Watching skate videos – try this one, or this one – is great. You can kind of imagine doing those tricks.
Watching beginner “how to” skate videos – try this one – is fun too. You can definitely imagine doing those tricks: “So I just put my foot here, then I jump like this…”
You can learn a lot from videos, and it’s interesting, and it’s fun. But when you actually stand on a skateboard, or go to a skatepark, you discover this: gravity works.*
The idea in your head meets the reality of real-world execution – the necessity of endless repetition, incremental improvement and painful failure all to land the least impressive version of the least impressive trick in the simplest tutorial – and you start to see what the polished performance of the pros really means.
This is the work of getting better, and you need to find ways to do it often, and to enjoy it.
*Especially if you’re over… 35