Jake Hayes Whips Out His Kickflip Trick Tip Clip
If you haven’t learned how to kickflip yet, you might want to check this out: Bionic Australian Jake Hayes flicks out a few very useful pointers in the latest video on his YouTube channel. In Hayes’s ‘Kickflip Trick Tip,’ he reminds you that rolling is by far the easier way to learn this deceptively simple move (the foundation of sooooo many fun tricks), which might seem a little counterintuitive—you gotta crawl before you learn to walk, right?
Hayes is the perfect skater to lend a guiding hand in the realm of kickflips. He famously doesn’t take shortcuts, opting to contract his legs as far as they’ll possibly go, and vacuuming his kickflips back up to his soles at the peak. Usually, this means that his torso has to fold forward at a right angle to compensate for the force of his jump; if you pause his kickflip clip at the trick’s apex and Hayes bears a striking resemblance to an Olympic hurdler. But it isn’t solely his skills that make Hayes the optimal kickflip teacher—he also genuinely wants you get this all-important trick down pat. Along with his step-by-step tutorial, Hayes offers a helping hand in the form of an invitation to hit him up on Instagram with your kickflip-related questions: @jakehayes. If you still can’t master your flick after all that, you might want to explore heelflips instead.
In 2019, we spent some time with Hayes at The Berrics while he cheerfully humored our request to do the highest kickflip of all time. This is something you have to see, below:
