How To Turn On A Skateboard For Beginners (Step By Step)

Congratulation! your presence here shows you’ve already mastered balancing on a skateboard and riding in a straight direction. We know how difficult it’s to learn skateboarding as a beginner.

But you’re not yet done with the basics; you have to master turning on a skateboard, to turn left or right with ease. Over and above that, turning at right time prevents you from falling and accidents when it comes to sudden finish points or any uncertainty between the ride.

Therefore in this article, we’re going to cover everything about how to turn on a skateboard for beginners, with step by step guide.

Note: Make sure you own the right size skateboard. For example, if you’re 12 you need the right size skateboard for 12 year old. It helps in tuning and skateboard learning.

How To Turn On A Skateboard

There are many different ways to turn on skateboard, but the most preferred and easy ways are two. Either by leaning your body weight on one side of the skateboard or by doing a kickturn. You can prefer whatever suits you out of these two.

A leaning causes a smooth and gradual turn, while a kickturn makes a swift and sharp turn.

Let’s deep dive into it!

Turn on a Skateboard by Leaning

Before you learn the leaning, check the tightness of your skateboard truck. For that, stand on your board and lean both the left and right sides. First, press your toes to one side, then with your heels.

If your skate deck does not lean properly, it means the trucks are tight, which didn’t allow you to turn easily.

On the other hand, if your deck lean easily, it means the trucks are loose. It’s suitable for turning purposes, but it makes your ride unstable and goes complicated to control while riding.

So here the question arises how tight should skateboard trucks be? There is no exact tool that indicates the truck’s perfect tightness; it all depends on the rider. You will analyze the right tightness of trucks for yourself when you ride them for a while with different levels of tightness.

But as you’re a beginner, we recommend starting with tighter trucks than loose ones.

Push Off Until You Get A Decent Speed

Start pushing your board with the right foot; by having four or five strong pushes, you’ll have a good speed. Just keep going straight to make yourself stable and balanced on a skateboard.

Make sure your lead foot is right above the bolts on the deck attached to the trucks below. Further assured, your feet are not on the edge of the deck because if that happens, one pair of wheels will take off the ground, which results in losing the balance.

Decide The Direction

Before doing a lean, you must be clear about the direction you want to steer. Otherwise, in the end, you get confused.

As a beginner, steer a direction that suits your body language, no matter left or right.

You’re Ready To Perform It

By following all the above steps now, you’re ready to turn on a skateboard while riding it.

Bend your knees, slightly decrease your center of gravity and keep all the body weight on one side of the deck where you want to turn.

By following the same step daily, you’ll be pro in turning a skateboard at high speed too.

How To Stop Turning

Once you’re done with the turning, you must be knowing how to stop it and get back to the usual straight direction. For that, you’ve to downshift your weight back to the middle of your feet.

We hope that you’ve already learned the basics of skateboarding and mastered the skill. If not check out here how to skateboard as a beginner.

Turn On a Skateboard By Kickturn

Kickturn is a little bit harder to learn than Leaning, but it goes easy and more enjoyable once you know this.

A Kickturn is done by lifting your board’s nose, and it happens due to pushing down the tail of the board with the back foot. It makes turning easy and fast.

The best thing about kickturn is that it’s easy to turn and allows you sudden turning at slow or high speed.

To perform kickturn, get your body weight at the center of the board by place your front foot on the bolts of a front truck and keeping your back foot near the edge of the deck.

Now slowly swift your weight on the back foot and turn whatever direction you want to; using your front foot and twisting the shoulder’s action can turn in any direction.

Please don’t go too hard it will force the tail to the ground, and your turning will fail.

To stop kickturn, get your body back to the front foot with maintaining the proper balance.

Before you start performing kickturn, practice it in a standing position until you get perfect to it.

If your wheels are new still not performing well, it means they need to be clean. For that, you can check out here for step by step guide.

How do you make it easier to turn on a skateboard?

To make turning easier, you can adjust your trucks. The bolt that holds the truck to the board can be loosened or tightened to change the truck’s width. Wider trucks are easier to turn. You can also adjust the kingpin, which is the bolt that connects the baseplate to the hanger. A lower kingpin makes turning easier. And finally, you can try using softer bushings. Softer bushings make it easier to lean the board into a turn.

Why is it hard to turn on my skateboard?

It could be that your skateboard trucks are too tight, meaning the bolts that hold the trucks to the board are too tight and need to be loosened.

Conclusion

Before you start learning how to turn on a skateboard wear all the protective gear like a helmet, wrist guard, and pads. While turning the first time, you may fall off the board, so having protective gear is recommended for beginners.

Also, choose the right location to practice daily, like a parking lot or parking garage.

At last, we hope you have learned something new from this article. If you’ve any thoughts or queries regarding skateboard turning, feel free to comment it down, we’ll be pleased to help you out.