How to Start Skateboarding as an Adult

The single most common thing we hear from adults at a first lesson is some version of "I feel ridiculous." You won't after about twenty minutes. What actually holds adults back isn't age or fitness — it's the fear of looking like a beginner in public. Everything below is designed around removing that.

Buy the right board first

An adult beginner wants a full-size popsicle deck, 8.25 inches wide or more, with 54–56mm wheels at around 99a durometer. Wider decks are more stable. Slightly bigger, slightly softer wheels roll over cracks instead of stopping dead on them, which is the cause of most first-week falls.

Skip the complete boards sold at big-box stores. The bearings and trucks on them are genuinely unsafe. A complete from a local shop runs $120–$160 and will last years. If you're not sure yet, every one of our lessons includes a board so you can try before you spend anything.

Learn to fall before you learn to ride

Adults fall differently to kids: further to the ground, with more mass, and with an instinct to catch themselves on an outstretched arm. Wrist fractures are the number one adult skate injury and they're almost entirely preventable.

• Wear wrist guards. Not optional for the first month.
• Practise falling onto knee pads on grass until sliding out feels normal.
• Learn to bail forward off the board and run it out rather than fighting to stay on.
• A helmet is cheaper than a night at Swedish Medical Center.

A realistic four-week progression

• Week 1 — Standing, finding your stance, pushing in a straight line, foot braking.
• Week 2 — Carving turns, controlling speed on a gentle slope, stepping off cleanly at speed.
• Week 3 — Tic-tacs, kickturns, riding a mellow bank, pumping transition.
• Week 4 — Rolling comfortably around a skatepark's beginner area and dropping in on a small ramp.

That's the pace of a committed beginner practising twice a week. Slower is completely fine. Nobody is grading you.

Where to practise in Colorado

Skip the busy skatepark for the first two weeks. What you want is a large, smooth, flat, empty surface. In the Denver metro that means the Platte River Trail south of Littleton, the High Line Canal path near Greenwood Village, or the flat sections of a real park before the crowd arrives — Cornerstone Skatepark in Littleton and Trails Skatepark in Centennial are both quiet before 10am on a weekday.

The part nobody tells you

Progress as an adult isn't linear and it isn't fast. You will have a session where everything clicks and then a session two weeks later where you can't push straight. That's normal, it's not a sign you're too old, and it happens to teenagers too — they just don't narrate it to themselves the way we do.

If you want to skip the awkward start entirely, that's what our Adult Beginner sessions exist for. Small groups, other adults at the same level, and a coach whose whole job is to stop you developing habits you'll spend a year unlearning.

Written by Evan

Head coach at Rocky Mountain Shred School. Thirty years on a board and more than 1,200 students coached across the Denver metro.