s easy for it to brush against your shoe and slow down. You might not notice it in the moment. Film yourself and check. When I relearned these, that’s what was happening. The board would’ve flipped perfectly, but I was giving up because it felt like it wasn’t coming around.

4. Commit and put your feet down

Here’s what makes this trick hard. With your back foot popped forward and your front foot flicked forward, it’s hard to see the board. The trick floats behind you a little and your feet are out in front. It’s not hard to make the board do it. It’s hard to see it and commit.

How do you commit to a trick you’ve never landed? That’s skateboarding. Trust it and put your feet down.

While you’re learning, you’ll often catch it at an angle, on the tail, and have to push it down and flatten it out with your knees bent way up. You’ll land toes down, heels down, on the tail, on the nose. Don’t worry about it. Eventually you’ll know a trick is going to work by how it glanced off your foot. Then you can do them higher and catch them flat.

Troubleshooting

The board stops at 90

This trick has a weird way of making you look like you’ve never skated. You pop it, it flips about a quarter of the way and then just stops. Two things cause this:

• Foot position. If your back foot is too far on the side and scooping too much, the board hits your front foot and dies. It needs to be poppier, more of an angle, to get a good heelflip off of it.
• Catching too soon. The board would have done the flip, but you weren’t pulled up out of the way yet, and it bounced off your feet.

Pop it harder and jump higher. That’s 90% of the troubleshooting on this trick.

Landing sideways

This happens if you catch it too early. Don’t scoop it more. That causes more problems. Pop it more, suck your feet up and wait.

Not spinning enough

It’s usually not that you’re not spinning it hard enough. Sometimes you’re flipping it too hard and catching it when it’s done flipping but not done spinning.

Other ways to learn it

• Stationary. I don’t usually recommend stationary at this level, but this one is dead easy standing still. I can do it standing still almost every time. Rolling and committing to it is the hard part, but stationary helps.
• Switch. For a lot of people, frontside heelflip-type tricks (varial heelflips, bigspin heelflips, laser flips) are a lot easier switch. For me it’s easier to stay centered switch.
• Nollie. Rolling nollie works pretty well too. The board wants to travel more off the tail than off the nose.

All of these build confidence before you take it back to regular.

What’s next

The no comply varial heelflip and the semi flip both build on it.