Flat or steep nose & tail kick, which is better?

In the following article we provide insight into how the kick, i.e. the angle of your nose and tail, affects the performance of your skateboard.

To put it simply, you can say: the steeper the kick, the more pop the deck has.

However, there are several factors at play here that we would like to discuss in detail here.

The steeper the nose or tail, the greater the distance to the ground and the greater the distance the tip of the tail has to travel to touch the ground when popping. This gives you the opportunity to build up more pressure and thus bring more energy into your ollie. However, you need even more precise timing to implement all this energy.

Not only the angle, i.e. the strength of the bend in the nose and tail, has an influence here, but also the position of the bend. Most decks don't have their kick directly at the axle holes, but only afterwards. The easiest way to compare this to fingers is to measure how many fingers you can fit between the bend and the holes in the axles. This is also called “Fingers of Flat”. The shorter the distance between the axles and the bend, the more energy can be converted and the more pop you can get out of the deck.

The following applies to manual tricks or wheelies: A steeper kick on the nose or tail gives you more room to avoid dragging on the ground during the trick, but it is easier to maintain balance with a slightly flatter deck.

But the kick is not only noticeable on the pop side. For example, when you ollie over the tail of your deck, your front foot pulls toward the nose. Here, a steeper nose gives you more resistance from the bend onwards, which makes it easier for you to raise the board. However, when doing flip tricks in which you then pull your foot sideways over the nose, a kick that is too strong can be annoying. This is a key point why particularly technical street skaters often prefer a flatter deck.

What is the difference between "Mellow Kick" and "Steep Kick"?

Here you once again become aware of how small the differences are between a rather flat board and a steep one. A fairly flat deck will have a kick of around 18 degrees, while a really steep board will go up to 24 degrees. So here a difference of just 6 degrees makes the difference.

Because the nose is usually a little longer, it hits the ground earlier than the tail. This is one of the reasons why it can sometimes be easier to learn new tricks using the nose. The pop isn't as explosive as the tail, but you don't need as precise timing.

In summary explained:

The longer and flatter the nose or tail and the later the kick begins after the axle holes, the easier it can be to learn tricks, but you have less leverage and lose energy when jumping off.

We went into great detail in this article and in practice the actual differences between decks are sometimes very minimal. These nuances are only noticed by very experienced skateboarders. If you have just started skating or are thinking about starting, these subtle differences are not really relevant to you, so the following applies here: Please do not overanalyze.

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