How to Tail Stall on a Skateboard

About the Tail Stall

The tail stall is one of the first coping tricks you’ll learn on a skateboard and is a great setup trick when skating a halfpipe. Before learning this trick, you should be able to pump a ramp well and drop in. The best place to learn is on a 3 to 4 foot miniramp. The tail stall is a little hard to time at first, but is actually one of the easiest coping tricks and you’ll dial it in quick.

Learning the Trick

Timing is probably the hardest part of this trick, but it won’t take you too long to figure out. As you’re rolling up one side of the miniramp fakie, you’ll want to come in with enough speed to where if you did nothing your back wheels would roll over the coping. You don’t want so much speed that you would fly over the coping – just enough to roll gently over. With this proper amount of speed, just before you hit coping you should shift all of your weight backwards onto your tail into a drop-in position. When first learning, it’ll probably be a super quick stall where your board gets completely parallel with the flat ground. As you improve, you will be able to bring your weight all the weight back until you can stall in a complete drop-in position.

As I said, timing can be the toughest part. If you try to stall too early, you’ll be sliding your tail on the ramp and will slip out. Just be prepared for this possibility – it’s not a tough trick to run out of as long as you’re ready for it. If you try to stall too late, your wheels will go over the coping before you get your tail down and you’ll have to slide down the ramp. Either case is pretty low consequence as long as you know what to expect. Once you dial this trick there are a ton of variations you can learn, so get after it!

Comment below with questions or progress!