The grammar of trick names

Skateboarding trick names look chaotic, but underneath sits a productive grammar - a small set of movement components that combine, and a handful of rules for how they combine. Learn the components and you can read a name you have never heard, or name a movement nobody has named. This page is the reference for the semantic model behind all 316 tricks in the database.

1 · The components

Every trick decomposes into independent components - three describing how you're riding, four rotations each on its own axis, then contact and posture:

2 · Stance is three things, not one list

Trick lists usually offer one stance field with four values - regular, fakie, switch, nollie. That reads as a single choice, but those four are combinations of three independent questions, and flattening them hides the combinations that don't have a slot:

Read down the columns and the confusion in the flat list becomes obvious. Fakie is about which way you're rolling. Switch is about which foot is forward. Nollie is neither - it's which end you pop, the nose instead of the tail, which is why “nollie” attaches to tricks the way it does: a nollie kickflip is a kickflip, popped off the other end. Keeping them separate is also what lets the last two rows exist at all.

Two of these axes also carry a “neither” value, because plenty of tricks need one. Pop can be none: a manual presses the board rather than snapping it, a slappy grinds a curb with no ollie at all, a footplant lifts the board by hand, and a transition wall launches you without any pop - which is why nearly every vert trick has no pop in its data. Riding can be stationary, for tricks held at a standstill like a pogo or a truckstand. Neither value changes a trick's name: a slappy 50-50 is still a 50-50.

Regular and goofy are a fourth thing, and they aren't part of a trick. Which foot you naturally lead with describes the rider: a goofy-footed kickflip is still a kickflip, and its whole description is unchanged. That's why footing is recorded as natural-or-switch relative to your stance, whatever that is, and footedness is just a mirror toggle on the simulation.

3 · Frontside and backside

The two most load-bearing words in skateboarding are stance-relative directions. Backside: the rotation direction where your back turns to face the direction of travel first (a backside shove-it scoops the tail toward your heels). Frontside: your chest opens to the direction of travel first. They come from surfing - which way you faced the wave. For grinds and slides they instead describe how you approached the obstacle: backside means the obstacle started behind your heels.

4 · Flip direction

A kickflip rolls the board so the grip tape turns toward your heels first - flicked off the heel-side pocket of the nose with the front foot's toes. A heelflip rolls the opposite way, grip turning toward your toes, kicked out with the heel through the toe-side pocket.

5 · The shove-it is relative to the rider

This is the single most important rule in the model, and the one that stops the grammar from confusing tricks. The board is bolted to your feet, so whenever you rotate, it rotates with you. What names a trick is therefore not the board's total turn but its turn relative to you - the shove-it component:

shove-it = board's total yaw − rider's rotation

A Hardflip and a Frontside 180 Kickflip both put the board through 180° frontside and one kickflip. They are completely different tricks because in a hardflip the rider stays square and the board turns underneath them (shove-it = 180°), whereas in a frontside 180 kickflip rider and board turn together (shove-it = 0°). Same total board rotation, different relative rotation, different name. That's also what separates a Biggerspin (540° board, 180° body - extra board yaw) from a Gazelle Spin (540° board, 360° body - extra body rotation).

The exception is the body varial, where your feet leave the board entirely: you spin, the board keeps rolling straight, and the relative rotation is an artifact rather than a scoop.

Because the two axes are recorded separately, a trick where board and rider turn together states both - and in the Builder you set both. Board spin on its own is a shove-it; body rotation on its own is a body varial.

6 · Fusion names - the irregular verbs

When a flip and a spin happen together, the name is often not compositional. These fusions are the irregular forms every skater memorizes:

Board and body rotating together also fuses: a 180° shove-it riding on top of a 180° body rotation is a Bigspin (360° of board yaw in total); push the shove-it to 360° and it's a Biggerspin; push the body to 360° instead and it's a Gazelle Spin. Add a kickflip to any of them and “spin” becomes “flip”. Fakie stance fuses with body rotation too: fakie body 180 = Half-Cab, fakie body 360 = Caballerial - named for Steve Caballero, which is the other force in trick naming: people. Smith, Willy, Suski, Losi, Bennett, Andrecht, Madonna, McTwist - grammar and folklore coexist, which is why every entry stores its aliases and history.

7 · Word order

The canonical name reads left to right in a fixed order, just like a syntax tree:

[stance] [body rotation] [flip⊗spin fusion] [grab] [contact trick] [modifiers]

“Nollie Frontside 360 Heelflip Crail Grab” = nollie stance · body FS 360° · heelflip · crail
“Switch Bigspin” = switch · (body BS 180 + BS 180 shove-it) fused
“Fakie 360 Flip” = fakie · (kickflip + BS 360 shove-it) fused

8 · Grab dictionary

9 · Contact - grinds, slides, stalls

Contact tricks are named by what touches the obstacle: both trucks is a 50-50; back truck only, a 5-0; front truck, a Nosegrind. Angle the deck across the edge and friction changes the word to slide: middle of the deck is a Boardslide, tail a Tailslide, nose a Noseslide, wheels-plus-tail a Bluntslide. Truck + rail combinations get folk names: back truck with the toe rail dipped is a Smith; with the heel rail over the bar a Feeble; front truck pinched with the nose pointing down the rail, a Crooked grind. Do any of them without moving and it's a stall.

Mind the slash: 50-50 is the grind - both trucks along an edge. 50/50 is something else entirely, the freestyle stance where the board stands vertical on its tail with one foot on the back truck and a hand on the nose. Drop the hand and the same position is a Truckstand. The two share a number and nothing else.

10 · Using this to simulate

Because every component is a rotation on a known axis (or a contact constraint), the semantic model is directly executable: the 3D simulation on every trick page is generated from the same JSON the search runs on - roll from the flip component, yaw from the spin component, pitch from the end-over-end component, plus the rider's body rotation ring. The same data could drive a full-body rig or a step-by-step coach. Data is the single source of truth; the renderer is just an interpreter.