Pro Tip - How to Skate Like Zion Wright with The Nine Club Podcast

Skate Tips from Pro Skateboarder Zion Wright who uses visualisation to get his best tricks

If you love podcasts and love skateboarding, look no further than The Nine Club Podcast.

I love podcasts and always put one on in the car, when tidying the house or walking into town. The Nine Club Podcast means you can listen to your favourite skaters talk filming videos, competitions, sponsors and growing up. It’s currently one of my most listened to podcasts alongside The Tim Ferriss Show, Finding Mastery and The Grit/Surf Splendor.

Zion recently had an interview with The Nine Club to tie in nicely with his new Nike SB edit ‘Jupiter Rising’ (have a watch below..it’s insane) and with that, the stars aligned to bring us some amazing content. So with all this new content coming from Zion, what can we learn?

There were 2 big takeaways from this, the first is Confidence and the second is Visualisation.

“I’d say it’s like pretty much 90% of my skating is confidence.”

Zion talks about a trick in his part that only took him 2 attempts, landed on it first go and slipped out, rolled away second try.

“It’s mental you know, because like, the skating is there I can do the trick.”

So he’s been practicing the trick before going to the street spot. He’ll go to different skateparks with similar rails and practice the trick to build confidence in his ability. Then he’s visualising it before he goes to the rail, in the days/weeks leadings up to it, he’s visualising it.

“Pretty much the one I did, I visualised that try”

This part is fascinating. During his visualisations his foot comes off the board a bit during the grind (half cab crooks on a rail). No particular reason, but that was how it would look in his mind. When he went and filmed the trick for real and watched it back… his foot comes off the board a bit during the grind.

So to turn these two takeaways into actionable insights, this is what I now do:

1. Think of the trick I want to learn

2. Find a video of someone with the same stance as me doing the trick

3. Watch the video a load of times, absorbing in the look and feel of the trick

4. Find a skatepark with the right obstacle to learn on, opting for something small and low

5. Learn the trick and slowly build it up to bigger obstacles

6. Visualise (sometimes film) how I was doing the trick, re-watch this after learning to embed the movement into my muscles

So hopefully that can help you. I’m a big fan of Zion and love watching him in the comps, plus to add to all this, Zion surfs too. What a champ.

Enjoy.

The show that has skateboarders talking - This week Zion Wright discusses growing up in Jupiter Florida, getting into skating at 4 years old, going to Woodward and getting flowed by Karl Watson's Organika, moving to Long Beach, getting on Real Skateboards, non-stop traveling, skating for RedBull, Nike SB and much more...

Zion spent the last part of 2018 traveling and filming with friends. Getting another full part out of it was just a bonus. Cheers, Z! You're a maniac. Keep up with Thrasher Magazine here: http://www.thrashermagazine.com http://www.facebook.com/thrashermagazine http://www.instagram.com/thrashermag http://www.twitter.com/thrashermag