Do watching skateboarding tricks frame by frame make you progress faster?

I can only vaguely recall this stage... but I found standing on a board without trucks or wheels fairly helpful!

On a relatively firm surface (ie: carpet) this provides some practice for the balancing act. How foot placement and the contours in the board impact things too

Similarly, on something with a little more flex (grass), it's a decent way to start trying some flip tricks :)

As for rolling around, I think it's mostly finding really smooth/flat surfaces... and just doing it a lot.

Depending on your wheels/weight placement, anything thicker than a quarter can stop you almost immediately.

It takes a little while to get the 'feel' and speed to deal with rougher surfaces particularly well

There are skateboard coaches. I hired one after skating for 10+ years, and it made a qualitative leap in my abilities.

well, I have to admit seeing decent numbers of fractured collarbones and wrists, and the occasional serious trauma among people learning, so first get best helmet you can find and protective gear.

You could try a hub driven electric board, supposedly they can be freewheeled without the motor like a heavy passive skateboard to increase your practice time, which musicians and gamers call shed time or seat time

Unless you've got insurance that'll cover it, and/or cash money for fairly serious injuries, you probably shouldn't. You won't bounce back like most of us did in our childhood and teens, and you stand a chance of seriously fucking yourself up.

Depending on where you live, sidewalk construction may be an issue. E.g., paved areas in the UK can be shitty due to inconsistent height between paving stones. The slightest thing and the newb is gonna go flying.

The thing to remember with skateboarding is that for every several minute video showing cool tricks, you aren't seeing the hours of bails. The Tony Hawk games always included bails videos to show that there's a lot of perseverance and pain that goes into making it look effortless.

I did myself some horrible injuries over the years, including slashing the palm of my hand wide open on a pebble-dashed wall whilst learning just to coast. Also gave myself a horrendous groin injury at one point whilst casually riding around.

Consider rollerblades, way easier.

If you insist on skateboarding, larger diameter wheels go a long way to not crashing on every crack/pebble/uneven surface. A long-board is easier than a street/short-board, and will usually have larger wheels by default.

Beyond that I have no advice for learning in your 40s. I learned to skate street in my childhood and can still effectively get around on one in my 40s. But it's no joke to crash on pavement at our age. Be prepared for some slow-healing fractures and irreparably damaged laptop/phone if you're commuting with a tech job.

Having said all that though, skateboarding is awesome and should get way more respect than it tends to. Super challenging and rewarding, more kids should learn it, character building.

Totally aligned with the answer below. Probably not the best for commuting. But it is true that it opens a whole new world. Both deep and fascinating IMO. I have been thrown in during my childhood, and realised it is a whole part of who I am now. If you want to try it out, we have a friend of us in the Old Skaters Tricks Challenge who started out recently at 36 yo. Being part of the tricks challenge helped him unlock tricks like BS 180 or FS 180, and it made the other guys with often more experience super stoked to witness that. First time landing a new trick is quiet something. Anyway, if you want to get skateboarding a chance, we're here.

So perhaps this is obvious, but for commuting you probably want to use a longboard, not a skateboard. Can't do tricks on a longboard, but other than that it's much easier than a skateboard.

a lot of tricks have subtle bits around foot placement, how and when the board is flicked, etc. even the same trick can be done in different styles.

someone learning from this is paying attention to detail on body and foot positioning that someone who doesn’t skate wouldn’t see.

That's an interesting point. It is highly likely for someone who does not skate that you would not feel anything much that some sort of satisfaction (if anything at all). This is all the more intriguing that for skaters though, it lights up so many different things in your body and brain, that you could literally stay watching a simple trick forever. It is probably true for a lot of sports with some artistic vibes. Vibrating to the perfect moment, the sound, the touch, all happening at speed.

This is how I learned to swing a baseball bat. I remember my dad bought some VHS tapes with a swing coach who broke it down into stages "one, two and three." And then he showed the slow motion swings of major leaguers and pointed to where the three stages were. Then he gave a drill for each step. And you were supposed to practice each step in isolation, then put them all together.

I remember thinking it was ridiculous, but it was somewhat effective (I was never a great hitter, but I think that was due more to the lack of a batting cage in my backyard than it was to the poor teaching skills of some mustached guy from the 70s). It's "good enough" for beginning instruction because it gives you a way to break a complex process into smaller discrete steps that you can practice in isolation. Are professionals thinking about their swing in three parts? No, definitely not, but you've got to start somewhere...

My piano teacher had a similar way of teaching, breaking each song into small pieces and making me practice a few notes dozens of times, then gradually growing the size of the pieces, and then putting them all together. He was an expert, so you could put a sheet of music in front of him and he'd play the whole thing on the first try. But I couldn't do that, so I needed to learn step by step.

There is something to be said for this technique, at least until you become an expert at something, to the point that it's second nature to swing the bat or play a full sheet of music. At that point you probably have more effective ways of teaching yourself. But you've got to start somewhere.

The four-dimensional thing is better than any explanation I can offer... as a skater, with skating things at least.

It doesn't translate to other things at all for me, but this was the most active thing I ever did...

I can watch Rodney Mullen do things I could never physically do, but 'feel' things you wouldn't expect. Examples would be where I'd put my weight, where the board would be pushing back, and how much I should lean forward/back to not slip

It's kind of like when zoning out while driving, in some ways. You go through the motions because you've done all the various pieces before. A kickflip is an ollie with a slide to the side, for example

But, because this process is new, it does take a lot of trial/focus. You get a good idea, but... theory/practice

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3924058/

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4826257/

3. https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysio...

The last one was cool, and new to me.

100. Also, I am still quiet surprised that for this example on the hardflip, you place your back foot near the opposite side. It was pretty counter-intuitive for me. Practice for sure is the most important part.

I'd be super interested in reading that piece. If you find it again, could you post it here?

Let me try this hardflip a hundred times more. When I land it for good, an article it will be. You shall not be disappointed once again.

See my other comment, may scratch your itch.